In 2007, late vice president Alhaji Aliu Mahama was among seventeen candidates who competed in the New Patriotic Party’s presidential aspirant race.

Having served as an able lieutenant to the outgoing president John Agyekum Kufuor, it was expected that Aliu Mahama will get the nod to lead the NPP but as it turned out, Nana Akufo-Addo won the primaries.

Aliu Mahama who polled 146 votes finished third to Akufo-Addo and Alan Kyeremanteng who obtained 1096 and 738 votes respectively.

Nana Akufo-Addo has been the leader of the party since then and after losing the 2008 and 2012 elections, the party has won the last two elections albeit a contest over the result of the 2020 elections announced by the Electoral Commission.

Thirteen years after the Delegate Conference in Accra, Farouk Aliu Mahama, a son of the late Vice President has opened up on how his father dealt with the defeat.

The MP-elect for Yendi reveals that the consummate politician took the defeat calmly and supported the party massively.

He said to GhanaWeb that though he would have loved for his father to have been President of the country, he believes that the delegates at the time made a good choice in settling for Nana Akufo-Addo.

“NPP is a democratic party. We have our choice and the party chose Nana Akufo-Addo as the leader of the party, they didn’t choose my late father. He took it calmly and I believe we made a good choice. I wanted my father to be president but the party chose Nana Akufo-Addo.

He further revealed that instead of being acrimonious over the defeat, Ali Mahama rather became the person that united the various factions that developed in the party during the primaries.

“My late father brokered peace in the party. When they did the elections, my late father was third and needed to go for a second round. He was the person with the needed numbers to sway the elections in a candidates favour but he told the Nana Addo and Alan Kyerematen camps that they needed to rally around Nana Addo and support him. We have no regret because Nana Addo has been a great leader”, he said.