Media personality and former Ghana Airport Authority Board Chairman, Paul Adom-Otchere, has offered a detailed explanation for the New Patriotic Party‘s (NPP) defeat in the September 2, 2025, Akwatia by-elections.
According to him, the party’s loss was a consequence of ill-timed decisions and misaligned campaign strategies.
Speaking on Good Morning Ghana on September 5, Adom-Otchere argued that the by-election was scheduled just months after the 2024 general election, which was a period in which the party was still reeling from its significant loss.
“The timing of the election was not good for the NPP because the NPP came from a very huge defeat in the 2024 Election. The defeat was expected; the margins were unexpected,” he said.
Adom-Otchere also explained that rather than renewing internal leadership via elections at various levels, the NPP opted to freeze these contests and focus instead on selecting a de facto presidential candidate.
“The normal process of selecting and changing leadership within the political parties, which occurs every four years, was suspended by the party and a new decision was made that the party first ought to elect that de facto leader who would be on the ballot for the next election. That process went through some difficulty, but eventually it was approved.
“Since that occurred, the party has been shaped into a leadership contest so that many key activists of the party today are defined by their support for one leader or the other, one aspirant or the other. This shift meant that the aspirants, not internal party leaders, were the only figures on the ballot heading into the next cycle,” he said.
He highlighted how, at Akwatia, the national executive had to coordinate timing for the aspirants to visit different parts of the constituency.
Some aspirants, Adom-Otchere said, skipped Akwatia altogether, investing time and resources in securing delegated support ahead of the planned January vote, rather than focusing on parliamentary by-election outcomes.
“The presidential candidates and their inner circles were also making a calculation that going to spend time and money in Akwatia to elect a parliamentary candidate who may not necessarily change much with the situation in Parliament and going to delegates to spend time and money with them, which may occasion votes for our tickets in January.
“Most of them were choosing the latter, which is that they wanted to go and spend time and money with delegates who they can secure to work for them,” he said.
Paul Adom-Otchere concluded that these dynamics, the poorly-timed election, the absence of conventional party leadership contests, aspirants driving the campaign; and the neglect of grassroots voter engagement, served as the primary reasons the New Patriotic Party (NPP) suffered defeat in Akwatia.
What happened at the Akwatia by-election?
Legal practitioner, Bernard Bediako Baidoo, of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) emerged victorious in the hard-fought Akwatia by-election, reclaiming a historically contested seat from the New Patriotic Party (NPP).
According to certified results from the Electoral Commission, Baidoo secured 18,199 votes, while his closest rival, Solomon Kwame Asumadu of the NPP, garnered 15,235 votes.
A third candidate, Patrick Owusu, of the Liberal Party of Ghana (LPG), received 82 votes, with 303 ballots rejected out of 33,819 valid votes cast across 119 polling stations.
This win shifts the parliamentary balance, with the NDC increasing its tally to 183 seats in Parliament, leaving the NPP at 87. An NDC victory in the upcoming Tamale Central by-election would bolster the party’s majority to 184 seats.
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