Former President John Dramani Mahama has been elected flagbearer of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) following a resounding victory in the party’s recently concluded primaries.
Mr Mahama, who served as Ghana’s president for one term from 2012 to 2016, received 297,603 votes, accounting for 98.9 per cent of all votes cast, while his lone opponent, Kojo Bonsu, received 3,181 votes, accounting for 1.1 per cent of all votes cast.
The Electoral Commission’s returning officer declared the results late on Sunday, May 14, at Accra’s party headquarters.
Mr Mahama, who ran unsuccessfully for president in the 2016 and 2020 national elections, will now lead the NDC into the 2024 elections.
He competed against former Bank of Ghana Governor Dr Kwabena Duffuor and Kumasi Mayor Kojo Bonsu.
Dr Duffuor, on the other hand, dropped out of the contest, stating that concerns he made regarding anomalies in the party’s electoral record had not been addressed.
Mahama’s campaign team had previously stated that they were confident of receiving 99.9% of the vote in the primaries.
Beatrice Annan, the team’s deputy spokeswoman, stated that the enthusiastic reception the team received in all 275 constituencies they visited before the primaries bolstered and cemented their conviction in a landslide win in the flagbearership election.
Mr Mahama served as Vice President from January 2009 to July 2012, and was sworn in as President on July 24, 2012, following the death of his boss, Prof. John Evans Atta Mills.
He went on to win the election in December 2012 and serve as President for one term (four years).
He was defeated in his re-election campaigns in 2016 and 2020 by Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
Mr Mahama is a communication specialist, historian, and author.
He served as Deputy Minister for Communications from 1997 and 1998 before becoming the substantive Minister for Communications in 1998. He was a Member of Parliament for Bole Bamboi from 1997 to 2009.
He is the first head of state of Ghana to have been born after Ghana’s independence.
