John Mahama holds a Ghanaian flag as he waves to supporters during his final election campaign rally in Accra on December 5 [Zohra Bensemra/Reuters]
* Neutrality of Political Ideology
* Senegal, Mauritius, Nigeria, now Ghana, set precedence to African countries
Abubakar Hashim
Ghana’s elections last Saturday have come and gone peacefully and successfully. The defeated Presidential Candidate former VP, Muhammadu Bawumia conceded and congratulated President-Elect, Mahama, even before the final official results.
Lessons to African Countries:
1.Integrity and Transparency of Ghana’s Electoral System. Preceding the elections, there were heated accusations of the electoral processes by the civil society organisations and the press. These were instantly corrected by the electoral management body. There was sincerity in the management of the electoral process
2.Ghana’s political class maintained a relatively strong ideological stance, a far cry from other African countries, where politicians are always junketing from one party to another for economic ascendancy. President-Elect, John Dramany Mahama, though lost out in two previous elections, strongly maintained his party’s ideological foothold and symbol, to contest last Saturday’s elections. There were 13 political parties in last Saturday’s elections, 9 and 4 independents. None among these, have been junketing in the past.
3. Senegal, Mauritius, Nigeria and Ghana have set precedence.
In Senegal, a former prisoner, Faye, was voted overwhelmingly a few months ago. Mauritius Dharam Ghokool was also elected on December 6, 2024, by people’s power, defying incumbency factors.
In 2015, erstwhile Head of State, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari, was returned to power in what Vanguard called a historic election that saw the first defeat of an incumbent president in the history of democratic rule in post-colonial Nigeria.
President Goodluck Jonathan, candidate of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, hours later conceded defeat and put a call to Buhari at about 5.15 p.m. with only Borno State yet to return its results. At that time, Buhari was already leading by 14,932,385 to the 12,638,310 votes scored by Jonathan.
In a similar vein, Ghana’s Mahama, returned overwhelmingly from the opposition, defeating an establishment candidate, Bawumia.
Africa is now cruising on the right democratic journey. Ghana, Senegal, and others have set the pace to be emulated to sustain democracy in Africa.
*Abubakar Hashim is the West Africa Bureau Chief of TheNEWS, based in Sierra Leone. He is currently writing from Lagos, Nigeria