By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Ghana’s governing party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has picked Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia as its presidential candidate in the 2024 presidential election.
Since the return of multi-party democracy in 1992, VP Bawumia will be the first northerner and Muslim to contest the presidency on the platform of NPP.
In his victory speech, Mr Bawumia promised to lead a “united and energised” NPP into the election.
He won the primaries by a convincing margin, getting 61.47% of the vote.
Mr Bawumia’s nearest rival Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, who got 37.4% of the vote, accepted defeat.
President Nana Akufo-Addo, a member of the NPP, will step down after the December 2024 elections, having served his two terms in office.
The election is expected to be a two-horse race between Mr Bawumia and former President John Mahama, who is the flagbearer of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC).
With Mr Mahama also hailing from the north, this is the first time that both main parties have fielded northerners as their presidential candidates.
Mr Bawumia is the head of the government’s economic management team, and will face an uphill battle persuading voters to elect him and give the NPP a third term in power.
A major producer of gold and coca, Ghana is facing its worst economic crisis in more than a generation with government debt soaring, forcing Ghana to take a $3bn (£2.4bn) loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to ease the crisis.
