Presence of many heads of state, foreign reps at inauguration shows Akufo-Addo won polls - Amoako Baah

The presence of world leaders at the investiture of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is an endorsement of the legitimacy of his victory in the December 7, 2020, general elections, political science lecturer Dr Richard Amoako Baah has said.

“That’s what it portrays because no president of another country would endorse disputed elections by showing up at the inauguration of the winner of that election”, Dr Amoako Baah told Kwame Appiah Kubi on Accra100.5FM’s morning show Ghana Yensom on Friday, 8 January 2021.

Some of the foreign dignitaries who graced the inauguration on Thursday, 7 January 2021, include Presidents Denis Sassou Nguesso of Congo; Faure Essozimna Gnassingbé Eyadéma of Togo; Alassane Dramane Ouattara of the Ivory Coast; and Roch Marc Christian Kaboré of Burkina Faso.

The rest are Presidents Macky Sall of Senegal, Professor Alpha Condé of Guinea, Mahamadou Issoufou of Niger, George Weah of Liberia, Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone, and Umaro Mokhtar Sissoco Embaló of Guinea-Bissau.

The others include Vice-President Bornito de Sousa Baltazar Diogo of Angola, Colonel Assimi Goita, Transition Vice-President of Mali, Mr Olavo Avelino Garcia Correia, Deputy Prime Minister, and Minister of Finance of Cape Verde; Mr Moussa Faki Mahamat, Chairperson of the African Union Commission; and Dr Jean-Claude Kassi Brou, ECOWAS Commission President.

Also present were Madam Teresa Efua Asangono, Senate President, Equatorial Guinea; Dr Mohamed Ibn Chambas, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS); and Mr Geoffrey Onyeama, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nigeria.

Additionally present were Dr J. Peter Pham, the United States Special Envoy for the Sahel Region of Africa; Mr James Duddridge, the Minister of Africa at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) of the United Kingdom; Mr Jean-Yves Le Drian, the Foreign Minister of France; Mr Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, the Minister of External Affairs of India; and Mr Aurélien Agbénonci, Foreign Minister of Benin.

In Dr Amoako Baah’s view, all the nations whose presidents and representatives came for Akufo-Addo’s swearing-in ceremony, have embassies in Ghana who followed the elections, so, had the outcome been “patently” stolen, their ambassadors and high commissioners would have conveyed that to them.

Dr Amoako Baah said despite the few skirmishes in some parts of the country during the elections, “it is clear that Nana Akufo-Addo won”.

Out of the 13,119,460 total valid votes cast in the recently-held polls, President Akufo-Addo of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) polled 6,730,587 votes, representing 51.302 per cent.

Former President John Dramani Mahama of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), who was his closest contender, polled 6,213,182 votes, representing 47.359 per cent.

Mr Mahama and the NDC are, however, contesting the results.

They have described it as a “fictionalised” and “stolen” verdict.

The party has held several demonstrations across the country to drum home its claim that the election was flawed and skewed in favour of President Akufo-Addo and the NPP.

Some of the demonstrations have been violent.

Mr Mahama has filed a petition at the Supreme Court to challenge the results.