Flagbearer for the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has indicated that religion did not play role in the defeat of the New Patriotic Party in the 2024 elections.
According to him, he tested the data by the results he garnered as compared to Christian Members of Parliament, and he clearly polled more votes as compared to Members of Parliament who were Christians.
He, therefore, described the perception that the party lost because they fielded a Muslim candidate as propaganda, which should not be given attention.
The former Vice President said he was impressed that all the surveys have proven that religion and tribe did not play a role in the defeat of the political party.
“When I heard that, I knew it didn’t make sense, and this is not the Ghana that I know. We even went for primaries; we were ten contestants, and there were nine Christians and I was the only Muslim, but the NPP voted for the Muslim presidential candidate. So that could not be the case.
So I decided to do some data analysis to test this hypothesis, and when you look at the data, the data is very clear. In many constituencies across the country, the NPP presidential candidate performed better than the Christian parliamentary candidate,” he revealed.
He continued, “If they weren’t voting because I was a Muslim, I shouldn’t be performing better than the parliamentary candidates. Even my good friend Ntim Fordjour of Assin Central, who is a reverend, I did better than him, even though he mobilised votes for me.”
“If you look across the country, the fact is that there was no religious factor. It is only propaganda. There is no religious factor. So many different Institutions undertook research and clearly it was not an issue of religion, it was not an issue of tribe. Those issues have been ruled out in all finding from different surveys. As a country I am very happy that religion and tribe has not entered our political discourse. So we should not allow people to come in to play propaganda with religion and tribe, we are one nation and we all go together and work together for the good of this country,” he said while addressing party folks on April 23, 2025.
