But alas by Saturday morning, results from the constituency trickled in and the grey-haired old fox was among the NDC stalwarts to retain their seats.

Mr Enoch Teye Mensah, one of the country’s longest serving MPs, won the Ningo-Prampram seat in the 1992 elections, and had since been the MP for the constituency.

This year’s presidential and parliamentary elections produced astounding outcomes in some constituencies, and Ningo Prampram was no exception, as the NPP candidate for the area polled a figure that none of the party’s candidates in the constituency’s history had ever recorded.

Even though its longest serving MP won the seat again, the opposition NPP’s candidate, Mr Sylvester Tetteh, also made significant progress in the number of votes it had in the constituency, compared to what the NPP’s candidates had been getting over the past years.

The constituency is known to be one of the strong holds of the NDC, and the NPP had over the years been recording low votes in the area.

But the trend in the parliamentary election changed as the skirt and blouse voting pattern increased in most of the polling stations in the Ningo area especially, which had 35 polling stations out of the 76 polling stations in the constituency.

At the end of the polls on December 7, Mr Mensah won the seat of the constituency with 21,178 votes representing 58.06 per cent,  against NPP’s Sylvester Mensah, who had 17,122 votes, representing 43.71 per cent.

In 2008, Mr  Mensah, who is also the Minister of Water Resources Works and Housing, had 18,339 votes representing 71.47 per cent, while the then NPP candidate, Abed Tawiah Okorno, polled 6,196 votes representing 24.15 per cent.

In this year’s presidential results, the NDC’s John Mahama had 28,490 votes that represented 73.70 per cent, while NPP’s Nana Akufo-Addo had 9,581 votes representing 24.79 per cent.

In 2008, Prof Mills polled 20,477 votes which represented 80.08 per cent, with Nana Akufo-Addo polling 4,557 representing 17.82 per cent.

With the presidential, there was no significant change in the number of votes the NPP had been polling over the years, but there was much significant change in the parliamentary polls.

The chiefs and people of Ningo a few months ago had problems with the location of the Ningo Prampram District Assembly’s capital at Prampram.

They thought it would have been better to make Ningo the district capital, since the Ningo Traditional Area occupied bigger land with as many as 72 towns, while Prampram had only 10 towns.

Due to this, many people anticipated that Mr Mensah would lose the seat this time to a new person to represent the people in Parliament, since Ningo had more people in the constituency than Prampram.

Another factor which also made people believe that Mr Mensah was indeed going to lose was his former constituency secretary, Mr Michael Tetteh, who decided to contest as MP for the constituency on the ticket of the National Democratic Party (NDP), which was a breakaway party of the NDC.

Most people, therefore projected that there could be a split in the number of votes for the NDC candidate, which would eventually make the NPP’s Sylvester Tetteh the winner of the Ningo Prampram seat.

Most of the people the Daily Graphic spoke with, said they were tired of seeing the face of their long serving MP, and that they wanted a change.

Others also said instead of the MP giving equal attention to all the areas or towns in the constituency, he only focused on Prampram,where he hailed from.

Some natives of Ningo said when they compared the kind of things and developments that had taken place in the whole constituency, Ningo had the least, and had since 1992, not seen much development in their town.

Story by Alice Aryeetey