For weeks and months, glaring inconsistencies surrounding the overall vote performance of Dr Mahamudu Bawumia have been allowed to fester without a robust rebuttal. Unfortunately, some disorganised and disoriented campaign teams in the race have seized upon these inaccuracies and amplified them for political convenience joining the party with propagandist inclination; the NDC in sowing discord. 

It is nauseating when intellectuals even follow the bandwagon with the penchant of extolling 38.7% against 41.7% gazzetted total votes by the Electoral Commission (EC). Unfortunately the height of this was when I was personally challenged by a friend on Facebook, regarding the potency of presenting Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia and recognising that these narratives were false, I found it necessary to respond decisively as it has been articulated previously by his Excellency Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia himself.

First, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia remains the first presidential aspirant in the history of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to have secured the highest number of votes ever recorded in an NPP flagbearership delegate election. This is an objective and verifiable fact.

Second, Dr Bawumia is the second individual, after President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, to obtain one of the highest national vote margins as a first-time presidential candidate in Ghana’s Fourth Republic. This places his performance firmly within a historically strong bracket.

Third, electoral history further reinforces this point. While President Akufo-Addo secured 49.7% in the first round of the 2008 general elections, President John Agyekum Kufuor obtained 39.7% in the 1996 elections, and Professor Albert Adu Boahen polled 30.2% in 1992. These figures demonstrate that strong leadership trajectories often evolve progressively rather than instantaneously.

Although it would have sufficed to confine this argument strictly within the NPP’s electoral history, broader national trends are equally instructive. The National Democratic Congress (NDC), under President John Evans Atta Mills, experienced a significant reduction in vote share.from 57.37% in 1996 to 43.1% in 2000, sadly this decline did not diminish the party’s long-term competitiveness or legitimacy.

Conclusion

It would therefore be the height of indiscretion and indeed wholly absurd to suggest that Dr Mahamudu Bawumia’s 41.7% performance in 2024, when contrasted with the NPP’s 50.6% showing in 2020, is evidence of electoral failure. Such a claim does not withstand rigorous scrutiny when examined against historical and empirical electoral data.

Those who persist in weaponising the 41.7% figure to construct a case against Dr Bawumia must reflect more critically. When assessed holistically, cumulative gains and losses within Ghana’s electoral cycles tilt decisively in Dr Bawumia’s favour and do not support the speculative extrapolations advanced by his critics.

Writer 

Prince Kwadwo Osei

Chairman One In Town

NPP Birmingham Chapter Chairman

Email: beminegh@gmail.com

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