TNR Files
A former Deputy General Secretary of the opposition New Patriotic Party has publicly cautioned President John Dramani Mahama against underestimating his own party’s capacity to destabilise the administration, drawing chilling historical parallels to the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah.
Nana Obiri Boahen, a private legal practitioner and former NPP executive, warned in a YouTube interview that the party has “planned a lot” and that the governing NDC should not underestimate what the opposition is capable of.
“The kind of mindset that the NPP has picked, the NDC shouldn’t underestimate them at all. I don’t know when I will die, but the NPP has planned a lot,” he said.
Obiri Boahen invoked the fate of Ghana’s first president, noting that despite Nkrumah’s developmental achievements, he was overthrown and subsequently humiliated.
“If you know the history of this country, Kwame Nkrumah did a lot of things but on the day he was overthrown, the money that had his head on it was used as a song to insult him. I am a historian,” he stated.
He urged Mahama to be guided by the lessons of history, advising him not to rely exclusively on his inner circle. “He shouldn’t listen only to those close to him because those people are only interested in what they will eat. He should try and listen to voices from outside,” Obiri Boahen said.
The warning echoes the infamous threat by the late NPP General Secretary Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie, who after the party’s 2012 election defeat vowed to make the country “ungovernable” if party members were arrested.
Obiri Boahen’s intervention comes amid a wave of attacks on President Mahama and his family by NPP sympathisers, some of whom have been arrested and face prosecution. Notably, the party’s 2028 flagbearer and former Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has been pictured embracing some of those who have attacked the president.
The timing is also significant following the emergence of a leaked video in which Sylvester Tetteh, a former MP and aspirant for the NPP General Secretary position, openly advocated abandoning facts in favour of propaganda.
“We are in opposition, we don’t need facts, we need to propagate,” Tetteh declared in the video, adding that the party’s Asylum Down headquarters, not Parliament, should be the engine of its propaganda machinery.
The convergence of Obiri Boahen’s warning, the historical echoes of Nkrumah’s overthrow, and the NPP’s apparent embrace of propaganda as a strategy raises questions about the party’s intentions as it settles into opposition. For President Mahama, the message from his political opponent is clear: the lessons of history are unforgiving for those who ignore them.