Ghana: John Mahama’s Return By Reuben Abati

There seems to be an emerging pattern in some of the major elections conducted in Africa so far, hinting at an emergent character of democracy in the continent, and this would seem to be the people’s seeming determination to change incumbent ruling parties or whittle down their influence or remove them altogether, and at the base of this is a certain streak of nostalgia for the past. In May, South Africa held its general elections and for the first time since the end of apartheid in 1994, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) lost its parliamentary majority, receiving less than 50% of the votes. It therefore found itself in the uncomfortable situation of having to negotiate with the centrist Democratic Alliance, the Jacob Zuma-led uMkhonto Sizwe (MK), the Inkatha Freedom Party and the Patriotic Alliance (PA) to be able to form a national unity government. Former President Jacob Zuma said he and the MK would not be part of any alliance. Zuma was indeed the nemesis of the ANC.

He is the overlord of politics in KwaZulu Natal, having left the ANC in December 2023. Ramaphosa survived the anti-ANC onslaught but it remains to be seen for how long the government of national unity would last, a similar arrangement having failed in the past. There was yet another upheaval in Botswana in October 2024 when the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) which had ruled the country since independence in 1966, lost woefully to the Umbrella for Democratic Change Coalition, producing Duma Boko (54) as President, with a majority 36 seats in the 61-seat parliament. The BDP was reduced to four seats! Former President Ian Khama (2008 – 2018) was, as in South Africa with Zuma, a major factor in the Botswana election. He had appointed Mokgweetsi Masisi as Vice President in 2014, and when his tenure expired in 2018, Khama supported Matsisi to succeed him. When Matsisi assumed office, however, he simply went after Ian Khama, and ended up reversing his policies, and drove him into exile in 2021. In October 2024, Khama returned with a determination to unseat Matsisi. It was not his candidate that won in the end, but he achieved his aim all the same and the Umbrella for Democratic Change was not unknown to him, having worked with that same party in 2019 to secure victory for Matsisi. And now in Ghana, over the weekend, former President John Dramani Mahama has been overwhelmingly re-elected as President for another term of four years. The people of Ghana looked back and looked into the future and concluded that Mahama is best suited to take them into the future.

Beyond the conflict of political interest and power blocs in the three countries isolated for illustration is the resolve of the people to defend their votes and make a choice, by trying possible alternatives. In Botswana, the economy was in the doldrums, the government’s treasury was almost empty. Government hospitals had run out of funds and facilities. Corruption was on stilts, institutions were prostrate. In other words, the state of the economy was a major issue in Botswana as it was also in South Africa. Over 80% of the registered voters in Botswana turned up on polling day. In June, in South Africa, voter’s behaviour was dictated not strictly by the in-fighting within the original ANC but by a number of complex and related factors, top of which is the fact that the people’s expectations had not really been met by the ruling ANC. The people wanted jobs and a better life. The ANC had offered them a high unemployment rate with many of the youths jobless. Trust in the ruling party is also important to the electorate, and the people were no longer as trustful of Ramaphosa and the ANC to create jobs, get them the social grants that they need and address corruption in official corridors. On election day, voter turnout was 58.6%, the lowest ever in 30 years, a reflection of the people’s discontent. The ANC got 40.18% of the votes, and Ramaphosa returned but the people had made a statement about their discontent. Last Saturday in Ghana, voter turn-out was estimated at 61%, and that is considered the lowest in that country in the last three elections. Outgoing President Nana Akuffo-Addo presided over such a bad economy in a generation with high inflation, unemployment and huge, almost unpayable debts that the people angrily voted out his party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

The only exceptions to the pattern described so far would seem to be the general elections in Mozambique on October 9, 2024, and in Namibia, 27 – 30 November 2024. Turn out in Mozambique was put at 43%, with many outrightly boycotting the election in the North and in Namibia, turnout was 76.48%. In Mozambique, FRELIMO retained its 58 years of authoritarian hold on the country, and in Namibia, SWAPO remained immovable even if it produced its first female President, incumbent Vice President, SWAPO veteran, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah. Analysts have noted that the elections in both countries cannot be considered free and fair, but where the voters were allowed to choose and defend their votes, the people spoke loudly through the ballot to the key point that the people are the mainstay of the democratic process. The challenge for African leaders is to provide an enabling environment for democracy to thrive, for good governance, and for building trust with the people. And when it is election time, to allow the people to make their choice.

There have been many comments on the just concluded elections in neighbouring Ghana, focusing on the lessons that Nigerians can possibly learn from Ghana. I think there are lessons both ways, starting with the Nigerian example. It is refreshing to see that even long before the Electoral Commission of Ghana announced the final results and declared the winner, the candidate of the ruling party, NPP, and incumbent Vice President, Mahamudu Bawumia conceded defeat and congratulated President John Mahama, his main opponent of the National Democratic Congress (NDC). “The people have voted for change”, Bawumia said. This display of sportsmanship reminds us of the example of President Goodluck Jonathan in the 2015 general elections in Nigeria. President Jonathan not only congratulated General Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC), he also said famously that his political ambition was not worth the shedding of anyone’s blood. In 2016, a year later, when President John Mahama lost Ghana’s Presidential election of that year, he also quietly relinquished power and handed over to President Nana Akufo-Addo. Between the two countries, there seems to be an emerging realization that the people’s will, whatever may be the circumstances, must be respected. President Jonathan has since gone ahead to build a stronger reputation as a democrat and elder statesman in the West African sub-region and beyond. In an election cycle when we have seen a former President, Donald Trump returning to power in the United States, and President Mahama in Ghana, it is not impossible that there would be some Nigerians out there saying that President Jonathan is entitled to an out-standing possible second term and should also make a bid to return to office as Nigeria’s President. This would however depend on an interplay of factors. The onus is on President Tinubu and the APC not to unwittingly invoke a nostalgia for either President Jonathan and/or the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) among Nigerians.

The second lesson that Ghana had supposedly learnt from Nigeria was pointed out by the Chairman of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu who was in Ghana as a guest and observer. In a widely circulated video, he said Ghana has learnt from Nigeria how to manage constituency election results. Results are announced in the constituencies. Only Presidential election results are sent to Accra for announcement. This comment has drawn a backlash, with many of Professor Yakubu’s critics telling him that on the contrary he is the one who needs to learn lessons from Ghana’s management of the electoral process. For example, voting materials arrived early and the voting process was smooth. In Nigeria, voting is always a tug of war. In Ghana, even if there were scuffles in some constituencies, this was nothing compared to the Nigerian situation where persons resort to raw violence. Election in Nigeria is often a security operation, heavily militarized. In Ghana, the people drove soldiers away from polling stations. They insisted that an election should be a civilian operation. In places where the soldiers were confronted and scuffles ensued, we saw the Ghanaian soldiers not shooting anyone, even when they carried weapons. If any Nigerian voter displayed such boldness to challenge Nigerian soldiers at a polling unit, there would have been bloodshed! The Electoral Commission of Ghana also deployed technology, but this did not become an excuse for abuse as has been the case repeatedly in Nigeria. Those voters whose names were missing in the register on polling day, were still accredited through a back-end database, and allowed to vote. In Nigeria, it is either the notorious BVAS would fail or the INEC server would malfunction due to “technical glitches”. There have been no deafening reports of vote buying indicating that the Ghanaian voter is far more sophisticated, and that democracy in Ghana is more stable. A total of 18. 6 million registered voters, 13 candidates representing nine political parties, 4 independent candidates, with the NPP and NDC emerging as the. dominant two parties – the option of independent candidacy is an area in which Nigeria can learn from Ghana to make our political process more inclusive.

Despite the push-back that Professor Mahmood Yakubu may have received, he identified a lesson for Nigeria that seems noteworthy: which is his comment that politicians in Ghana are faithful to their political parties. They do not move from one political party to the other every election season. The reverse is the case in Nigeria because here, our political parties are Special Purpose Vehicles, organized to win by any means. Nigerian politics is not ideology-based. Politicians would rather use any political platform that would get them into power. Nigeria’s political parties are united by this singular aim, and that is why after every general election, it doesn’t take long before our politicians migrate into the ruling party. In Ghana there is a more enduring tradition of political identity. Prof. Yakubu obviously knows what he is talking about in this regard: names are constantly moving around on the INEC register. President John Mahama lost election in 2016 on the platform of the NDC, he lost again in 2020 on the platform of the same party, and now in 2024, at third attempt, he has emerged victorious. If he were a Nigerian politician, he would have been all over the political space, gambling for opportunity. But he stayed within the NDC, and helped to build it into a winning machinery.

We join others in congratulating him. His victory has resulted in much singing and dancing across Ghana. There are no politicians threatening to contest the outcome in the courts. The people of Ghana, however, should be cautiously optimistic. When President Mahama lost his bid for a second term in the 2016 general election, the key reason was the poor state of the Ghanaian economy, high unemployment rate and the failure of the country’s electricity system. Those problems have not disappeared, they only became worse under President Nana Akuffo-Addo who got so distracted he even commissioned a statue in his own honour in Sekondi in the Western Region. That statue must fall. It must be pulled down, to purge Akuffo-Addo of his own delusions. President Mahama also has to manage the people’s expectations. Ghanaians are looking for a miracle-working President who will offer them a better life. But there are no miracles anywhere. It is a good thing that Mahama has significant experience on the job having been President (2012 -2017), Vice President (2009 – 2012), Minister for Communications (1998 -2001), Deputy Minister for Communications (1997 – 1998), and Member of Parliament for Bole (1997 -2009). He knows the system. He knows Ghana. He has proven ability. Still, he must act carefully. He must resist the temptation to over-promise and seek to over-impress. He must take his time to study the same system that he is familiar with all over again. He knows Nigeria, being a High Chief of Offa Kingdom in Kwara state -Aare Atolase of Offa – and given his close relationships with the country, for a start, he should reflect on the experience so far of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Tinubu was in so much of a hurry, he started introducing reforms from his very first day in office, reforms which have now thrown the people into the deep end. The best reform that a leader can embark upon is in the minds of the people: to build trust and deliver the fruits of good governance. President Mahama should run an inclusive government, and accommodate the finest shades of opinions.

Students of Ghana’s politics and history would be better placed to give a more definitive history of President Nana Akufo-Addo’s legacy, a verdict which should be kinder in good time – his commitment to democracy, his Pan-Africanism, his Ghana beyond aid rhetoric, his management of the COVID-19 challenge, his establishment of six additional regions and his robust presence in international affairs. With Mahama, as President, Nigerians can have their own expectations too: better relations with a country with which we share so much in common. Our brother from Offa, has won 6.3 million polls, a historic 56.55% of the votes, an emphatic victory. President Mahama has been given an opportunity to rewrite his own legacy: at home and abroad. He should not squander it.