John Mahama has been sworn in for a second term as Ghana’s president. About 20 African leaders attended the ceremony in Accra.
Mahama was sworn in alongside Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang, the first woman to become vice president in Ghana.
He promises to lift the West African gold and cocoa producers out of the doldrums.
“Today should mark the opportunity to reset our country,” the 66-year-old new president, wearing the West African country’s national dress, told a jubilant crowd decked in the green, red, black and white hues of his National Democratic Congress (NDC) party.
Mahama won 56 per cent of the vote in the nation’s presidential election on December 9, defeating ruling party candidate and Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, who secured 41 per cent.
Mahama took over from outgoing President Nana Akufo-Addo, who served two terms in power.
“Today should mark the opportunity to reset our country,” the 66-year-old new president, wearing the West African country’s national dress, told a jubilant crowd decked in the green, red, black and white hues of his National Democratic Congress (NDC) party on Tuesday.
Energy radiated from Accra’s Black Star Square as a sea of elate faces waved Ghanaian and NDC flags, chanted, and spontaneously danced to the beat of drums and the blaring honk of vuvuzelas.
Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Senegal’s Bassirou Diomaye Faye, Burkina Faso’s leader Ibrahim Traore, Kenyan President William Ruto, President Felix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Gabon’s Brice Oligui Nguema were among those present.
Mahama’s return to the presidency ends eight years in power for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) under President Nana Akufo-Addo, whose last term was marked by Ghana’s worst economic turmoil in years, a bailout by the International Monetary Fund and a debt default.
Mahama, who led Ghana from 2012 to early 2017, failed twice to regain the presidency. But in December’s election, he managed to tap into Ghanaians’ expectations of change.
The rising of John Mahama
He was born in northern Ghana as a child of privilege, his house being the only one in the village with a diesel generator.
His father, who served as a junior government minister, was briefly detained and interrogated by the 1966 coup leaders but later released unharmed.
John Mahama was also a member of parliament and chairman of the West Africa Caucus at the Pan-African Parliament in Pretoria.
With a history of political stability, Ghana’s two main parties, the ruling NPP and the NDC, have alternated in power equally since the return to multi-party democracy in 1992.
The country of 33 million people is Africa’s top gold exporter and the world’s second-largest cocoa producer.
