Front-desk report
Is Kennedy Agyapong preparing to burn the last bridge? Whispers emanating from the New Patriotic Party’s war room suggest the volatile but influential MP has finally cut ties with the party he has both defended and embarrassed in equal measure over two decades.
While his spokesman dances around the question, a cold-eyed look at the political arithmetic suggests the rumour, if true, may be less an act of folly than a calculated gamble by a man running out of time.
Political analyst Ralphael Ofori-Adineran, a German-based Ghanaian journalist and political analyst, has offered a stark demographic and electoral projection that frames Agyapong’s dilemma in brutally simple terms: this is his only shot.
Agyapong is 65. If he accepts the conventional wisdom being peddled by party elders that he should wait his turn, support Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia in 2028, and bide his time nthe numbers become merciless.
President John Mahama, if he serves a full first term, has three years remaining. Should the NDC secure re-election in 2028 a distinct possibility given Ghana’s tendency to alternate power every eight years the NDC could hold the reins for another four years beyond that.
By the time the NPP returns to power and Bawumia completes his own eight-year tenure, Agyapong would be 76. If the NDC, as has become convention, stays for a full two terms seven years from 2028 to 2035 he would be 80 before the NPP even contemplates a ticket.
“Those discouraging Ken from forming his own party are basically promising him a phantom presidency at the ripe age of 80,” Ofori-Adineran argues.
But age alone is not the only barrier. By 2040, the electorate will be dominated by Gen Z and Gen Alpha voters young Ghanaians born into a digital age, for whom the liberation struggle is ancient history and the 2000 transition a textbook footnote. Will they flock to an octogenarian candidate, no matter his firebrand credentials?
Furthermore, the NPP is a machine that devours its own. What guarantee does Agyapong have that a new power bloc will not emerge to sideline him when his turn finally arrives? The party’s history is littered with veterans who waited patiently only to be leapfrogged by fresher faces with deeper war chests.
If the rumours of a new party dubbed by some as the Movement for Progressive Prosperity (MPP) are to be believed, Agyapong is calculating that a third-force insurgency, however slim its chances, offers a more immediate path to Jubilee House than waiting for a party that may never anoint him.
The obstacles are formidable. Ghana’s political duopoly is entrenched. The resources required to build a national structure from scratch are immense. And Agyapong’s volatile temperament, while endearing to his loyal base, raises questions about his capacity for the coalition-building a third force would require.
Yet the arithmetic of waiting is equally unforgiving. “This is the only time Kennedy Agyapong would be relevant in the NPP,” Ofori-Adineran insists. “The next contest is not assured.”
For Agyapong, the choice is binary: embrace the uncertainty of a new movement, with all its risks, or accept the slow fade into elder statesman status, watching younger men inherit a party he helped build.
The analysts who matter in Accra’s political salons are watching closely. Some see folly; others see a man who has done the math and decided that now, not later, is the moment to stake his claim.
As one insider put it: “Ken knows that in politics, the future belongs to those who show up. If he waits his turn, he might not show up at all.”
The question hanging over the NPP’s future and Ghana’s political landscape is whether Agyapong will gamble on a third force or resign himself to waiting for a turn that may never come.