Ghana opposition: chooses Mahama for 2024 race

John Dramani Mahama, the former president of Ghana, was selected as the party’s standard bearer for the 2024 presidential election on Sunday by the main opposition group in Ghana.

On Saturday through Sunday, National Democratic Congress (NDC) delegates cast their votes in primaries to select a candidate for both the presidential and legislative elections.

After receiving 297,603 votes, or 98.9% of the vote, Mahama was proclaimed the clear victor. His opponent, former Kumasi mayor Kojo Bonsu, received 3,181 votes, or 1.1 percent.

The primaries take place while Ghana negotiates a $3 billion bailout with the IMF to pull it out of an economic crisis and as it faces a growing Islamist threat as a result of a conflict in neighboring Burkina Faso.

More than 355,000 NDC party delegates gathered on Saturday at 401 polling places across the nation to cast their votes.

Despite losing to incumbent President Nana Akufo-Addo in the 2016 and 2020 elections, 64-year-old Mahama had been considering a comeback and had competed against Bonsu and former central bank governor Kwabena Duffuor.

However, late on Friday, Duffuor announced his withdrawal from the race, claiming that the party was not prepared to hold a “free and fair election.”