If there is anything Ghana’s election results teach, even beyond the sub-region, it is that voters do not forgive politicians who leave them worse off. You may have saved them from COVID-19, the fallout from global conflicts elsewhere, or the headwinds that followed. However, what they care about when they vote is whether they feel better today.

News from Ghana fails to show how John Dramani Mahama’s opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), defeated Nana Akufo-Addo’s New Patriotic Party (NPP).

The news was how Akufo-Addo managed to survive a full second term. Toward the end of his first and for much of his second term, he ruled with his head on the block, just waiting for the ax to fall.

The defeat of his party in the presidential election of December 7 was a predicted defeat. It was barely two years after Akufo-Addo came to power in 2017 that doubts about the viability of his party began to surface. It shouldn’t have been this way.

His predecessor, the John Atta-Mills/Dramani government, created such a mess. In addition to divisions within the NDC, it was further weakened by a series of serious corruption scandals, the most notable of which was the government’s involvement in the transfer of $11 million and £9 million paid by a party financier and a litany of broken promises.

Dramani’s defeat to Akufo-Addo came as a relief to the loser, who only managed to complete Atta-Mills’ term after the latter died in office.

Hero at zero

As I wrote in a 2022 article, Akufo-Addo is off to a good start. From New York to Beijing and Paris, he became the new face of the African Renaissance, saying the right things wherever he went on the world stage and raising a $3 billion Eurobond for the restructuring of Ghana, which outperformed its $21 billion backlog.

Despite its best efforts, COVID-19 and the Russian-Ukrainian war have put Ghana in a difficult situation. The country’s plight has been made worse by poor budgetary discipline, volatile commodity prices and a capitulation to Labor’s pressure to raise public sector wages to unsustainable levels.

Akufo-Addo’s party has paid in advance for the country’s misery. Multiple protests shook the streets of Accra and other major capitals, and voters were eager to bury the NPP with final claims of good deeds in the elections.

Successful elections and transitions in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Nigeria and Ghana offered a counter-narrative. It is all the more encouraging that the ruling party’s candidate in the election, Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, did not wait for the official results to acknowledge his defeat, thus reinforcing a trend started in 2015 by the former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan.

Beyond the elections

However, the election meant something more to the sub-region than just angry and tired Ghanaian voters dismissing the incumbent government.

Over the past four years, the sub-region has been plagued by military coups reminiscent of a bygone era. Mali, Niger, Guinea and Burkina Faso formed an arc of delinquent states, three of them having broken up the decades-old Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), by creating a parallel alliance for the Sahelian states, in defiance of regional powers and even the AU.

Successful elections and transitions in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Nigeria and Ghana offered a counter-narrative. It is all the more encouraging that the ruling party’s candidate in the election, Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, did not wait for the official results to acknowledge his defeat, thus reinforcing a trend started in 2015 by the former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan.

Work for power plants

A successful transition is good news for regional economic stability. Although the four secessionist states constitute half of the ECOWAS area and only seven percent of economic activity Within the zone, economic sanctions imposed by the subregional group have affected large sections of the region’s mostly poor population, where informal cross-border trade, mainly in food, represents around 30 percent of regional trade.

Stable transitions in Ghana and Nigeria, the region’s two economic powerhouses, would allow ECOWAS to reassess its options – an important item on the agenda as the sub-regional group meets this week in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria.

Four offenders on the agenda

Should ECOWAS continue to involve separatist states in its efforts to accelerate regional integration, particularly in light of the fragile relations between these states and France, at a time when Russia and China are in hiding and where is the United States self-centered? Or has the time come for the group to chart a new course and accept a future without the four breakaway states?

It wouldn’t just be an economic decision. This is also of importance for subregional security. Burkina Faso and Mali are excluded from the ECOWAS multinational joint task force. Prolonged or failed elections in Ghana would have further weakened the group’s crisis response mechanism at a time when Nigerian military authorities are grappling with new security threats from Lakurawa, an IS franchise.

The new government in Accra, under the leadership of Mahama, one of the mediators of the crisis, is unlikely to post-election conflict in Gambia in 2016, would be a significant departure from the leading role Ghana has played in sub-regional peace support operations, dating back to its role in ECOMOG in the 1990s.

On a more granular level, there are other reasons why elections in Ghana are important, particularly in relations between Abuja and Accra. Already, Nigerian commentators are presenting Ghana’s elections as a model for Nigeria’s election management body. Aside from the pre-emptive concession of former President Jonathan’s defeat nine years ago, Nigeria is perhaps the continent’s contested election capital.

Go to court!

On a more granular level, there are other reasons why elections in Ghana are important, particularly in relations between Abuja and Accra. Already, Nigerian commentators are presenting Ghana’s elections as a model for Nigeria’s election management body. Aside from the pre-emptive concession of former President Jonathan’s defeat nine years ago, Nigeria is perhaps the continent’s contested election capital.

Of course, Nigeria’s election management body needs to up its game. But fundamentally, the chaos reflects the winner-takes-all mentality within the country’s political elite, which is increasingly incentivizing the courts to decide the elections. Often, when Nigerian politicians urge their opponent to “go to court” after an election, they are confident of a favorable outcome.

Ghanaian jollof

Nigerians also envy Ghana’s rise as a new destination for big business, a prospect that could only have been boosted by the smooth running of elections. Despite Ghana’s economic crisis, Nigeria has lost several fintech and manufacturing companies to its western neighbor over the past three years.

Guinness, for example, has moved its operational headquarters to Accra, while others, such as Afprint, President Industries and Aswani – all active in the textile sector – are reportedly considering a move. Due to Ghana’s stable and predictable political environment, tech giants including Google, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook have made no secret of their preference for this sector, despite the large size of the Nigerian market.

It remains to be seen whether, apart from its commercial appeal, Ghanaian jollof will also surpass Nigerian jollof in the never-ending culinary war between the two countries over the next four years under Mahama.

Psyche of voters

If there is anything Ghana’s election results teach, even beyond the sub-region, it is that voters do not forgive politicians who leave them worse off. You may have saved them from COVID-19, the fallout from global conflicts elsewhere, or the headwinds that followed. However, what they care about when they vote is whether they feel better today.

This is why Rishi Sunak lost to Keir Starmer in Britain and Vice President Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump in the United States. This is also the reason why Akufo-Addo barely survived his second term but failed to hand over to his deputy in Ghana.

Azu Ishiekwene is the editor-in-chief of LEADERSHIP And author of the new book, Write for the media and monetize it.