Expectedly, President John Dramani Mahama’s triumphant return to power after his emphatic victory in the December 7, 2024, general elections has been graced by widespread jubilation.

While the initial euphoria, mainly from the National Democratic Congress (NDC) supporters and sympathisers, is gradually receding, there is now the need to offer dispassionate and non-partisan analysis on the way forward for Ghana under the incoming administration. First, to alert all the major stakeholders on the difficult task ahead and secondly to provide some takeaways for the incoming president and his team.

Undoubtedly, Mahama’s resounding victory and return to power after eight gruelling years in opposition has both potential and pitfalls. For the jubilant supporters within the NDC and among the larger Ghanaian voting population, Mahama’s victory may have provided, even if symbolic, an air of freedom from all that has been wrong with Ghana’s zero-sum politics epitomised by the winner-takes-all since the 1992 democratic transition.

In this regard, the challenge ahead for President Mahama after January 7, 2025, when he assumes power as the next chief executive of this nation requires both patience from the general citizenry and a move away from business as usual from the newly elected president, his appointees, political hangers-on and all those around him including friends, family members, NDC executives, supporters and sympathisers from the national to the local. While the NPP was swept away by an avalanche of fury from the voters on December 7, few had any surprises given that similar (but of a smaller scale) episodes happened in 2000, 2008 and 2016.

Therefore, the caveat that has to be borne in mind, especially by the victorious side is that the same fury that swept away the Akufo-Addo government may happen in the 2028 or 2032 elections against the incoming NDC government if the mentality of business as usual is not immediately purged. While Mahana may have good intentions at least from his utterances so far, the results of the December 7 elections have shown that it is his actions and those of his appointees and high-ranking party officials that will matter for Ghanaians in the coming years. Therefore, my only goal in this essay is to succinctly point out the potential pitfalls for the incoming president and the people he will select to assist him.

There is hardly any dispute that, the three crucial sectors that will determine the electoral viability of the NDC in subsequent elections are the economy, corruption and galamsey. Other areas that the incoming president and his appointees need to guard against as much as possible are propaganda, lies and deception, ostentation, impunity, arrogance of power, disregard for human life and well-being and abuse of both state properties and private investments. In all these pitfalls, Mahama can only leave a good legacy if he is willing and able to look outside the box and do exactly what his predecessors had failed or were unwilling to do, even if that may require some constitutional changes as well as a general programme of re-orienting the psyche of the Ghanaian population towards development and nation building.

Mahama needs to be guided by his own government’s past mistakes, especially in his first tenure (2013-2017) where a lot of these pitfalls were either not fully anticipated or simply ignored. While I admonish the president on the above issues, I must also admit that Mahama’s second four-year tenure is short and that alone is likely to hamstring the administration from fulfilling many of its electoral promises. Added to this problem of short tenure is the NDC’s constitutional stipulations for an early internal election for the replacement of the incumbent president for the 2028 general elections. I have always held the view that short tenure for leaders of any political hue does not bring out the best in them even if they mean well for the nation. So, with broad national consensus, constitutional changes are urgently required to remedy this situation for the sake of the next generation and not for the parochial political interest of any individual.

The Economy

As is the case with all the previous Ghanaian governments since independence, the sector that will likely pose the biggest challenge for the incoming Mahama administration is certainly the national economy. While the goal of this paper is not to inundate the reader with figures and statistics, few will however contest the idea that the word ‘bankrupt’ may not even be strong enough to describe the current state of the Ghanaian economy. An economy whose entire revenue cannot pay half of its bills and suddenly collapsed in 2022 when the door to the Eurobond borrowing it was surviving on was suddenly shut down is certainly not an economy anyone will be proud of inheriting as a president. Presently, while the national economy may be slowly responding to the punishing prescriptions as well as temporary debt reliefs from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under the current 3-year stabilization programme (2023-2026 Extended Credit Facility), the incoming Mahama government, in particular, is likely to resume the repayment of both the principal and the interests on the over USD50 billion public debt that was suspended through the current IMF programme under the so-called debt restructuring programme.

Ultimately, this will include some of the bullet payments of what remains of the USD13 billion of the Eurobonds that will reach maturity under Mahama’s stewardship. While it was President Kufuor who made a maiden entry into the international capital market in 2007 for a supposed development financing, between 2013 and 2016 the Mahama administration also expanded this form of borrowing with grave implications. The Akufo-Addo government with Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta in the saddle subsequently pushed this risky Eurobond borrowing to dangerous levels eventually crashing the economy in 2022. It must be made clear that, very little if any of the proceeds of this USD15 billion Eurobonds contracted between 2007 to 2022 by the Kufuor-Aliu, Mahama-Amissah Arthur and Akufo-Addo-Bawumia were put to any productive investments as promised, leading to the current distressed situation.

Consequently, with the current huge public debt, high and rising inflation, chocking arrears to contractors, energy sector-related debt, high interest rates, weak and unsustainable growth levels, lower revenue to GDP (in fact one of the lowest in Africa), looming environmental catastrophe from galamsey, there is simply no scintilla of fiscal space left for the incoming Mahama administration for a single infrastructural project. Recent utterances have shown that Mahama himself may be fully aware of the real situation on the ground regarding the economy. This may have informed his proposal for a national forum to decide on charting a new course. The proposal for a national forum is a smart move to inform and prepare the general population for the difficult task ahead while seeking public support for urgent remedial measures.

IMF’s Austerity

President Mahama proposed a national forum on fiscal consolidation measures or policies to correct the present dire economic situation. While I recognize the immediate need for some of these measures in the short term for the sake of economic and political stability, relying on them in the medium to long term will make very little or no difference to the development of this nation.

Rather, they will bring the economy back to even bigger fiscal and debt crises in the future. Fiscal consolidation is nothing but a euphemism for punishing austerity where the government cuts down on expenditure while increasing revenue (in Ghana’s case, mainly from taxation) not only to reduce fiscal deficit but also to create fiscal space for future spending.

The expectation is that with a successive implementation of fiscal consolidation measures, other economic fundamentals will respond, ultimately leading to the improvement of the general well-being of the entire citizenry. My humble opinion is that we have been through this merry-go-round economic solution for umpteen times since 1966 and still nothing substantial has changed. On the contrary, poverty, unemployment (especially among the youth and university graduates), weak economic and social infrastructure, and poor agricultural technology and mechanization, among many ills are widespread across the country.

So, instead of a national forum for fiscal consolidation, Mahama may help his legacy by proposing a national forum for the long-term economic development of the nation where major sectors like education, agriculture and industry will be discussed instead of short-term fiscal needs from the IMF. The fact of the matter is that Ghana’s education is not properly aligned with its industrial and economic sectors, leading to joblessness and low morale among university graduates and needless foreign importation of goods.

Further, while I do not support suffocating taxes on the population, the real question is: How is President Mahama going to relax some taxes as promised during the electioneering campaign while simultaneously creating a fiscal space to carry out all his policies including the existing Free SHS? This calls for serious calibration of the tax regime and I know there are good tax brains who are capable of doing that with the right leadership.

Thinking Outside the Box

To avoid igniting the kind of political anger that embarrassingly swept away the Akufo-Addo regime, Mahama needs to look outside the box and as I said earlier, do what all his predecessors since 1966 have failed to do regarding the national economy. First, the president has to fully and urgently commit himself and his government to ending the country’s dependence on needless importation, especially of goods Ghanaians are capable of producing.

He can start with agriculture while aggressively orienting Ghanaians, especially the younger generations in our schools and universities to patronise Ghanaian goods. In all these measures, he needs to select selfless, experienced, knowledgeable and disciplined people to assist him and not people who are only interested in hoarding national resources for themselves, their families and their unborn generations at the detriment of poor and ordinary people.

More crucially, the President needs to muster the necessary courage, and political will to leverage his present political goodwill and look into the nation’s shares of the proceeds from its extractive sector. There is no debate that, per the various agreements, Ghana has almost surrendered its natural resources to foreigners and foreign corporations and successive leaders in the past have chosen silence and indifference over genuine efforts presumably to avoid offending the foreign corporations and their powerful host governments. It is common knowledge that, over-reliance on taxation as a means of raising revenue unnecessarily burdens businesses, industry and households and is partly responsible for the slow pace of national development and increased poverty in the past decades.

So, instead of punishing citizens with heavy taxation, national revenue can be dramatically increased if Ghana can follow the steps of other countries and seek lawful avenues to maximise its shares of the proceeds of its natural resources. For instance, according to available data: Out of the US$22.72 billion worth of mineral resources produced in Ghana from 2015–2018, the country made only US$1.48 billion, representing a paltry 6.5 per cent in revenue.

The remaining US$21.24 billion or 93.5 per cent went to foreigners and foreign corporations. Moreover, in terms of economic rents, only 10.5 per cent of the US$14.14 billion (super-normal profit) generated from mineral production over the same period was paid as revenue to the government, with the multinational corporations bagging in as much as 89.5 per cent of the super-normal profits. However, in both Nigeria and Botswana, the story is different.

For instance, in Botswana, mineral revenues constitute about 95 per cent of the super-normal profit/economic rent and about 52 per cent of the total value of production. In the oil sector, while the government of Ghana rakes in an amount which is less than 20 per cent of the total value of production, the Nigerian government can secure about 52 per cent of the total value of oil produced in that country.

In simple terms, in almost all the agreements on Ghana’s natural resources, the nation is getting at most 15 to 20 per cent and for some parochial and selfish reasons successive Ghanaian leaders have looked on. Instead, they resort to imposing heavy taxes on ordinary citizens to atone for these heavy losses in the extractive sector. These increased taxes are often complemented both by proceeds from the so-called donors and heavy borrowing including from the risky and predatory Eurobonds.

The simple logic that the older generation of leaders in this country have so far failed to understand is that there are no donors anywhere in the world and monies borrowed or donated will definitely be paid back one way or the other with often disastrous consequences to the ordinary citizenry. For decades, the leadership’s mentality of wantonly emptying the national coffers while needlessly shifting the burden of indebtedness and national economic problems to the next generation is what has brought us here and Mahama has every opportunity to stem this tide for the sake of the next generation.

What our leaders see as donations, grants, concessional loans, technical support etc. are what the powerful nations and the multilaterals offer to the resource-rich developing countries as baits to provide openings for foreign corporations across all sectors of their economies. Our leaders must be reminded that, while political, diplomatic, technical and even financial support from the corporations and their countries of origin may be indispensable in getting our presidents into office, maintaining the overwhelming dominance of these corporations in our natural resource sectors deprives the nation of the vital financial resources that are crucial in improving the well-being of our citizens. Ironically, the result is the citizen’s anger against the same leaders, leading to their embarrassing exit from power, like what happened on December 7, 2024, in Ghana.

Corruption and Galamsey

The next twin challenge that faces the president-elect is undoubtedly corruption and galamsey. A lot has been said about both corruption and galamsey and yet administration after administration, the problem seems to be festering. While I am not a habitual cynic, it is my belief that the wars against corruption and galamsey, (if there was any genuine one in the first place), have been lost.

I have always argued that corruption in Ghana is both a symptom of societal norms and the decadence of the political system, processes and practices, particularly since 1992 when the nation transitioned to competitive elections. Therefore, we have to shed ourselves of the usual pretence and the ostrich mentality and speak about these issues openly and bluntly. Generally, Ghanaian society deifies and celebrates wealth, with zero regard for the modes of acquiring that wealth.

People who enter into politics or are serving in public office are expected or even goaded by their family members, friends and the community to enrich themselves even if at the expense of the state. Those who refuse or fail to heed this societal demand are simply described with all manner of derogatory labels. In addition, family members, friends and the general community inundate these public officeholders with financial demands daily while others, particularly habitual sycophants, simply shower them with undeserved reverence for exhibiting power, opulence and ostentation. This simply fuels the desire for others to emulate and abuse political office to meet these unrealistic demands and undeserved societal celebration.

From this cultural perspective, the problem dovetails into the arena of electoral politics. Few will therefore contest the idea that corruption has been an integral part of the electoral processes since 1992. Under the Fourth Republic, both parliamentary and presidential elections require huge amounts of money and the situation keeps on degenerating election after election. For instance, in the just-ended elections, some parliamentary candidates were said to have spent about GHc10 million, some even more. This falls within a study carried out by the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) after the 2020 elections that suggested that one parliamentary election in Ghana cost about US$700,000.

The same study also concluded that for a successful presidential election, a candidate needs not less than US$100 million. Candidates at both the presidential and parliamentary levels need these monies to finance usual campaign activities including advertisements, posters, fuel, accommodation, and allowances for security and election agents, among others. However, other less discussed expenditures on voters and supporters include those for funerals, naming ceremonies, hospital bills, personal financial demands, and unsolicited payments to opinion leaders, and traditional and religious leaders for votes and support. The last one is bribing or financially inducing voters during elections to vote in a certain direction both in internal as well as general elections.

In addition, the candidate, particularly if he is part of an incumbent government needs to build a strong war chest to cushion himself and his immediate family while simultaneously building enough financial capability for future political ambitions, in case his party gets out of power. In the case of the president who is ending his tenure, there is always the temptation to build enough financial armoury that can provide the needed bulwark to continuously interfere and serve as a kingmaker within his party.

The question that arises in this situation is: Where do both the presidential and parliamentary candidates get these monies to perform all these activities? The answer comes back to my earlier assertion that the war against corruption has been lost. Thus, procurement breaches, abandoned and shoddy infrastructure projects, the rituals in the annual Auditor-General’s reports and recently galamsey, among many other dubious sources of political financing provide further answers to this puzzle.

For galamsey, a combination of factors such as greed, lack of political will and impunity are inhibiting countermeasures. Again, the failure or lip service paid to the various community livelihood programmes announced by the state, makes any draconian countermeasure politically and electorally suicidal for any government, particularly in the mining communities. And there is no wonder the lukewarm attitude toward the problem from the main presidential contenders in the December 7 election.

The foray being made by members of the political class including DCEs, MCEs, MPs, ministers and party executives from the national to the local into the galamsey bandwagon is certainly an issue that will continue to attract attention from Ghanaians, especially members of the middle class. In my opinion, the simple reason why all these officials joined the bandwagon of galamsey is not only to satisfy their insatiable greed but also to look for financial resources that will oil their political and electoral machine.

Galamsey seems to be a God-sent for public and party officials at a time when making cheap money from government procurements is beset with numerous challenges, including budgetary constraints and the bankruptcy of the Ghanaian economy. So, President Mahama has enough lessons to learn from the embarrassing defeat of his main opponent, with galamsey as one of the key ignitions of the citizens’ fury, especially among the middle class who could not accept the looming environmental and ecological catastrophe, the deformed newly-born babies in the galamsey communities, the contamination of water bodies, the destruction as well as contamination of arable lands and the general existential crisis facing the people of this country.

Can Mahama Do Something?

Although I still insist that the war against both corruption and galamsey has been lost, Mahama can re-start a fresh battle, leveraging his goodwill and a genuine intention to repay the outpouring of electoral support he received from all the strata of the Ghanaian population. Again, just like the economy, this would require a total departure from the business as usual for the incoming president. For a start, there is an urgent need to start a re-orientation of the thinking of the general population, especially the younger generation through the educational system and other forms of socialization tools.

More crucially is reforming the electoral processes to take away all the elements of monetisation both for the parliamentary and presidential elections and the president can set an example from his own party. The NDC, from its inception, has been comfortable with the so-called popular acclamation in selecting its candidates and officials until after the 2000 elections when it decided to fully go the way of the NPP and conduct internal elections with full ingredients of monetization and corruption. Therefore, if the incoming president genuinely wants to make a difference in drastically reducing the incentive for corruption among party and public officials, he and the NDC party can look into the popular acclamation method or any other reform that will eliminate monetization and corruption in all internal elections.

At the national level, the electoral system also needs to be looked into and possibly reformed from the current system of winner-takes-all to proportional representation where power is shared according to the number of votes and not by simple majority or the 50+1 as is the case with the presidential election. Presidential tenure could also be changed from the current four years to eight years uninterrupted one tenure for one individual. This may reduce the political and financial pressures on elected officials and provide ample time for economic planning while simultaneously reducing incentives for corruption among elected leaders.

On galamsey, the simple solution is the political will to thoroughly implement all the mining laws and regulations as well as the avoidance of the temptation of the incoming NDC government and party officials replacing those of the outgoing NPP officials as galamsey kingpins in the mining communities across the country.

Propaganda lies and Disregard for Human Life

Undoubtedly, one of the main reasons why the NPP lost the election was their continuous underestimation of the ability of Ghanaians to see through their heavy doses of propaganda and lies and the fact that their words were not aligning with their actions and the realities on the ground.

I have no iota of doubt in my mind that, if the incoming NDC government attempts to repeat even half of this behaviour after assuming power on January 7, 2025, the anger from Ghanaians against it in subsequent elections would even be bigger than what we witnessed on December 7, 2024, against the NPP government.

The new media, particularly the various dialogical social media platforms have not only provided uninhibited access to information for Ghanaians, especially the urban youth, but are also in a constant process of structural and technological transformation. So, just like the period between the 2020 to 2024 elections, the 2028 elections will witness more expansion of the media space with more sophisticated (digital) media genres becoming available to the population, especially the younger urban population.

Therefore, in the next four years, propaganda, lies and deception should simply give way to honest, transparent, truthful leadership as well as real tangible results on the ground to transform the lives of ordinary citizens. Mahama himself, as a communications expert seems to have taken political notice of this situation, judging from his utterances and actions so far.

For instance, while using ‘24-Hour Economy’ as a main election message, he seemed non-committal on what it can or can’t do, knowing the reality of the Ghanaian economy and its fragile and cyclically unstable nature.

Again, referring to some of his seemingly unpredictable policies and decisions to the Ghanaian population through a national forum is a shrewd effort at apportioning responsibilities for the ostensibly challenging situation ahead. That shows his skills in complex matters of political communications and psychological operations needed to navigate through some of these challenges facing the country.

Furthermore, very few can dispute that, disregard for human life, the well-being of citizens and abuse of power on both the state and private properties contributed immensely to the defeat of the NPP in the just-ended general elections. Ghanaian voters in the 2024 general elections were not oblivious to the indiscriminate shootings, injuries and deaths of the innocent, particularly before and during the 2020 elections.

Equally, the whimsical purging and take-over of financial institutions under the guise of a banking clean-up not only deprived avenues for small businesses to get loans but also resulted in the massive loss of investments and quality jobs by some innocent and hardworking Ghanaian citizens. Apart from the over GHc20 billion public funds needlessly sunk into the exercise, my own observations tell me that a large majority of the thousands of people who lost their jobs during the so-called banking clean-up were ironically NPP supporters.

So, the proverbial cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face was at play and any person with little experience on these matters will know that it was just a matter of time for the political fallout to boomerang on the NPP government. Therefore, the incoming Mahama government does not need anyone to remind it of the potential destructive effects of abuse of executive power on the long-term survival of incumbent governments.

They just have to look at what happened to the Akufo-Addo-led NPP government and take some humble lessons. By this, I am not saying that outgoing public officials should not be made to account for any wrongdoing. What I am saying is that in every decision and action that the new Mahama government would take to correct the wrongs of the past administration, as much as possible innocent people should be protected and spared.

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The author, Abdul Hakim Ahmed, PhD is a Political Science Lecturer at the University of Education, Winneba.

E-mail: ahahmed@uew.edu.gh