Thanksgiving Blunder, Empty Seats, and Missing Dons Open Wounds
By Gifty Boateng
The new NPP flagbearer’s attempt to frame his primary victory as a triumph over internal persecution has deepened party fissures, triggering a conspicuous boycott by his main rivals and raising questions about his unifying credentials.
The Party’s much-touted “National Thanksgiving Service” held on Sunday at the UPSA auditorium was meant to be a coronation of unity a glossy photocall of a party healing after a bruising presidential primary. Instead, the empty seats where Kennedy Agyapong and Bryan Acheampong should have been sitting told a more accurate story of a party still nursing open wounds.
The source of the latest rupture? None other than the new flagbearer himself, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia.
In what insiders are already calling a catastrophic miscalculation, the former Vice President used a recent gathering with Muslim constituents not to extend an olive branch to his vanquished opponents, but to litigate the grievances of the campaign trail. Speaking at what was ostensibly a prayer meeting to thank Allah for his January 31 victory, Dr. Bawumia delivered a raw, unfiltered monologue that has landed like a grenade in the party’s fragile ecosystem.
With the solemnity of a man testifying in church or in this case, before the faithful Bawumia detailed a litany of abuses he claims to have suffered at the hands of his own colleagues.
“Throughout this campaign,” he told his audience, “I have listened to my own party members insult me, I have listened to them tell lies about me, and my family. I have listened to them say hurtful and unprintable things about me.”
While he couched his survival in Quranic verses, preaching patience in the face of “lies and vilification,” the political translation was unambiguous: Bawumia was naming and shaming the architects of the “storm” he endured. And in the corridors of the NPP, everyone knows who was driving that storm.
The fallout was immediate. By Sunday, both Agyapong, who placed a strong second, and Acheampong, the surprising third-place finisher who many saw as the event’s “biggest achiever,” were nowhere to be found. Their absence was a loud, silent protest.
While the party’s communications machinery tried to project an image of unity, featuring also-rans Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum and Kwabena Agyei Agyepong on stage, the elephants in the room were the ones missing. Notably, former Presidents John Agyekum Kufuor and Nana Akufo-Addo also skipped the event, a fact quickly seized upon by Agyapong’s camp to downplay the significance of the boycott.
Kwasi Kwarteng, a spokesman for the “Ken Team,” was blunt on JoyPrime, dismissing the notion that Agyapong’s absence was a slight. “Former President Kufuor, Nana Akufo-Addo, were not there.
Does it mean they are starting their own party?” he queried, seeking to hose down speculation that Agyapong is plotting a breakaway movement speculation fueled by his close confidant George Oti Bonsu’s talk of a “third force.”
Yet, the optics were damning. Just days earlier, Agyapong had released a gracious video with his wife, thanking delegates and Ghanaians for their support. The shift from that conciliatory tone to a boycott suggests the grievance aired by Bawumia cut deep, alienating the very supporters whose consolidation he needs.
The irony was thick enough to cut with a knife. At the Sunday service he largely dominated, Dr. Bawumia shifted theological gears, quoting Psalm 118:22 about the “stone the builders reject” becoming the “cornerstone.” He spoke of forgiveness, perseverance, and the need for national healing, admitting “the exercise of healing isn’t completed yet.”
But for Agyapong’s loyalists, the damage was done. They saw Bawumia’s Muslim gathering speech not as a testimony of faith, but as a divisive reopening of primary wounds a public airing of dirty laundry that undermines his mandate to unite a fractured house.
To them, a leader who cannot resist detailing the “unprintable things” said about him by his rivals, even in victory, is a leader still fighting the last war.
As the NPP looks toward 2028, it is staring at a familiar specter: a flagbearer grappling with a party that is not yet his. Bawumia has the votes from January 31. Winning the trust of the Ken and Bryan brigades, however, will require more than scripture. It will require a muzzling of the memory and a genuine embrace of the men who stayed home on Sunday.