Seasoned Ghanaian journalist, Paul Adom-Otchere, has responded to comments made by veteran politician Ato Ahwoi, who accused him of stirring confusion within the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
Adom-Otchere on his Good Evening Ghana show on Metro TV on Tuesday, October 7, 2025, recounted how the exchange began when he appeared on Good Morning Ghana on Friday, October 3, for a newspaper review segment.
“To my surprise, my colleague Moro Awudu said Mr. Ato Ahwoi wanted to make an intervention into the programme. We were all excited. We know Uncle Ato very well,” Adom-Otchere said. “But when he came on, he took me on. He said I was saying something terribly wrong and accused me of all kinds of things.”
According to Adom-Otchere, the former minister’s call-in took him aback, especially as he had been analysing Global InfoAnalytics Executive Director’s Mussa Dankwah’s polling data on the NDC’s internal selection processes, a discussion, he explained, that was driven purely by the day’s headlines.
“The things he heard me say were based on a discussion of the Mussa Dankwah polls,” he explained.
“It’s a newspaper review programme. So the newspaper agenda is what we are following,” he said.
In his phone-in, Ato Ahwoi accused Adom-Otchere of being biased against the NDC and working to “cause confusion” in the party.
“I like the way you’ve been bringing Paul Adom-Otchere to come and cause confusion in the NDC,” Ahwoi said.
“Paul has never found anything correct with the NDC. He is one of the people who always wants to be on the side of Akufo-Addo.”
Ato Ahwoi also claimed that Adom-Otchere once sought a position from him when the NDC was in government, an assertion the broadcaster partly confirmed but said was being misrepresented.
“It’s true that when Uncle Ato was at Church Street in those days of Mills, I would go there often with Harry Zakour. I don’t remember asking him to give me a position, but yes, I visited him all the time,” Adom-Otchere said.
He added that his interest in political discussions is driven by his work as a journalist and his passion for politics, not partisan motives.
“I am generally a political animal. I like to follow politics a lot. But the discussion about the NDC wasn’t born out of mischief. It was born out of Mussa Dankwah’s polls,” he said.
Adom-Otchere also took time to give historical context to Ahwoi’s concerns, tracing them back to the late 1990s when the NDC faced internal struggles over leadership succession.
“If you know the history of these things, you’ll understand where Uncle Ato Ahwoi is coming from,” he said. “This will be the first time that the NDC has to go through a secession process through a fully democratic way.”
He explained that during Jerry John Rawlings’ exit in 2000, Ahwoi and his allies had sought to avoid internal division by rallying behind Professor John Evans Atta Mills, leading to what became known as the Swedru Declaration.
“Ato Ahwoi needed to occasion the Swedru Declaration so that fighting and division would be avoided,” Adom-Otchere said. “Incidentally, that process, which was successful in terms of his understanding of it, also led to the biggest breakaway from the NDC.”
The broadcaster played a clip of former minister Kwamena Ahwoi, the brother of Ato, recounting how Mills was chosen as running mate to Rawlings, describing the decision as one that shaped Ghana’s political history.
Adom-Otchere argued that while Ato Ahwoi’s instincts to preserve party unity were understandable, such a strategy would not work in today’s political climate.
“It is impossible to do that in 2025,” he said. “Democracy has come so far. The MPP has gone through so many congresses changing leaders that Ghanaians have become used to it. So it’s completely impossible for anyone within the NDC to orchestrate an automatic inheritance of John Mahama’s leadership without a contest.”
He said ongoing public discussions about possible successors to Mahama are not the result of any media agenda but part of Ghana’s evolving democratic process.
“Uncle Ato Ahwoi, we are really sorry, but it’s not me, it’s not us, it’s not the media,” he said. “It is the circumstance of the matter. You can’t do anything about it.”
