What politics does to us! At an old students' association meeting sometime in October 2025, an old boy for whom I had absolute respect walked me aside and whispered into my ear.
“You are inciting Ghanaians against Mahama”.
He was referring to a warning in my September 18, 2025 article in the Daily Graphic asking Mahama to “Remember Akufo-Addo’s cane”.
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It read as follows: “The cane that was used to lash Takyi will inevitably be used on Baah, so say the Akan of Ghana.
President Mahama knows this proverb very well.
“In the 2016 election, the difference between Akufo-Addo and his closest contender was 1,984,630 votes.
Then his reign began. O, such goodwill by the people! Even the traders at
Aborsey Okai voluntarily reduced prices.
“Then started the little-little slips.
At the end of his first term, Ghanaians voted to tell him that they were not terribly impressed with his performance.
When the votes were tallied in 2020, the gap between Akufo-Addo and the first runner-up had narrowed to only 517,405 votes - one million people had decided to vote against him.
“Other ‘sins’ followed which Ghanaians could not forgive and in the 2024 elections, Akufo-Addo was trailing by a whopping 1,714,089 votes.”
I recall this incident and this article because, less than two years into the NDC’s time in office, the people of Ghana have bared their teeth at Mahama.
They haven’t even barked yet, let alone bite.
In their latest poll released this week, Global InfoAnalytics, Ghana’s leading pollsters, has projected that the NDC could lose 29 parliamentary seats in the 2028 general election.
Mercifully and happily for the NDC, the poll predicted that the party would still form the Majority in Parliament.
But the party’s Deputy Director of Elections and IT, Rashid Tanko Computer, cannot be bothered. Speaking on TV3, he said the party will win 154 parliamentary seats in the 2028 general election.
Whether he was tickling himself and laughing or he was putting up a brave front, I am sure that ultimately, when he got home and alone in his closet, he took another look at the poll and uttered a loud sigh. He is happy that God has given the NDC a “warning”.
If Baah wants to avoid the wrath of the people’s rod that was used against Takyi, it still has a year’s chance to make amends.
If inflation keeps rising and the Middle East keeps boiling, even Ato Forson, the party’s strongest favourite for 2028 (without argument), will be discredited by rising fuel, transportation and food prices.
Learn
Taking heed, the NDC must, first of all, learn to talk well.
The last thing Ghanaians want to hear is Sammy Gyamfi, GoldBod CEO, promising that informal miners operating outside protected or environmentally sensitive zones such as water bodies, forest reserves and residential areas, could be allowed to operate while the government formalises and regularises their activities.
Yours truly was shocked by these words. I felt used. I felt someone had told me to my face that my vote or my voice does not count.
How could anybody in government be allowed to talk like that when the Minerals and Mining Act, 2006 (Act 703) requires a licence before any small-scale mining begins?
Telling unlicensed miners they can operate while awaiting regularisation risks emboldening galamsey operators.
Already, on the Galamsey front, the clouds are gathering.
The Ghana Catholic Bishops' Conference does not open its mouth by heart and everybody knows it is totally apolitical.
For it to express “deep disappointment with the NDC government and President John Dramani Mahama over their handling of the Galamsey crisis” is a sign that too much water has gone into the belly of the frog.
When the President of the Bishops' Conference, Most Rev. Matthew Kwasi Gyamfi, openly urges citizens to vote against the present government, accusing it of “lacking the commitment to end environmental degradation”, it is one ominous sign too many.
The wish of Tanko Computer will not matter in 2028.
Labour
Away from the NDC, things are happening in Parliament which shock me. I have never, since I was born, heard any opposition party put their case across the way NPP did this week, practically begging (or ordering) the labour movement to reject the government offer in this year’s salary negotiation.
On October 28, 2026, the government and organised labour signed a two-year agreement providing a nine per cent increase in public sector base pay for 2027 and a 10 per cent increase for 2028.
In what I consider an act of incitement, NPP MPs have slammed the increment as a "historic backstab" and asked that workers should not accept such modest increases, given current conditions.
The NPP is literally asking workers to rise against their labour union leaders! If anybody should do this in a democracy, it should not be by MPs, especially those belonging to a party which has, more than once, suffered the pangs of global economic/health disruptions.
The last time Akufo-Addo and NPP offered lower percentage adjustments to workers, the excuse was “Russia-Ukraine war”.
This level of desperation by politicians will drown Ghana. Just to win an election!
The writer is the Executive Director, Centre for Communication and Culture.
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