The ruling party’s candidate says John Dramani Mahama has won “decisively”.
Ghana’s ruling party candidate, Mahamudu Bawumia, has conceded defeat in the West African nation’s presidential election, declaring his main opponent, former president John Dramani Mahama, to be the winner.
In a concession speech on Sunday, Bawumia, the country’s current vice president, congratulated Mahama on his victory after preliminary results showed the New Patriotic Party (NPP) could be on course to suffer one of its worst defeats in decades.
“The data from our own internal collation of the election results indicate that former president, His Excellency John Dramani Mahama, has won the presidential election decisively,” the NPP candidate told reporters at his residence in the capital, Accra.
Mahama’s victory will see his return to the presidency, which he lost to outgoing President Nana Akufo-Addo in December 2016. He previously led Ghana from July 2012 to January 2017. The 65-year-old politician first rose to power following the death of his predecessor, John Evans Attah Mills, in whose administration he had been vice president.
Despite significant infrastructure investment, Mahama’s government has endured widespread criticism for the country’s erratic power supply and the depreciation of the local currency against the US dollar, as well as allegations of corruption involving his officials.
However, the country’s economic crisis is said to have worsened under the current government, which had promised a new era of development and a “Ghana Beyond Aid” in campaigns that helped it win power twice – in 2016 and 2020. Akufo-Addo’s administration defaulted on most of the country’s $30 billion of external debt in 2022, following years of borrowing.
Voters have accused the ruling party of mismanagement and failure to deliver on key promises, stating that they were casting their ballots on top issues, including the rising cost of living and unemployment.
According to the Electoral Commission of Ghana (EC), nearly 18.8 million people in the 34 million-strong country registered to vote in the December 7 general elections, which saw ten other candidates competing against Mahama and Bawumia.
The president-elect confirmed in a post on X that he had received a congratulatory call from his “brother” Bawumia following his “emphatic victory in Saturday’s election.”
While the EC has yet to release official results, the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), to which Mahama belongs, said numbers collated by party agents from 38,896 of the total 40,976 polling stations showed their candidate leading with about 56%. Local broadcaster Joy News also reported that Bawumia had received 45.16% of the vote and Mahama received more than 53%, citing provisional results from 68 of 276 constituencies. Last month, Global InfoAnalytics, an independent research organization, released an opinion poll predicting that Mahama would win with 52% to Bawumia’s 41%.
On Sunday, Bawumia said he had decided to concede defeat ahead of the “official announcement by the Electoral Commission to avoid further tension and preserve the peace of our country.”
“It is important that the world investor community continues to believe in the peaceful and democratic character of Ghana,” he stated.
