The National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia, has refuted claims suggesting that the party intends for President John Dramani Mahama to run for a third term in office.
Speaking in an interview on Channel One TV on August 26, 2025, on recent speculations about the NDC’s succession plans, Asiedu Nketia stressed that the party remains fully committed to Ghana’s constitutional provisions, particularly the presidential term limit.
“We have never run our party in ways that conflict with the national constitution, and we don’t intend to do that. We will stick by the tenets of the Constitution,” he stated.
His clarification comes amid growing debate over who could lead the NDC after President Mahama’s current mandate ends in 2029.
It may also be recalled that a former Deputy General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Obiri Boahen, criticised former National Chairman of the party, Freddie Blay, over his stance of having no objection if the Supreme Court interprets the constitution to allow President Mahama to run for a third term.
Freddie Blay, weighing in on the national debate over President John Dramani Mahama’s eligibility to contest the 2028 general elections, welcomed the idea of a possible interpretation of the provisions stipulated in the 1992 Constitution.
“The law is in the bosom of the judges. If it goes to the Supreme Court, which has the exclusive judicial right to interpret the constitution, and that body decides that what it means by two terms is conservatively this or that, I don’t have a problem with it,” Freddie Blay stated in an interview on Oyerepa Breakfast Time on Wednesday, June 11, 2025.
However, in response to Blay’s remarks during an exclusive GhanaWeb interview on June 17, 2025, Obiri Boahen chided him for hiding behind semantics to praise the president’s work, emphasising that while there is nothing wrong with commending the president, Blay should not do so openly.
According to Boahen, the constitutional provision regarding the number of terms a president can serve is explicitly clear and does not require interpretation, emphasising that it is not ambiguous and should be easily understood by anyone.
He further explained that legal interpretations are sought in court only when the wording of a law is unclear or susceptible to misinterpretation.
