Former President John Dramani Mahama was too upfront with Ghanaians regarding the state of the country’s economy during the 2016 election campaign, hence his defeat, NDC Member of Parliament for Banda, Ahmed Ibrahim, has said.

According to him, telling the truth to the electorate rather made Mr Mahama unpopular to most voters while the then opposition leader Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and the NPP peddled falsehood to hoodwink the electorate into voting for them, culminating in the NPP’s electoral victory in 2016.

He said that many Ghanaians were already regretting their decision to vote against the NDC upon the realisation that the NPP and Mr Akufo-Addo lied to them.

Speaking on Ghana Yensom on Accra FM on Thursday May 25, Mr Ibrahim said: “The NPP and Nana Addo are really subjecting Ghanaians to severe hardship. Today, taxi drivers are crying, other workers are also crying in all parts of the country.”

“But I am not surprised at the government’s actions to bestow hardship on Ghanaians because they know they won by over 1.5 million votes, and, so, even if anything at all should happen to them in the next election, that figure will only reduce and that will be immaterial to their victory.

“This is the reason why the president is not working. So far, we are in the sixth month of his administration and not even one of the promises he gave has been fulfilled. Not a single one of them! What are we doing to ourselves in Ghana? The NHIS is not working and [there are] several other issues.”

He added: “I strongly believe that former President Mahama was too sincere with Ghanaians but Ghanaians didn’t like that; instead they opted for deception.”