Dr Alhaji Mahamudu Bawumia has asked the electorate to give the presidential mandate to a brand new candidate.

The flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) cum vice president said this, arguing the National Democratic Congress (NDC) flagbearer John Dramani Mahama, a former president, belonged in the past and was “a secondhand president”. Thus, Bawumia intimated, Mahama cannot take Ghana into the future.

“We’re going to elect a new president in December 2024.

“And when I say a new president, I mean a new president. Not a secondhand president, I mean a new president.

“We’re going to elect a president that will take us into the future. Not a president that will take us back into the past. We’re looking forward, we are not going backwards.

“We want a president who thinks about possibilities not impossibilities.

“We want Ghana to be a beacon for all African countries for all the world to see what can be done with possibilities.

“Former President Mahama is a former president. Let us maintain him as a former president,” Dr Bawumia said at a Youth Connect programme.

His status as a seasoned politician and former president has been touted as an advantage Mahama wields over Bawumia who, until his 2014 unveiling as Nana Akufo-Addo's running mate for the 2016 election, was but a banker, economist and deputy governor of the Bank of Ghana.

On Monday, July 29, 2024, NDC’s Deputy Youth Organiser Osman Ayariga argued Bawumia was “an experiment,” who seeks to succeed his wasteful boss President Nana Akufo-Addo, while Mahama, on the other hand, was “a tried, experienced and transformational leader” who could give Ghanaians the Ghana they want.