I was asked to be Majority Leader before election 2024 – Mahama Ayariga

The new Majority Leader of Parliament, Mahama Ayariga, has stated that he was approached to lead his caucus long before the 2024 general election.

According to the Member of Parliament for Bawku Central, the possibility of him leading the National Democratic Congress (NDC) caucus after the December 7, 2024, election was popular among MPs, including those from the New Patriotic Party (NPP), now the Minority caucus.

“The suggestion for me to lead actually came to me even before the election. Even before the election, I was approached by some people. If you ask some of the people in the current Minority caucus, even when they were the Majority, they kept walking up to me to say, ‘We hear that the thinking is that when the election is over and done with, you will lead the caucus,’ and I am like, ‘I don’t know, I hear so also.’”

“So even before the president thought about his ministers and who will go where, to tell you the truth, I had been approached, and I had actually seriously considered leading,” he told Bernard Avle of Channel One TV on Monday, January 27, 2025.

On what influenced his decision to take up the position, the Majority Leader said he felt the need to take up a leadership position in the legislature, having served various roles in the executive arm of government in the past.

“The reason why I considered leading the caucus is because I had been in the executive; I have served as a presidential spokesperson, I had been deputy minister, I had been minister in several ministries. The one job I have never really done was to lead the caucus,” he stated.

As a professional lawyer with years of experience under his belt, Mahama Ayariga’s name came up as a potential candidate for the position of Attorney General in the John Dramani Mahama government.

However, the Bawku Central MP emphasized in his interview on Channel One that he had never had any interest in working as the Attorney General.

GA/EK

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