Former President John Mahama has been re-elected to head the National Democratic Congress (NDC) into the 2024 presidential election.

Mr. Mahama polled an overwhelming 297,603 votes representing 98.9% of the total valid votes cast at the end of the NDC primaries on Saturday, May 13, 2023.

Former Kumasi Mayor, Kojo Bonsu, garnered 3,181 votes, accounting for 1.1% of the vote.

Prior to the elections, former Finance Minister under Mills, Kwabena Duffour, withdrew from the campaign for the NDC flagbearership.

In his acceptance speech, Mr. Mahama expressed his heartfelt gratitude to the delegates, the NDC, flagbearer aspirants, the media, and Ghanaians at large for their peaceful conduct during the just-ended elections.

“Our party is the winner because there is no single winner in this contest,” Mahama said in his acceptance speech.

As the NDC’s leader, Mr. Mahama will be running in his fourth election.

After President John Evans Mills passed away in office in July 2012, Vice President John Mahama succeeded him and went on to win the election later that year.

He was a sitting president when he lost the 2016 election to Nana Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), making him the first president to hold office for just one complete term in the Fourth Republic.

He was chosen as the NDC’s flagbearer in the flagbearership contest in February 2019 with a whopping 95% of the vote, but incumbent President Nana Akufo-Addo defeated him on December 7 with 51.59% of the vote, beating out the DNC candidate’s 47.37%.

The outcome was contested in the Supreme Court by John Dramani Mahama, who claimed that Akufo-Addo’s votes in some polling stations were padded, putting him over the 50% threshold required to avoid a runoff.

The court did not rule in his favour.