NPP presidential aspirants show party is not ready for power in 2028 – Kpebu

Private legal practitioner Martin Kpebu says the calibre of aspirants in the New Patriotic Party (NPP’s) flagbearer race signals the party is unprepared to return to power in 2028.

Kpebu delivered the assessment on TV3’s ‘The Key Points’ on Saturday, arguing that the opposition party appears to be repeating the strategic errors that led to its defeat in the last general election.

“Looking at these candidates, it tells me one thing: the NPP is not ready to win the 2028 election,” he said. “This tone-deaf attitude is exactly what pushed them into opposition in the first place.”

He was particularly critical of any renewed attempt to project Dr Mahamudu Bawumia as a viable presidential option. “How can you parade Bawumia?” Kpebu asked. “He is of the same feather as Akufo-Addo. Birds of a feather flock together.”

According to him, Ghana’s electoral history has often shown near-parity between the two major parties, a balance he said was disrupted in 2024.

“NPP and NDC have a certain constant in elections,” he noted. “Until the 2024 elections, the general wisdom was forty-five percent apiece.”

Kpebu blamed the scale of the NPP’s 2024 loss on Dr Bawumia’s performance as flagbearer. “Bawumia performed so shambolically that even NPP members had to vote for John Mahama,” he claimed. “That tells you how badly the party misread the public mood.”

In the 2024 polls, President John Dramani Mahama secured over 6.5 million votes, while Dr Bawumia polled about 4.8 million, leaving the NPP trailing by more than 1.5 million votes.

Kpebu said that electoral outcome has left the former vice president politically exposed. “Such a man who helped Akufo-Addo unleash economic terror on us, economic doldrums, where is he going to get a better record to campaign on?” he asked.

He argued that the party’s path to recovery depends on a clean break from figures associated with recent governance. “You have to bring someone who is not tainted,” Kpebu stressed. “If you recycle the same faces and the same record, the electorate will not buy it.”

The legal practitioner, who is a frequent media commentator, said the ongoing flagbearer contest should have been an opportunity for deep introspection, warning that without a credible reset, the NPP risks entrenching itself in opposition ahead of 2028.