President Nana Akufo-Addo has for the first time publicly revealed the reasons behind his selection of Dr Mahamudu Bawumia as his running mate despite the avalanche of other well-qualified members of the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

According to President Akufo-Addo, Dr Bawumia is a truthful and goal-oriented person who is always determined to ensure team goals are achieved.

He also added that he needed somebody from the North to help him govern the country and unify the nation as a whole.

The President made this known when he answered a question posed by Adwoa Boadiwaa, a pupil of the Association International School, when together with other pupils and teachers of the school, they paid a courtesy call on him at the seat of the country’s presidency, Jubilee House, on Thursday, October 26.

“Of all the people, why did I choose Bawumia as the Vice President, my goodness, that is a lot of questions. But em…. I think you are aware [that] in terms of the balance, people from the south, people from the north… I think that for the unity of the country, it is good that we have a leadership where Northerners and Southerners are together so that the country can remain united."

“He [Dr Mahamudu Bawumia] is from the North and I wanted somebody from the North to partner me for the election and then for the governance. He [Dr Mahamudu Bawumia] is also a clever man and I needed his brains to help me govern the country effectively,” President Akufo-Addo.

He also revealed that he admires honest people and Dr Bawumia is one of the few honest people he had met in his political journey.

“He [Dr Mahamudu Bawumia] is an honest person. He speaks honestly to you. He is not one of those people who you have to guess what they are trying to say, he says what he has to say directly and I like that. I prefer to deal with people who are very direct in what they say. These are some of the reasons why I chose Dr Bawumia to be my vice president” Akufo-Addo added.

President Akufo-Addo first chose Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia as his running mate on the ticket of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), for the December 2008 presidential elections.

Following that decision, he received a barrage of questions and concerns from within his party and political watchers as many said Dr Bawumia was not a member of the party and that he was not known in Ghana's politics.

However, then-candidate Akufo-Addo kept faith with Dr Bawumia and maintained him for the December 2012 elections. In both polls, they lost the election narrowly to John Evans Atta Mills (2008) and John Dramani Mahama (2012)

In 2016 and again in 2020, President Akufo-Addo and his running mate, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia won both elections and the two have worked together as President and Vice President for the last six years and 10 months.

Currently, Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia is contesting three other aspirants in the upcoming NPP internal presidential primaries which come off on Saturday, 4th November, 2023, for the flagbearership slot of the NPP ahead of the December 2024 general elections.

Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia has been projected by several independent polls to win the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP’s) flagbearership race by up to 78% of the valid votes expected to be cast by the over 200,000 delegates who will be participating in the constituency-based polls.