Daniel Owusu-Ansah, a senior lecturer at the Department of History and Political Studies at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has predicted that John Mahama will have a tough time convincing Ghanaians to vote for him in the 2024 elections.
The largest opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) party has chosen the former president as its candidate for presidential elections on 7 December 2024.
Mahama obtained a landslide victory in the poll 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%.
Owusu-Ansah said the outcome of the primaries shows that Mahama is still a force to reckon with in Ghana politics.
“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,” Owusu-Ansah said.
“He would have to do a lot more,” the lecturer said on the Accra based Asaase radio on Monday (15 May).
“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,” Owusu-Ansah said in conversation with host Kwaku Nhyira-Addo.
“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,” he said.
Watch Mahama’s post-election acceptance speech:
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