By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
I’m just from the Republic of Ghana where I spent seven days as one of the ECOWAS Election Observers.
I was deployed in the Ashanti Region (Kumasi) at a place called Asawase where I and my Liberian teammate, Fakateh Weagba (who works at her country’s Foreign Affairs Ministry), visited and monitored the voting processes in about twenty-five polling stations in the Asokore Mampong Municipality.
Ghana has made West Africa proudly proud that an African country is capable of conducting decent elections without the usual cry-babying about the unfairness of unfair elections. That country has shown other West African countries, notably Sierra Leone, that an Electoral Commission can be efficiently efficient with the efficiency expected of an efficient Electoral Commission. That nation has shown that the collation and presentation of credible elections results could be as clock-ish as Britain’s Big Ben and also smooth like a Chinese silk of old. Unlike ours where the Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone (ECSL) is still unable to produce credible results over a year after declaring a “Presidential” winner, Ghana has shown that it can produce elections results that truly reflect the will of the majority within 48 hours!
What was fascinating, about the grand finale of the elections, was the decency exhibited by the Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, who conceded defeated, phoned, and congratulated his main contender, John Dramani Mahama, less than 48 hours after the polls were closed.
Even before the Electoral Commission of Ghana announced the final results, Dr Bawumia told nationwide audiences that based on what his party’s Collation Centre had; he knew that his main contender had won so there was no need for him and his party to enact the last kicks of dying horses. He also pledged to work with the incoming administration by not opposing would-be government policies just for the sake of opposing.
And the President-elect, in his acceptance speech on national television from his campaign headquarters, reciprocated in kind by promising that he would “lead a government that embodies the hopes and dreams of Ghanaians”. He also vowed to “reset Ghana and restore national glory”.
John Mahama, who polled 6,328,397 which translated into 56.55% of the total votes cast, has now got everything cut out for him to make true on his campaign promises. Unlike the current Ghanaian hung parliament where the then opposition and now the winner, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), had the Speaker; the next parliament will be a smooth ride for the NDC which now has185 seats while the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has 63. That means: Mahama’s party has more than two-third majority which in itself is frighteningly frightful—considering how African governments often abuse their two-third majorities with arrogance!
Unlike in Sierra Leone, where politics is toxically toxic because it has become a very lucrative business that produces rags-to-riches “patriots”, Ghanaians were decently decent in their democratic decency as they campaigned decently like civilized people! Few days to the elections, Accra, the Ghanaian capital, especially the Osu area (Accra’s equivalent of Freetown’s PZ area), was so peaceful that Sierra Leonean, Nigerian, and Liberian ECOWAS Election Observers couldn’t believe the tranquil atmosphere—knowing how cutthroat politics could be back home!
The main theme of the entire Ghanaian 2024 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections was the economy. Like Sierra Leone, the Ghanaian currency, the Cedi, is very weak. According to the BBC website, “The World Bank said as many as 850,000 Ghanaians may have been pushed into poverty in 2022 because of the rising prices of goods and services. These “new poor” joined the six million who were already living in poverty. By the end of 2022, government finances had been depleted with little left to support the country’s budget, forcing Ghana to go to the International Monetary Fund for help….”
The driver, Collins Opoku, who drove me and my teammate to and from Kumasi told me that his monthly salary was 800 Cedis which can only feed his family of six (his wife, three children, and aged mother) for less than a week.
Before I was deployed in Kumasi, I was lodged at the 50-dollar-a-night Atlin Hotel (formerly Greenfield) that is situated at a place called Asylum Down—which is about three minutes drive to the Alisa Hotel where the ECOWAS Election Observation Mission to Ghana was headquartered.
I landed at the Kotoka International Airport on Tuesday 3 December 2024 at exactly 2100 hours. And after going through Immigration, and coming towards the parking lot, I was greeted with a placard on which was written: “ECOWAS Election Observation Mission”. I identified myself to the man holding the placard and he directed me to a lady from “ECOWAS Protocols”. And the lady pointed to a white mini-bus which later bussed I and two other Sierra Leoneans, Rachael and Haja, to the Atlin Hotel which was few minutes’ drive from the airport.
On Wednesday 4 December 2024, a lady from “Logistics” visited us at the Atlin Hotel. She distributed our caps, name tags, sim cards, t-shirts, jackets, and black backpacks—all of which had the “CEDEAO” and “ECOWAS” logo on them. We were asked to submit our Boarding Passes and passports which would be used for “administrative purposes”.
Later, early that afternoon, we were driven to another hotel in central Accra where all the Observers, who would be posted to other regions, were trained on the online reporting tools.
On Thursday 5 December 2024, all the ECOWAS Election Observers were briefed at the Alisa Hotel on the political situation and stakes of the elections; the electoral operations; observation methodology; deployment plan; given pre-deployment training, and the deployment teams were assigned.
On Friday 6 December 2024, Team 26 (comprising Fakateh and I) joined a convoy of five black Prados and Pajeros in which were eight other Observers who were to be deployed in the Ashanti Region (Kumasi).
After a grueling five hours plus journey by road, we arrived at the Silicon Hotel in Kumasi where we were briefed by two Long Term Observers (Sierra Leone’s Valnora Edwin and Nigeria’s Professor Aderemi). After the briefing, Fakateh and I were deployed at Asawase which was about a 35-minute drive from the Silicon Hotel.
At Asawase, a local contact named Muhktar took Fakateh and I on conducted tours of twenty-five would-be polling stations, which were identified for visitations on Elections Day.
On Elections Day, which was Saturday 7 December 2024, the first and last Polling Station I visited was Station F261512B at Sawaba New Site in Asawase (One of the methodologies of the ECOWAS Election Observation Mission to Ghana was that the polling station visited at the opening of voting, at 7a.m, must be the same station visited at the close of polls which was at 5p.m.). The entire voting and collation processes in the Asokore Mampong Municipality, Kumasi, were peaceful and well organised.
And as it was one Tuesday 3 December 2024; so it was on Tuesday 10 December 2024: the same white mini-bus (with the same driver) that picked us from the airport picked us again from the Atlin Hotel for the Kotoka International Airport.
And as the mini-bus bussed along Nyanyo LN and made a left turn at Second Crescent Street and later another left turn at Mango Street; the political history of Ghana fleetingly passed through my mind’s eye. Then, I realised that Ghana had come a long way since 1966 when the first military coup ousted Dr Kwame Nkrumah to the 2000 elections which saw the first peaceful transfer of political power between rival parties.
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