Ghana’s Electoral Commission announced on Wednesday that President Nana Dankwa Akufo-Addo has been re-elected for a second four-year term. Mr Akufo-Addo received 6,730,413 votes, representing 51.595 percent of the total valid votes cast.
His closest opponent, former president John Dramani Mahama of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) polled 6,214,889 votes representing 47.36 per cent.
Akufo-Addo who ran on the platform of the New Patriotic Party, received one million votes more than he polled in 2016 but scored a lower percentage of the total vote this time arround. this year. In 2016, he received 5,716,026, representing 53.85 percent of the total votes cast while Mr Mahama, also his rival in 2016, polled 4,713,277, votes, representing 44.4% of the total votes cast.
The total voter turnout was 13, 434,574 representing 79 per cent of the West-African country’s 17 million registered voters.
Jean Mensa, Chairperson of the Electoral Commission announced the results at 5 PM on Wednesday. She described the elections as “incident free” and “peaceful, although police said five persons died.”
Although Akufo-Addo beat Mahama by about 500,000 votes, his party the NPP was locked in a tight race with the NDC to secure a majority in parliament. With two seats for Sene West and Upper Denkyira West yet to be called, the NPP had secured 137 seats out of 275 seats, while NDC had won 135 seats. An independent got one seat.