John Dramani Mahama has been voted to be the flagbearer for the 2024 Ghana presidential elections by the National Democratic Congress, Ghana's largest opposition party.
Mahama, 64, won by a large majority, polling 297,603, or 98.9 percent, of the votes while his challenger former Kumasi mayor Kojo Bonsu got 3,181 votes, or 1.1 percent.
More than 355,000 NDC party delegates had converged on Saturday at 401 voting centres across the country for the ballot.
Former central bank governor Kwabena Duffuor withdrew from the primaries late on Friday. Mahama faces a strong contender in President Nana Akufo-Addo, whom he has squared with and lost twice in 2016 and 2020.
"He has been tried and tested and comes with a lot of experience," Kwame Asah-Asante, a political science lecturer at the University of Ghana, told AFP. Mahama served as President of Ghana from 24 July 2012 to 7 January 2017.
He previously served as Vice President of Ghana from January 2009 to July 2012, and took office as president on 24 July 2012 following the death of his predecessor John Evans Fiifi Attah Mills.
The ruling New Patriotic Party will hold its own primaries in November 2023 while the presidential election is scheduled for December 7 next year.
Political pundits predict Mahama will leverage on the economic crisis facing the West African country in his presidential campaign.
Ghana, a major exporter of cocoa faces a heavy debt load of over 49 million dollars as at November 2022 with the government spending more than half of its revenues on debt servicing.
Ghana, along with coastal West African neighbours Benin, Togo and Ivory Coast, is also bracing for growing spillover from jihadist conflict over northern borders in Burkina Faso, where Islamist militants control large swathes of territory.
