FULL TEXT: Speech delivered by Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia at the National Delegates Conference

ADDRESS BY H.E DR. MAHAMUDU BAWUMIA 2028 NPP PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE AT THE NATIONAL DELEGATES CONFERENCE IN KUMASI ON SATURDAY OCTOBER 3, 2026

Kukrudu!

Kukrudu!

Kukrudu!

· Acting National Chairman, Chairman Danquah Smith Buttey,

· Former President His Excellency John Agyekum Kufuor

· Former President His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo-Addo

· Former 1st Lady, the beautiful Rebecca Akufo-Addo

· Former 2nd Lady, My beautiful Samira

· Members of the National Executive Committee,

· The Minority Leader, Hon. Alexander Afenyo-Markin, and Members of the Minority Caucus,

· Members of the Council of Elders,

· Members of the Diplomatic Corp,

· Representatives of Political Parties,

· Regional and Constituency Executives,

· Electoral Area Coordinators and Polling Station Executives,

· Distinuguished Guests,

· Our friends from the Media,

· Fellow patriots,

1. It is always a great pleasure to address Conference, the special congregation of committed patriots from all walks of life across the length and breadth of the country.
2. And it is always a special feeling for all of us, to be in the Ashanti Region and Kumasi, the heart of our great party, which has stood with the NPP in good times and in hard times. When our tent needed holding up, Ashanti was one of the pillars that held us up. On behalf of every member of our party, I say Medaase for the belief, continuous support and the great reception to all of us for this Conference.

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3. Today marks the end of a chapter, and the beginning of another in the glorious history of our party, as we go to the poll to elect new national executives to steer our party to victory in 2028, by the grace of God. To our national executives whose tenure ends today, we say a big thank you for your efforts, especially carrying the party through a very difficult period in which we lost an election, and also for initiating the restructuring of the party to get us back to on track.
4. I pay special tribute to our Acting National Chairman, Mr. Danquah Smith Buttey, who at a difficult moment, stepped forward and steadied the ship. You have led with calmness and with loyalty. The party is indeed grateful.
5. I also pay special tribute to our former Ashanti Regional Chairman, Bernard Antwi Boasiako, Chairman Wontumi. Your years of dedicated service, sacrifice and unwavering commitment to our party will always be recognised and deeply appreciated.
6. To our National Chairman, Mr. Stephen Ayesu Ntim, we thank you for years of committed service to this party; from the grassroots to the highest office of our organization.
7. And on this historic day, that we seek to make a great leap into the future, we remember our great leaders and fathers on whose shoulders we stand; the President John Agyekum Kufuor and President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. Forever in the annals of our country, especially in the Fourth Republic, their proud record, which ensured the greatest social interventions this country has seen in decades for all Ghanaians: National Health Insurance, Free Maternity Health Care, School Feeding Programme and the game-changing Free Senior High School, will never be forgotten.
8. Before them were the foundational thinkers of our tradition, the great trio; Danquah, Busia and Dombo, among others, who taught us that freedom, enterprise and the rule of law are the surest foundations of a prosperous nation.
9. Fellow patriots, today we gather to conduct conference business which includes choosing our leaders by the ballot. Ours is a party that exchanges views, and compete, sometimes fiercely. But when we are done, we allow the principles of democracy to prevail.
10. Forty-seven of our members have offered themselves for nine national offices. It is a step to serve our party, and I congratulate every one of you. You have travelled across the country, met delegates and party members in every region and made your case with energy and conviction. Whatever the outcome, the depth of talent on display in all the positions, tells Ghana that the NPP is not short of leaders.
11. This is however, just an internal contest to select a few from well-qualified aspirants to serve our party’s collective and ultimate objective of winning back the trust of the people to serve our motherland better. Therefore, when the voting is done today, the contest must also end. To those who win: the first hug and call you make should be to your fellow aspirants. And to those who do not win, I want to firmly assure all of you that this party still needs you. There is work for all of us.
12. Let us vote in peace, accept the results in good faith and leave Kumasi as one family.
13. Fellow Patriots, since December 2024 we have, in our quest to reorganize, done what every serious party ought to do. We have listened. We have listened to Ghanaians in the markets, on the streets, on the farms, in the offices and on campuses. We have listened to our own members at the grassroots. And we have learnt some valuable lessons.
14. We have learnt lessons in how we manage our party: how we organise, how we communicate, and how we treat the loyal men and women who tirelessly carry this party on their backs at the grassroots.
15. We have learnt lessons in how we make policy for government: that good intentions must be matched by sound evidence, careful design and genuine consultation with the people a policy is meant to serve.
16. Those lessons are already shaping our reformation. You see it in this conference. You see it in the rebuilding of our structures – culminating in the successful and peaceful manner we have elected our executives from the polling station up to the regional levels. And you see it in the way we are preparing our programme for government.
17. As part of our reformation, our party took the great decision to go for early Presidential Primaries, and at the beginning of the year, I had the honour of being elected as Presidential Candidate to lead our party to victory in 2028. It’s been eight months already and we have given meaning to that decision by constituting various policy committees and instituting meaningful engagements with different stakeholders.
18. We will not wait for the campaign to start thinking about how to govern. The work is already underway.
19. We continue to deepen our engagements with various groups, and I am confident that when we lay our 2029 Governance program before Ghanaians, the hard work we are doing will win the hearts of the majority.
20. Fellow Patriots, an opposition party has a duty to hold government to account. And nearly two years into the NDCs administration, it is becoming clear that the questions Ghanaians are asking through us, are yet to receive convincing answers from this Government, which is struggling to fulfill many of its lofty promises to Ghanaians.
21. The NDC promised Ghanaians and the youth of this country in search of jobs a flagship 24-hour economy with one job, three shifts and 3 people (1-3-3). Nearly two years have passed and the jobs have not come or even showing any signs of coming. The young graduate and artisan who voted for the NDC because of this sweet promise of a dramatic job boom through the 1 job 3 shifts, 3 people offer under the NDC is still waiting for his or her shift. Sadly, the promised 24-hour economy jobs have now turned into 24-hour demolition of buildings for a so-called 24-hour markets even the NDC cannot explain.
22. Permit me to commiserate with the good people of Labadi, whose livelihoods have been reduced to rubble. Traders, artisans and small business owners have watched years of hard work flattened in hours. A government that promised new jobs is instead destroying the ones Ghanaians created for themselves. We stand with Labadi, and we call on government to engage those affected, provide alternatives and pay fair compensation.
23. The NDC also promised a Women’s Development Bank. Almost two years on, that bank has not opened its doors to a single market woman.
24. They also promised a reduction in electricity tariff under their so-called 24-hour economy. However, nearly two years on, there has rather been a dramatic increase in electricity tariff thus crippling households, small businesses and industries. Today, the barber shop owner, the hair salon operator, the bread baker and many young businesses who were promised better electricity tariffs are now striving to survive because much of their sales are going into electricity bills under the NDC government.
25. As if the suffocating electricity and water tariffs are not enough, cost of transportation continues to rise, especially in the cities, due to rising cost of spare parts and fuel. Cost of rent has also continued to rise. So even though on paper, inflation has declined to 5%, the cost of living for ordinary Ghanaians has increased massively!
26. In the midst of the government failing to fulfill its promises and unleashing all these difficulties to households and businesses, its lifeline has been the relative stability of the Cedi, largely supported by our innovative Domestic Gold Purchase Programme.
27. In June 2021, on my recommendation, the Bank of Ghana launched the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme to protect our currency from global shocks. Records show how the programme saved our economy from serious crisis and revamp of the Cedi. And the programme is today the major support behind the stability of the cedi, and with it the easing of inflation and interest rates that this government now celebrates. Ironically, key officials of the government today opposed the policy when it was introduced, vehemently claiming it was not feasible.
28. As they say, a good tool in careless hands becomes an expensive one. In 2025 alone, this Government is making unprecedented losses on this program we left for them. It is therefore, not surprising that despite the stability of the Cedi, businesses continue to suffer, prices keep soaring and cost of living for the Ghanaian is getting higher.
29. Also, several programs we bequeathed to this Government, designed to help Ghanaians live a higher quality of life have been abandoned. Our crucial national healthcare intervention, Agenda 111, which was designed to provide all districts without much-needed district hospitals, has stalled. If the NPP was in office, these hospitals would have been completed to provide easy access to healthcare to millions of Ghanaians and tens of thousands of jobs to health graduates. Apparently, this government prefers 24-hour markets to hospitals.
30. In education, Free Senior High School is suffering under the NDC. After they promised to improve meals for students, today it has deteriorated. Many of our young BECE graduates are being deliberately cut off from Free SHS and what frustrated parents are told by the government is that their wards have deservedly failed. They criticized our phased introduction of double track system to accommodate many of young BECE graduates in school. They promised to immediately abolish it, but rather they have abandoned the promise they made to Ghanaians.
31. I believe many Ghanaians are not surprised by the way the NDC government is managing the Free SHS program. They never believed in it. They bastardised it for years, election after election until they realized its impact on every household in Ghana. Free SHS would be truly functioning as intended if its initiator, the NPP was in office.
32. My brothers and sisters our dear motherland is gaining notoriety for drugs being arrested abroad, having passed through our borders unnoticed. Our country’s name is being dragged through the ports of Europe, and the government has answered with meetings, not results. We have called for a bipartisan committee of Parliament, sitting in public, with the power to summon witnesses and demand the shipping records. Arresting couriers is not enough. Ghanaians want to know who is financing these shipments and how they keep getting through. As many religious groups, Civil Society Organizations and concerned Ghanaians have expressed, this is ruining the international image of our country. It is important to note, under the NPP’s tenure, virtually all the drugs arrests were made here in Ghana. Today, the biggest hauls are being found abroad, after slipping through our ports unnoticed. This means that systems and people under this government have been compromised. Our country’s good name is at stake, and we must act now.
33. In Ghana today, flagrant abuse of rights and liberties of citizens has sadly become the order of the day under this government. The new era we are in, is the weaponisation of state power and the running of a different justice system for the NDC and another system for all other Ghanaians. A nation cannot have two systems of justice: one of haste for the government’s opponents and one of leisure for its friends. Yet that is what Ghanaians see today.
34. Cases against persons linked to the governing party have been discontinued, some after the courts had already ordered the accused to open their defence. Meanwhile, cases involving opposition figures are picked out for hearing during the legal vacation while other cases wait. What is worse is the arrest, jailing and refusal of bail for critics of Government just because the NDC doesn’t like what they say.
35. Only last week, the Member of Parliament for Manhyia South, Hon. Nana Agyei Baffour Awuah, was accosted at the Accra High Court, with no warrant produced, while he was there defending a vulnerable woman, a detained nurse from Techiman. When a warrant was later obtained, he did the honourable thing and walked into EOCO voluntarily. Yet a sitting MP who surrendered himself, and who poses no flight risk, was detained overnight. No one is above the law. But what purpose does detaining a man who came of his own free will serve, other than to humiliate and intimidate? That is not justice. It is the weaponisation of state power I spoke of.
36. As I have said already, I disavow politics of insults, and I remind all in the political space of the need to be decorous. But I also remind the NDC government that any infringement on the right to free speech pushes our democracy backwards.
37. And When the NPP returns to government, which Insha Allah we will, there will be one standard of justice for all. One law applied equally to every citizen, whatever their party.
38. On Galamsey, let me say that Galamsey has troubled almost every government in the Fourth Republic. It is a complex national challenge that demands seriousness, not slogans. Yet this NDC government made many promises to Ghanaians. It promised to resolve it in months and restore our polluted water bodies to their natural state. Ghanaians are reminded every day of how the NDC and its senior officials, many of whom are Cabinet Ministers and top CEOs today, lambasted the NPP government and told Ghanaians that they possessed the magic to end galamsey instantly if voted into office. Today, under their watch, in nearly two years, galamsey has grown embarrassingly worse.
39. The promises to cocoa farmers to increase the cocoa price to GHC 6500 has turned out to be a scam. The promise of automatic posting of teachers and nurses and the improvement in their conditions of service has turned out to be another scam. The promise to cancel teacher licensure examinations has proven to be another scam just as the promise to pay all Menzgold customers and customers of all financial institutions which collapsed. Even their much touted Nkoko nkitikiti program has failed.
40. This is the record of the NDC two years on. As our elders say “Agoro no be so a na afri anopa”. Ghana deserves better. I assure you that when the NPP assumes the reigns of office in 2029, by the grace of God, we shall bring to bear the lessons of our successes and challenges to do a way better job in these and other areas than this NDC government is doing.
41. To the incoming executives, the task ahead is clear. To build a strong party machinery on which the policies we are building and the campaign we will set up can ride to victory in 2029. This requires us to keep our ranks closed, keep our focus on holding the NDC to account, put our best energies into selling our policies and give every Ghanaian a reason to believe in the NPP. If we do these things with discipline and unity, in 2029 we will have the task of moving this nation from a place of vengeance and attacks by the few unto a path of progress for the many.
42. Fellow Patriots, we came to Kumasi as a party that has listened and learnt. Let us leave Kumasi as a party that is united and ready.
43. Vote in peace. Accept the results with grace. And from tomorrow, let every one of us return to our constituencies with one message: the NPP is back at work for Ghana.
44. God bless the New Patriotic Party. God bless our homeland Ghana.
45. Kukrudu! By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana