Bernard Baidoo, the lawyer who won the closely contested Akwatia by-election on Tuesday, says the outcome proves that the people understood his message and acted on it.

“The people listened to the message we gave them, and we saw that they had really imbibed. They gave us a hope, some hope of a sort, which hope has resulted in what we see today,” he said after the declaration.

Mr Baidoo insisted that confidence was never in short supply.

“We’ve always been very confident. We’ve been in this game for a while. If you are in it and you are losing, you will know, except maybe if you don’t want to be honest yourself."

He explained that his campaign was grounded in clarity and focus.

“For me, I’ve always said, when you are going into such a contest, there are a lot of things you will hear, but I don’t focus on tangential. The focus is on the main ball.

"My focus is to have my message delivered. The people accept it, and then they take it up and work to make sure, eh, victory is delivered.”

Mr Baidoo brushed off past controversies, saying distraction could have derailed the campaign.

“Some of these comments, if you are not careful, you will be swayed by them, and then you go outside the main target and then be dealing with unnecessary stuff. Elections were held, and we have the results.”

Looking ahead, the new MP tied Akwatia’s prospects to its rich mining history.

“We’ve always said that you see Akwatia’s name has always been with regard to mining, you can’t take away the mining. We only have to do it lawfully. That’s what we're going to work on,” he said.

He pointed to progress already underway at the Ghana Consolidated Diamonds site.

“Where we are now is a GCD property just before John Mahama came to power; the place was in darkness, if you would recall. We did the 2024 collation here, and we had to put on some solar panels and all the lamps.

"Today, it wasn’t because of the by-elections, though; this was even done before. Today, we have electricity. It is the first step towards getting GCD back on track, which can employ 1000s of people. There are other things we are looking at.”