The election of the current crop of regional executives was, for many a party faithful, a moment of considerable relief and renewed optimism. There was a widespread expectation that the new leadership would provide a much-needed departure from the factional tensions, personality clashes and organisational disunity that had characterised the party in the run-up to the 2024 elections. Many including myself, genuinely believed that a new chapter was beginning; one defined by cohesion, inclusiveness, collective responsibility and a shared commitment to rebuilding the party.
The expectation was that the lessons of 2024 would inform a more mature and disciplined approach to political organisation. Alas, developments in the Ashanti Region appear to be telling a rather different story. The optimism that greeted the emergence of the current executives is increasingly giving way to familiar anxieties about factionalism, competing loyalties and the apparent subordination of collective interests to individual political ambitions.
The emerging cracks should set alarm bells ringing throughout the party. Ashanti is not just another region in the NPP’s electoral calculations; it is arguably the most consequential pillar of the party’s electoral fortunes. Any serious conversation about the NPP’s political recovery in 2028 that does not begin with the state of affairs in Ashanti is fundamentally flawed.
Yet, disturbingly, the region appears to be descending into familiar patterns of factional antagonism, personality clashes and internecine power struggles. The tensions involving factions associated with Wontumi and COKA, as well as who becomes running mate to Dr Bawumiah, point to a much deeper institutional malaise: a political organisation seemingly incapable of distinguishing between the pursuit of individual political interests and the imperatives of institutional survival.
What makes the current situation particularly instructive is its striking resemblance to the factional configuration preceding the 2024 elections. At the time, Youth Organiser Sarfo Raphael, Regional Organiser Dr. Francis Adomako and First Vice Chairman Acheampong appeared politically alienated, while the broader regional establishment seemed to rally behind Chairman Wontumi. Today, the political alignments appear to have shifted. Regional Organiser Dennis Kwakwa, Women’s Organiser Auntie Beatrice, the Youth Organiser Martin Ameyaw and First Vice Chairman Amofa Jantuah appear to be on one side, with the COKA-led camp on the other.
The personalities and configurations may have changed, but the underlying pathology appears remarkably persistent. This raises a fundamental institutional question: Is the NPP in Ashanti building a cohesive political organisation, or merely recycling factional rivalries with different actors occupying different positions?
It would be intellectually dishonest to treat these developments as inconsequential personality disagreements.
When successive leadership configurations produce recurring divisions, the problem may lie beyond individual personalities. It suggests a structural failure in the party’s internal mechanisms for consensus-building, conflict resolution and collective leadership. A political organisation that repeatedly reproduces the same conflicts must interrogate its institutional culture, not merely blame the individuals involved.
One is therefore compelled to ask: What exactly did the NPP learn from its devastating electoral defeat in 2024? Was that defeat not sufficiently consequential to provoke serious introspection, leadership renewal and a fundamental reorganisation of the party’s internal culture? Or has the party simply returned to business as usual, having mistaken the passage of time for institutional reform?
The more troubling dimension is the quality of leadership emerging from the party’s internal processes. Political leadership cannot be reduced to popularity, factional allegiance, financial influence or the capacity to mobilise supporters against perceived opponents. Leadership demands intellectual maturity, emotional restraint, strategic judgement, inclusiveness and, above all, the capacity to unite. Where individuals occupy positions of responsibility without demonstrating these attributes, the consequences extend beyond their immediate constituencies. They become an institutional liability.
A political party cannot expect to govern a country effectively when it struggles to govern its own internal affairs.
There is another illusion the NPP must urgently discard: the assumption that poor performance by the Mahama administration will automatically deliver electoral victory to the party in 2028. This is a dangerous and intellectually lazy proposition. An incumbent government’s failures do not constitute an opposition party’s manifesto, nor do they confer an automatic electoral entitlement. Voters are under no obligation to return a party simply because they become dissatisfied with the government in office.
The NPP must demonstrate that it has the leadership, organisational discipline, policy credibility and institutional character to offer a demonstrably better alternative.
The failure of an opponent is not proof of one’s own readiness to govern. Indeed, the party risks committing an extraordinary strategic error if it spends the next two years anticipating the political difficulties of the Mahama administration while neglecting the far more immediate challenge of repairing its own organisational fractures.
One cannot build an electoral comeback on the debris of unresolved internal conflicts.
More concerning is the possibility that what is unfolding in Ashanti will find expression in other regions. Factionalism rarely respects regional boundaries. Once personal rivalries become normalised, institutional discipline weakens, loyalties become fragmented and the party’s collective purpose is progressively subordinated to competing centres of influence. Ashanti could therefore be an early warning of a much broader organisational dysfunction.
The NPP must recognise that 2028 cannot be approached as though 2024 never happened. The party lost an election, but the greater danger would be to lose the opportunity for institutional learning. Repeating the same leadership mistakes, rewarding the same counterproductive political behaviours and tolerating the same destructive rivalries while expecting a different electoral outcome would represent a profound failure of political judgement.
The time for platitudes, cosmetic reconciliation and carefully choreographed declarations of unity is over. The party needs an honest internal reckoning. It must confront factionalism, demand accountability from its leaders, reassess the standards by which leadership positions are occupied and restore institutional discipline. No individual, however influential, should be permitted to hold the party’s collective future hostage to personal ambition.
The central question is no longer simply whether the NPP can win in 2028. It is whether the party is demonstrating the organisational maturity and political seriousness required to make a credible case for returning to government.
The 2024 defeat should have been a watershed moment. If, instead, it has produced little more than a temporary period of embarrassment followed by a resurrection of the same old political habits, then the party has learnt very little indeed.
History is particularly unforgiving of institutions that refuse to learn from their mistakes. The NPP must not confuse the possibility of Mahama’s non-performance with its own preparedness for power. Ghanaian voters will judge both. And this time, the party cannot mistake an opponent’s weaknesses for evidence of its own strengths.
The clock is ticking. Ashanti deserves urgent attention. The rest of the country should not be left waiting for the consequences of an avoidable internal crisis to become unmistakable.
THE HORNS OF THE ALTAR!!
Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Dr. med. Otchere Addai-Mensah
Head, Department of Medical Diagnostics
College of Health Sciences
KNUST.
