Explainer: How Adwoa Safo went from three-term MP to losing Dome-Kwabenya

For 12 years, Sarah Adwoa Safo was the face of one of the New Patriotic Party’s safest seats. But in 2024, she lost it in two steps.

In January, the party’s delegates in the constituency voted her out as parliamentary candidate. In December, the NDC took the seat for the first time since the constituency was created.

Safo won Dome-Kwabenya in 2012 with 63.75 per cent of the vote and improved to 67.99 per cent in 2016.

In 2020, she still won comfortably, polling 75,041 votes against the NDC’s 52,262. However, her share of the vote had dropped to 58.68 per cent.

Along the way, she rose to become Deputy Majority Leader and later Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection.

But her political fortunes began to change after she went on leave in 2021, setting off a controversy that would eventually affect her relationship with the party and her standing in the constituency.

The trouble began in 2021, when Safo went on leave for personal reasons.

A Presidency statement said the leave was expected to end on August 31 that year, but by October, she had still not resumed work. The Presidency subsequently extended her leave.

She remained in the United States for almost a year, during a period when the Majority needed every vote it could get to pass bills in Parliament because of its thin numbers.

Her absence became a source of frustration within the NPP, with some colleagues accusing her of holding government business to ransom.

Assin Central MP Kennedy Agyapong made the accusation publicly.

Safo, however, said family matters, including her son’s health, had kept her away and described the criticism as a witch hunt.

The controversy eventually reached Parliament.

In May 2022, Speaker Alban Bagbin referred her to the Privileges Committee for missing more than 15 sittings without permission.

She did not appear before the committee, which split over whether her seat should be declared vacant. Parliament watchdog Odekro put her absence at 40 sittings.

President Akufo-Addo removed her as Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection on July 28, 2022.

In October, Bagbin ruled that the full House, rather than the committee, should decide her fate.

Safo returned to Parliament on November 11, 2022, and her seat was never declared vacant.

Although she eventually returned, the controversy had placed her at odds with some of her colleagues at a time when the NPP was struggling to maintain its parliamentary numbers.

The question was whether the fallout would also affect her relationship with the party’s grassroots in Dome-Kwabenya.

A Global Info Analytics poll in February 2022 found that 47 per cent of Dome-Kwabenya residents opposed the proposal to remove Safo, while 44 per cent supported it.

The figures showed that opinion in the constituency was divided at the time.

By 2023, however, the mood among local party members had hardened.

When Safo apologised to the President and party leadership on September 14, 2023, and announced that she would seek re-election, constituency secretary Theophilus Larbi described the apology as habitual.

He said many people had told him they would not vote for the party if she returned as its candidate.

The reaction suggested that the controversy surrounding her absence had become an issue for the constituency’s party delegates ahead of the parliamentary primary.

Safo’s challenge was no longer simply to retain her seat in Parliament. She also had to convince the party’s delegates that she remained the best candidate to represent Dome-Kwabenya.

At the primary on January 27, 2024, Mike Oquaye Jnr, a former Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Free Zones Authority and son of the area’s first MP, Prof. Mike Oquaye, polled 1,194 votes.

Safo received 328 votes, while Sheila Oppong got 186.

The result was a decisive defeat for the former MP, who had represented the constituency for three consecutive terms.

It was also the third time Oquaye Jnr had faced her in the party’s parliamentary primary.

In 2019, Safo beat him by just eight votes.

Five years later, the outcome was dramatically different.

The constituency secretary said afterwards that delegates were reflecting what constituents had told them: they wanted a new face.

Safo accepted the result as a setback and said she would not contest the seat as an independent candidate.

The primary marked the end of her attempt to secure another NPP parliamentary nomination for Dome-Kwabenya.

But the party’s decision to replace her did not guarantee that it would retain the constituency.

The general election was much closer than the primary.

NDC candidate Faustina Elikplim Akurugu won with 51,634 votes against Oquaye Jnr’s 50,477, a margin of 1,157 votes.

Akurugu had polled nearly 41 per cent of the vote in 2020 and had been campaigning in the constituency since then.

The Ghana News Agency noted that the NDC also benefited from wider dissatisfaction with the NPP government.

The party lost other long-held seats that year, including Adansi Asokwa and Sekondi.

Dome-Kwabenya’s result meant the NPP had lost a constituency Safo had held for three consecutive terms.

The narrow margin also meant the party came close to retaining the seat with a new candidate.

However, the result opened another chapter in the controversy surrounding Safo and her relationship with the party.

In February 2025, the NPP’s Dome-Kwabenya executives blamed Safo directly for the party’s loss.

They said she had stayed away from campaign activities and accused her of undermining Oquaye Jnr’s campaign.

The accusations added to the strained relationship between Safo and some party figures following her absence from Parliament and her defeat in the primary.

Although she did not respond directly to the executives’ allegations, Safo said some party figures had worked against her during her absence.

She also questioned the credibility of the NPP’s election review committee, whose chair was Oquaye Jnr’s father.

The dispute highlighted the divisions within the party after the election and the unresolved tensions surrounding the former MP’s political future.

In March 2025, the party referred her to its disciplinary committee over her public comments. The hearing was later postponed.

On Friday, October 23, 2026, Safo declared her intention to contest the party’s parliamentary primaries and seek another mandate as its candidate for Dome-Kwabenya.

She explained that although she had previously expressed interest in exploring opportunities outside the constituency, she had reconsidered her position.

She said continuing to represent the people of Dome-Kwabenya in Parliament remained her priority.

Her decision brings her political journey in the constituency back to the question that followed her defeat in 2024: whether she can regain the support of the party delegates who voted for a new candidate and help the NPP reclaim a seat it lost after 12 years of her representation.

Adwoa Safo announces decision to contest Dome-Kwabenya NPP parliamentary seat

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