Lessons from Nigeria leave Ghanaians confused on election day

Ghanaians go to the polls today confused on whether like Nigerians, they should vote for “Change” or allow the status quo remain.

Ghana’s leading presidential contenders are incumbent president John Mahama of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and Nana Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party (NPP).
Akufo-Addo of NPP has brandished “change” as his key campaign slogan, pledging to create jobs, boost industrialisation and fight corruption, akin to Buhari’s slogan which later saw him rack up majority votes in Nigeria’s 2015 elections.
“The events surrounding the Ghanaian election is so identical with the Nigerian presidential election of 2015, where the opposition party anchored its campaign on a change mantra,” said Yuwa Okungbowa, a political science undergraduate at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Ashanti, Ghana.
“Some Ghanaians are benchmarking what is happening in Nigeria and are becoming weary that a change might worsen their plight,” Okungbowa, who is Nigerian, added.
Nigerian electorate had voted President Buhari into power on the back of a change mantra, like the one Addo offers Ghanaians today.
“However, the change Nigerians are getting is certainly not the one they had expected from Buhari and this scares some Ghanaians ahead of today’s elections,” a Nigerian surgeon resident in Ghana’s capital, Accra said.
However, a Tuesday twitter poll to gauge the direction of Ghana’s electorates, suggests that Addo may shrug off any negative comparisons with Buhari.
Of the 324 Ghanaians that partook in the poll, 236.52 of them or 73 percent voted Addo, while 87.48 or 27 percent kept faith with incumbent president Mahama.
Although the facilitator of the twitter poll, one “Tony” with twitter handle- @glowpulse, later tweeted that “such polls don’t determine winners, just makes you know what other opinions are.”
“Clearly, the opposition goes to the polls with a lot to criticise Mahama about. Not that if it were in government it would do any better,” said Rafiq Raji, a principal at Macroafricaintel Investment Limited, an Africa-focused macro research and investment consultancy based in Lagos, Nigeria. “Accusations of corruption apply to members of the opposition as much as those of the ruling party.”
A controversial gas turbine contract, as well as an SUV gift to Mahama by a government contractor has fanned corruption accusations.
“To one’s mind, Mahama and his team have done as much as any administration could to steer the country out of the doldrums, self-inflicted in any case. But voters hardly care how hard a government is working if the outcomes are below expectations,” Raji, who said the elections could go either way, added.
Lower prices for gold, cocoa and oil, Ghana’s main exports have caused debt to balloon and caused local currency, the cedi to decline against the dollar. Steady power shortages have also weighed on economic output.
The economy will likely expand 3.3 percent this year, the slowest pace since 1990, according to International Monetary Fund data, after growing 3.9 percent in 2015.
Mahama has been criticised amid these and his unpopular decisions to hike petrol and energy costs have sparked discontent among most Ghanaians.
But Akufo-Addo’s promises to improve the state of Ghanaians are hollow, according to Raji.
His promises include paying each of Ghana’s 275 constituencies the local equivalent of US$1 million annually if he won power, about US$1.1 billion over four years.
He also said every village would get a dam, every district, 110 in all, a factory and everyone eligible person, a free secondary school education.
Nigeria’s Buhari also made some promises, but much have gone unfulfilled. Like the N5,000 he promised to pay Nigeria’s vulnerable.
The economy contracted further by 2.24 percent in the third quarter, largely due to Buhari’s reluctance to act promptly to militant attacks which crimped oil production and a hard currency peg that triggered foreign capital outflows.
This plunged the economy in recession and unemployment and inflation rates have trended upwards uncontrollably.
“Most Nigerians are regretting voting Buhari,” one business leader in Nigeria who did not want to be named, said. “If he returns in 2019 elections, he will surely lose because his polices have hurt the economy so bad and Nigerians have lost confidence in his ability to steer the course.”
The rate of unemployed Nigerians was 13.3 percent in the second quarter, the highest in five years, while inflation at 18.3 percent in October, is at an 11-year high.
However, Buhari has notched notable points in quelling the unrest in the north-eastern part of Nigeria, ravaged by terrorist group, Boko Haram.
The Boko Haram insurgency triggered a notable movement of Nigerians into West African neighbour Ghana, reversing a trend which saw more Ghanaians flocking into Nigeria than vice versa.
Education has also triggered some influx of Nigerians into Ghana.
Ninety percent of international students in Ghana are Nigerians, according to the President of the All Nigerian Community in Ghana, Moses Owaru.