Dr Kwame Asah-Asante is a political scientist
Political scientist Dr Kwame Asah-Asante has backed claims that former President Akufo-Addo’s refusal to reshuffle his ministers significantly contributed to the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) defeat in the 2024 general elections.
His comments follow recent remarks by the NPP’s 2024 presidential candidate, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, who attributed the party’s electoral loss to several factors, including arrogance of power, failure to reshuffle government officials, the introduction of the E-Levy, and the controversial domestic debt exchange programme (haircut policy).
Dr Bawumia made these comments during the launch of his nationwide “Thank You” tour at the auditorium of Takoradi Technical University, highlighting the struggles Ghanaians faced amid an IMF-backed debt restructuring programme.
Speaking on Morning Starr with Naa Dedei Tettey, Dr Asah-Asante underscored that the failure to reshuffle non-performing ministers was a critical misstep.
According to him, former President Akufo-Addo prioritised loyalty over competence, which ultimately hurt the administration’s performance and contributed to public dissatisfaction.
He explained that ministerial reshuffles serve important purposes such as injecting fresh energy into governance, refocusing policies, and ensuring regional balance.
He said, “They talked about the issue of the fact that he did not reshuffle the government and all that. It tells you about what? The way Nana Akufo-Addo was not prepared to change those who were non-performing ministers. If you read literature on reshuffling of ministers, we bring them for so many reasons. One of the reasons that we bring people in to come and replace others is to inject fresh energy into the system. Sometimes you bring people in the focus of a policy and the direction of a policy.”
“Sometimes you bring them in just to, you know, have a regional balance and whatnot. And in all these things, competence is critical. It’s not about loyalty. Nana unfortunately, sacrificed competence and loyalty. That doesn’t work because the person can be loyal to you, but you know him to be an incompetent person. What can he do? He can’t do anything and that will translate into the results that you want. You want results because governance is nothing but about what? About records. So what results do you want to have in terms of what you have done? So your records, where would that be? So that is why these are some of the things that cause the difficulties.”
Dr Asah-Asante further noted that beyond national issues, constituency-specific challenges also impact electoral outcomes.
He expressed interest in seeing if research reports had captured these localized concerns, as they are often decisive factors for voters.
“I’m happy, they’ve done research to point them out. I have not seen the report, but I want to see whether there are constituency-specific issues. Because in voters, when they are voting, apart from national ones that they look out for, what about constituency-specific issues? Because various constituencies have their own problems. And how do you respond to them? It’s a function of whether people will vote for you or not. So I would have loved to see something like that, constituency-specific issue.”