Justin Frimpong Kodua: Scapegoat or Tested Asset for NPP’s 2028 Recovery?

Every major political defeat produces two reactions: honest introspection and convenient scapegoating. The New Patriotic Party must choose the former if it is serious about rebuilding for 2028. The 2024 elections exposed unmistakable weaknesses in the party’s internal organisation, electoral strategy, regional mobilisation, and political messaging. The party’s parliamentary decline was severe, with post-election reports placing the NPP at 88 seats against the NDC’s overwhelming parliamentary majority. In the Ashanti Region, the NDC’s improved presidential vote share, reported at about 33%, also signalled that the NPP’s traditional base could no longer be taken for granted.

These are serious warning signs. But serious warning signs require serious diagnosis. They should not be reduced to a quick search for one person to blame.

It is understandable that attention has turned to Justin Frimpong Kodua, the NPP’s General Secretary and chief administrator of the party. He was at the helm of party administration during a difficult electoral cycle. For that reason, questions about strategy, coordination, discipline, and mobilisation are legitimate. Yet accountability must not be confused with political convenience. To argue that the 2024 defeat was simply the result of Kodua’s leadership is to ignore the broader political burden the party carried into that election.

The NPP did not enter 2024 from a position of comfort. The party had already suffered a major parliamentary setback in 2020, when it dropped from 169 seats in 2016 to 137 seats, tying with the NDC, while the sole independent MP aligned with the NPP. That fragile parliamentary arrangement also produced an opposition-endorsed Speaker, Alban Bagbin, a development that shaped the party’s governance difficulties throughout the term.

This context matters. Justin Kodua inherited a party that had already lost parliamentary strength, internal cohesion, and political momentum. His election as General Secretary in 2022 came after he defeated the incumbent John Boadu, at a time when many within the party were already demanding renewal after the 2020 parliamentary shock. Therefore, any fair assessment of his leadership must separate inherited structural weaknesses from administrative lapses directly attributable to him.

The 2024 defeat was shaped by many forces beyond the control of the party’s General Secretary. Economic hardship, cost-of-living pressures, voter fatigue, and public dissatisfaction with government performance created a hostile electoral environment. Reuters reported that Ghana’s economic and cost-of-living crisis weakened the popularity of the Akufo-Addo government and strengthened the demand for political change. Internally, the party also faced serious tensions, including the public demand by some NPP MPs for the removal of Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta. These were not ordinary administrative challenges; they were deep political storms.

This does not mean Justin Kodua was perfect. No serious defender of his leadership should pretend that every decision was flawless. The party’s regional weaknesses, communication gaps, and grassroots frustrations must be examined without sentiment. But it is equally unfair to pretend that removing him alone will solve problems that were created by government performance, parliamentary instability, economic pain, internal rivalries, and campaign fatigue.

The real question is not whether Kodua should be scrutinised. He should. The real question is whether he is the cause of the NPP’s 2024 wounds or one of the few leaders who has gained practical experience from managing the party through its most difficult period in recent history. There is a difference between a leader who caused a crisis and a leader who was tested by one.

Those seeking to lead the party into 2028 are welcome to present alternative visions. But they must do so honestly. It is not enough to say that Justin Kodua “rode a lame horse” and therefore must be discarded. The better question is: who understood the horse's weakness, who managed it under pressure, and who has learned enough from the experience to prepare the party for a stronger return?

Justin Frimpong Kodua is not the NPP’s nemesis. He is a tested political asset. He has lived through the party’s hardest organisational moment, absorbed its lessons, and gained the kind of experience that cannot be acquired from the sidelines. The party may consider other contenders, but it must not replace experience with anger nor mistake blame for strategy. If the NPP wants victory in 2028, it must rebuild with honesty, discipline, and institutional memory. Retaining Justin Frimpong Kodua would not be an act of sentiment. It would be a recognition that some leaders are not destroyed by difficult seasons; they are refined by them. Kodua has been baptised by fire. That experience may be exactly what the NPP needs for its recovery.

Isaac Ofori
Tutor, Winneba Senior High School.
Social Activist and Human Rights Advocate
[email protected]