He said the former president handed the collation system for the 2020 elections to Felix Ofosu Kwakye and Dr. Omane Boamah, a decision, according to him, that caused the party's defeat in the 2016 and 2020 general elections.
Speaking in an interview with Kasapa FM on March 2, 2023, he explained: "If you will realize, the NDC party is more than the NPP, but as the Bible has said in Hosea 4:6, that 'lack of knowledge, my people perish.
"...and they say no one is a repository of knowledge; when you take NDC as an example, when we lost in 2016, our collation system jammed.
"In 2020, our collation system jammed again. The NDC collation system that has been broken twice was brought by Omane Boamah and Ofosu Kwakye. They are the same people who are shouting to retain JM so that they will bring the same nonsense system for us to lose again.
"For us that we know about that collation, it will cause our defeat again. So, we are telling the NDC members that we should remove the person (John Mahama) who has made them (Ofosu Kwakye and Omane Boamah) powerful from office so that we bring a different person."
After picking nomination forms on February 22, Mahama formally launched his bid to become the flagbearer of the NDC on Thursday, March 2, promising, among others, to scrap the retirement benefit given to Article 71 officeholders, known as ex-gratia.
"The payment of ex-gratia to members of the executive under Article 71 will be scrapped. And the necessary constitutional steps to abolish that payment will start in earnest in 2025.
"We will also begin the process of persuading the other arms of government other than the executive to accept the removal of this ex-gratia payment," he said.
Mahama also said that his administration would focus on reducing the president's powers and ensuring the separation of powers among the three arms of government: the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary.
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AM/SARA
Felix Ofosu Kwakye, Dr Omane Boamah and Solomon Nkansah