2020 Election: A Must Win For Me – Mahama Tells Akufo-Addo

Former president John Mahama, in August, put speculation regarding his political future to bed and took his first concrete step towards competing in the 2020 presidential election.

The 59-year-old, who suffered a stunning defeat at the hand of Nana Akufo-Addo in the 2016 election, officially launched the process of giving the presidency another shot.

Defying calls by some high-profile Ghanaians for him to retire from active politics, the former president wrote officially to the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to confirm his participation in the party’s presidential primary.

In his recent remark, the former President described the 2020 general elections as a final match between him and President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Referring to the 2012 polls as “a title fight” and the 2016 elections as “a rematch”, Mahama called the 2020 polls “a decider” and predicted the tiebreaker would return him to the helm of government.

Mahama won in 2012 as a first-timer on the ticket of then governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), securing a 5,574,761 votes that represented 50.7%. Akufo-Addo, Ghana’s main opposition leader at the time and presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), got 5,248,898, representing 47.7%.

In 2016, Mahama fell deep from the coveted seat of power with an incredible 4,713,277 votes (44.4%) to Akufo-Addo who polled a widely unanticipated 5,716,026, representing a record 53.9% since the Kufuor era.

“They say, ‘Why are you bringing your former president? NDC, don’t you have people?’ And we say you, too, didn’t you have people? In 2008, you brought somebody. Professor Mills defeated him. You should have brought a fresh face.

“You brought him again in 2012. John Mahama defeated him. You should also have brought a fresh face. And you brought him again in 2016 and it’s only at that time he won. So, fine. He was defeated several times; you still brought him. And this is what you call a title fight,” Mahama told NDC delegates and supporters in the Bolgatanga Central Constituency during his just-ended tour of the Upper East region.

He continued: “So, two boxers fight and one wins. Then, the one who loses asks for a rematch. So, the second fight is called a rematch. And so, they fight the second one and the other boxer, who lost the first time, won. So, he asks for another match. That match is called the decider. So, 2020 is going to be the decider and a must Win”

For many NPP supporters, the decisive win Akufo-Addo secured over Mahama in the last election, makes a second term victory for his predecessor in 2020 unlikely, if not impossible. (The president secured more than one million votes more than his predecessor in that election.)

Echoing that view recently, Reverend Isaac Owusu Bempah, a popular pastor and friend of Akufo-Addo, said that Mahama was “finished” politically and would never win an election in Ghana.

“Bring him [Mahama] a thousand times and he will lose a thousand times,” Owusu Bempah said of the former president.

According to him, Mahama is done with his job and that God removed him from the presidential seat and he is finished.