Mahama Faces Hurdles In 2024 Polls

A senior lecturer at the Department of History and Political Studies at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Daniel Owusu-Ansah, has predicted that former President John Dramani Mahama will have a tough time convincing Ghanaians to vote for him in the 2024 general election.

The main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) party chose the former president in last Saturday’s presidential primaries to be its candidate for 7 December 2024 polls.

Mr. Mahama got a landslide victory in the primaries by garnering 297,603 votes representing 98.9% of total valid votes cast, beating his only contender Kojo Bonsu, a former mayor of Kumasi, who also polled 3,181 votes representing 1.1%.

But Owusu-Ansah said even though the outcome of the primaries showed that Mahama was still a force to reckon with in Ghana politics, he would face tough times ahead.

“I think that he is still a strong candidate, but to be very honest with you, he would have to clean up some of the issues that really accounted for his failure in 2016.

“He would have to do a lot more.

“I think that his biggest problem will be to get the support of Ghanaians, after losing the 2016 elections. The issues are still fresh on our minds, and you will just need to start the campaign proper and you realise that these things will pop up again.

“Unfortunately for him, social media is always there and he can always be referred to what he said, what he did, and couldn’t do in his first term, that is going to be his biggest problem,” the lecturer stated on the Asaase Breakfast Show on Monday.