Fresh from congress, the newly elected Chairman of the opposition National Democratic Congress says it will not be a bad idea to retain ex-president John Mahama for the 2020 elections.

According to Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, the ex-president remains the most marketable candidate among the host of interested aspirants.

He was speaking on Personality Profile Thursday, barely a week after he was elected chairman in a marathon Congress which took more than 40 hours to organise.

A little over 8,000 delegates from across the ten regions of Ghana gathered at the Trade Fair Centre in Accra to elect new national executives to lead the party into election 2020.

There were little or no surprises at all with the usual suspects winning the positions they campaigned for.

Apart from Mr Ofosu Ampofo who won the chairmanship race, Asiedu Nketia silenced Koku Anyidoho to retain the General Secretary position.

Joseph Akamba picked the National Organiser role with Samuel Gyamfi also winning the Communications officer role.

The immediate task of the newly elected executives is to supervise the election of a presidential candidate to lead the party into election 2020.

There are over ten candidates who have so far declared interest and intention to vie for the position.

They include second Deputy Speaker Alban Bagbin, Prof Joshua Alabi former NHIA boss Sylvester Mensah, former Trades Minister Ekwow Spio Garbrah.

Some of these aspirants have accused elements within the party of scheming to have the favourite, ex-president John Mahama re-elected as flagbearer.

When Personality Profile host Lexis Bill asked party chairman Ofosu Ampofo if it will make sense to retain ex-president Mahama as leader of the party, Mr Ampofo said: “It is not a bad idea because when you are going for an election you are looking for the most marketable personality. It reduces your advertisement cost.”

He admitted ex-president is the most “marketable personality. There is no doubt about that.”

When he was asked who he would rather lead the party, he said: “That one the delegates will decide.”

According to him there will be a “screening process” to prone down the number of aspirants before they go into the elections proper.