Former President John Mahama has charged Ghanaians to vote out the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the next election in 2024, so they account for their stewardship under a new government.

The 2020 presidential candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) said, "The NPP have no intention of fighting corruption, and so the only way they can be made to account to the people of Ghana is for them to leave office so that the new government will come and audit them and show where they have gone wrong.

"Otherwise, all the money they have stolen, they will just walk away with it. If you participate in politics or are a participant in public service, one of the first things you must be willing to do is to be accountable to the people," Mr Mahama said in Wa in the Upper East region during his ‘Thank You tour.’

He added, "The only way they could be accountable is for them to leave office so that the people of Ghana can ask them questions and audit them to make sure they account for the period they were in office."

On Monday, Gabby Otchere Darko, a leading member of the NPP, described Mr Mahama as a disaster in an opinion piece.

"I read John Mahama saying on his belated “thank you tour” that NPP wants to break the 8 in order to protect itself from corruption. The simple response to that must be that the NPP wants to break the 8 in order to protect Ghana and the gains being made for Ghanaians from the likes of “Mahama the Disaster”.

"The evidence is still fresh in our minds why John Mahama was a disaster, and I shudder to think how he would have handled the Covid-19 crisis and its disastrous impact on the economy today," he said.

He continued, "Our problems are, of course, many and varied. Our struggle is historic, deep, real and naked. So, it is easy to be convinced by an acerbic and sweet tongue that can hit hard and promise paradise. But, we must be guided by what such a tongue does with its mind, heart and hands when given the opportunity.

"My simple response to John Mahama on why NPP must break the 8 is because it is clear to Ghanaians that the NDC doesn’t seem to see any alternative to present to Ghanaians in 2024 but him, John Mahama, and it is obvious from what he did to what he inherited from his own boss, President John Atta Mills, that he would destroy what NPP was fixing if returned in future."

According to him, Mr Mahama "destroyed what he inherited from Mills in July 2012 and handed over the running of Ghana’s oil-rich economy to the IMF when there was no crisis. Simply put, he himself was the crisis! He home-grew a crisis and outsourced the solution. That is the record of “Mahama the Disaster”.