For the New Patriotic Party (NPP), unity alone will not be enough to reclaim power in 2028. The bigger battle, according to a key member of Dr Mahamudu Bawumia’s campaign team, is rebuilding trust among Ghanaian voters.
In an interview on Monday, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah said the party is under no illusion that internal cohesion automatically translates into electoral victory.
Although unity is required, the formal information minister recognised that this is just the beginning. “As they say, with a broom, if you pull out one, it will break. But if it’s united, you have a formidable force,” he said. “When we are united as a party, we are a strong force, but that is only the foundation.”
Regaining the trust of regular Ghanaians, especially those voting for the first time, is the true task that lies ahead, Mr. Oppong Nkrumah emphasised.
“For us, we think that the bigger challenge is how to win back the love and the trust of the average Ghanaian,” he said.
According to him, the party must be clear about what it would do differently if given another opportunity. After receiving 56.48 percent of the total votes, Dr. Bawumia was declared winner of the NPP flagbearer content contest and was given the power to lead the party into the general elections in 2028.
But Mr Oppong Nkrumah argued that victory in the internal contest should not breed complacency. He said the party is already undergoing reorganisation beyond campaign rhetoric. “We are now going through a process of reorganising,” he said, pointing to constitutional amendments that formally establish a policy secretariat within the party.
“For the first time, we’ve literally set up a policy secretariat by constitutional fiat,” he noted, adding that the party is focused on populating it to ensure that ideas going into 2028 enjoy broad ideological support. Addressing concerns about the margin of Dr Bawumia’s victory, Mr Oppong Nkrumah rejected comparisons with previous contests, describing each election as different.
He said the race structure, the number of candidates, and the voting format had all changed.
He noted that Dr Bawumia expanded his reach nationwide, winning 232 constituencies, up from 213 previously. For him, however, the most significant outcome was not the numbers but the message they sent.
