By Belinda Nketia
Minority Chief Whip and Member of Parliament for Nsawam-Adoagyiri, Frank Annoh-Dompreh, has admitted that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) failed to adequately listen to Ghanaians ahead of the 2024 general elections, a key factor he believes contributed to the party’s defeat.
Speaking on the GTV Breakfast Show on June 2, 2025, Annoh-Dompreh reflected on the party’s missteps, internal weaknesses, and the broader disillusionment of the electorate.
“I think we failed to listen. When the Ghanaian people started speaking, we should have listened more,” he said. “President Akufo-Addo did what he could, but I think that collectively, we failed. I cannot place the blame entirely on his head because there were ministers, we were also in Parliament, and we were expected to carry the president along and bring good suggestions.”
He emphasized that responsibility for the loss should be shared among the party’s leadership and government appointees.
“As a team, we could have done better if we had listened to Ghanaians, because Ghanaians kept talking.”
Annoh-Dompreh revealed that the party wrongly believed its decisions were widely supported until the election results proved otherwise.
“We made some decisions we thought were popular, but later realized that no, we were not as popular as we thought,” he said. “There were times I engaged the president one-on-one, and I could feel his determination to break the eight and move us ahead. But man proposes, God disposes.”
He recalled the moment he realized the NPP would lose: around midnight on election day, as results from traditional strongholds began to show unexpected losses.
“Places we used to win hands down looked funny. We started losing in places we’d never lost before, including strongholds in the Ashanti Region, Aburi, the Central Region, and the Northern Region.”
In his own constituency, he observed unusually low voter turnout.
“I have 29 electoral areas. About 10 of them are very strong with huge numbers, but the turnout was extremely low. We’ve never experienced that. That’s when I realized we were in trouble.”
He noted that while the campaign saw massive crowds, the silence on election day was a clear message of protest.
“Refusing to vote is also a form of protest. It’s a decision. They kept mute and said, ‘Well, these people will see. We are going to punish them.’”
Annoh-Dompreh also advised the National Democratic Congress (NDC) not to ignore these signals.
“Maybe the NDC should learn a lesson from it. But politicians never learn. So the cycle continues.”
Looking ahead, he expressed confidence in the NPP’s chances of a comeback.
“I know we are going to overtake the NDC in the next election, and signs are beginning to show even in Parliament.”
He pointed to growing internal dissatisfaction within the NDC despite its two-thirds majority in Parliament.
“You can sense disillusionment in their backyard. They have 187 seats, yet they had to plead with us, who had 88, because they couldn’t marshal their numbers. When a government has such a majority and still struggles to pass bills, it means a lot.”
According to him, frustrations over political appointments have affected morale and attendance in the House.
“People are not coming to the House. Not just because they don’t want to, but because they’re disillusioned. Some didn’t like the way the appointments went. The president stuck to 60 ministers, and people made their own deductions.”
Background
The 2024 general election was seen as a defining moment for the NPP, which campaigned on the ambitious goal of “breaking the 8”, a slogan representing its bid to become the first party in Ghana’s Fourth Republic to win three consecutive terms.
Despite high-profile rallies and confident projections, the NPP lost both the presidency and its parliamentary majority to the opposition NDC.
