Four years after a painful defeat, John Boadu is the NPP’s new National Chairman, and 2028 is calling.
He started out chairing a polling station. Four years ago, delegates handed him a defeat that many thought would end his rise. Now John Boadu is the man who will lead the whole New Patriotic Party.
On Saturday, 3 October, at the Baba Yara Sports Stadium in Kumasi, NPP delegates elected Boadu as the party’s next National Chairman. He won with 2,888 votes in a four-man race against Sammy Crabbe, Paul Afoko and Boakye Agyarko.
The numbers tell the story better than anything else. In July 2022, Boadu got 2,524 votes and lost his bid for re-election as General Secretary to Justin Frimpong Kodua, who got 2,837. Four years later, he got more votes than he had on that painful day, and this time the prize was bigger.
Boadu’s rise is the kind of journey party people love to talk about. He began at the grassroots as a Polling Station Chairman. He then became a Constituency Secretary and a Regional Research and Elections Officer. From there he went through almost every office at party headquarters: National Finance Officer, National Youth Treasurer, National Youth Organiser, Deputy National Communications Director, National Organiser and, finally, General Secretary.
His reach went beyond Ghana too. From 2003 to 2006, he was Secretary-General of the Organisation of African Liberal Youth.
His name is tied most closely to 2016. The party was in its worst internal crisis, and its National Chairman, General Secretary and 2nd Vice Chairman had all been suspended. Boadu, then National Organiser, stepped in as Acting General Secretary and Director of National Campaign Operations.
The NPP went on to win that election. He became the substantive General Secretary at the 2018 delegates’ conference and was still in the job when the party contested the 2020 elections.
Supporters say that in office he worked to put the party on a firmer footing, and they credit him with helping set up permanent offices in constituencies and regions that had none and with providing IT infrastructure for party secretariats.
Then came 2022. Kodua beat him, and many people expected Boadu to step back from the front line. He did not. His backers say he stayed loyal to the party after that loss and kept working. This weekend, delegates gave him a second chance, at a higher level.
Now the hard part begins. The new chairman must keep the NPP together after a tough contest, and the 2028 election is already on the horizon. The party wants to win it, and it will need every camp pulling in one direction.
Boadu goes into the job with two things in his favour. He has more than three decades inside the party, from polling stations to national administration. And he knows both sides of the delegates verdict. He knows what it feels like to lose, and that may be the best preparation for asking a divided party to move on together.
For a man who began his journey at a polling station, the climb is over.
The real work starts now: unite the party, and take it to 2028.
