When Mahama’s Jubilee House Usurps The Powers Of The NDC To Nominate An Acting Majority Leader

On 24 August 2026, I read an online report on the Ghana News Agency (GNA) website stating, inter alia, that: “President Mahama has nominated Mr. James Agalga, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Member of Parliament for Builsa North, to serve as Acting Majority Leader.” I knew instinctively, intuitively, and without a flinch that the President was deliberately undermining the National Executive Council of the NDC by usurping the parliamentary procedure and practice that vests the appointment of the Majority Leadership of the NDC in Parliament in the Majority Caucus and the National Executive of the NDC.

Any participant observation from a qualitative research perspective, an examination and analysis of conversations, and other published interactions of the relationship between President Mahama’s Jubilee House and the NDC as a political party since 7 January 2025 leads one to the conclusion that some handpicked political officeholders in the Presidency behave as though the NDC as a political party is an appendage of the President’s executive chariot. Those few sycophants in Jubilee House have so soon forgotten the fact that the Presidency which they occupy as political public officeholders under the 9th Government of the Fourth Republic was enabled by the NDC, without which they would not be wielding the executive power of the Republic.

The President, together with the coterie of Jubilee House appointees around him, is presumed to know the Standing Orders and practices of Parliament, based on which he has been communicating with the Speaker of Parliament since assuming office on 7 January 2025.

The President, therefore, knew before purporting to nominate James Agalga as the Acting Majority Leader that the provisions of the Standing Orders of the Parliament of Ghana, 2024, state clearly and unambiguously in the interpretation in Order 6 that: “‘Majority Leader’ means a Member of Parliament designated by the Majority Caucus as their Leader in the House;...” and a caucus is defined to include “a group of Members belonging to the same political party or parties, region, religion, gender, profession or sharing a common interest with a view to promote a common cause.” (Emphasis supplied).

The President also knew that Orders 65 to 66 of the Standing Orders of Parliament, 2024, deal with communication to and from the House. Order 65, dealing with “Communication from the President to the House,” lucidly spells out the procedure and the seven subject‑matter areas in relation to which communication shall be made by the President to Parliament.

Rule 1 of Order 65 mandates that: “Communication from the President to the House shall be made to the Speaker in writing signed by the President, or in the absence of the President, by the Vice-President or by a Minister authorised by the President.”

Rule 2 of Order 65 then expressly sets forth the seven subject‑matter areas in relation to which communication shall be made by the President to the House, none of which includes nomination of the Majority Leader. Order 65 rule 2(b) empowers the President to communicate matters including “(b) a Ministerial or Deputy Ministerial nomination.” But James Agalga’s name was not included in the list of nominees the President had communicated to the Speaker as Ministers, nor was the President in his letter under review purporting to nominate James Agalga as Minister for Parliamentary Affairs.

Any constitutional activist acquainted with parliamentary procedure enshrined in article 110(1) of the 1992 Constitution and enabled by the new Standing Orders of the Parliament of Ghana, which took effect on 2 January 2024, would have known that the President was exercising a power he did not have under the Constitution and laws of Ghana. Where were all those lawyers the President boasted about to the leadership of the Ghana Bar Association (GBA) at the Presidency on 27 March 2026 when he was abusing the Constitution with impunity in nominating an Acting Majority Leader in his letter under reference? Or is the President refusing to listen to their counsel?

When I read later on Joy News that the Speaker of Parliament had politely rejected the President’s letter nominating James Agalga as Acting Majority Leader because it violated the Standing Orders, I interpreted the Speaker’s intervention as damage control of another deliberate unconstitutional act of impunity and abuse of power from the President.

Not surprisingly, the General Secretary of the NDC completed the damage control by immediately notifying the Speaker of Parliament in a letter with reference number NDC/HQ/73/045 dated 24 August 2026, inter alia, as follows:

“I write on behalf of the Leadership of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to formally inform you that, following consultations between the Leadership of the Party and the Presidency, Hon. James Agalga, Member of Parliament for Builsa North Constituency, has been appointed as the new Majority Leader of the Parliament of the Republic of Ghana.”

The NDC General Secretary’s letter can be downloaded from the news report of Citi Newsroom: NDC formally notifies Bagbin of James Agalga’s appointment as Majority Leader.

James Agalga has served the NDC as a Member of Parliament and Deputy Minister of the Interior since 7 January 2013, and as the ranking member on the Defence and Interior Committee for the NDC in opposition for eight years before the NDC won the 2024 elections. I hosted a group of NDC members from the Upper East Region (UER) in my residence on several occasions in 2024, strategizing to deliver the votes from the electorate resident in the UER and natives of the region resident in other regions of the country to the NDC at the 7 December 2024 elections. James Agalga attended a few of those meetings, which were initiated by the late John Tia; James Agalga was at the time the caucus leader of the MPs from the UER.

President Mahama did not consider James Agalga worthy of a ministerial appointment after 7 January 2025, while the NDC considered him worthy to be the Chairman of the Defence and Interior Committee of Parliament. President Mahama just made nominations for appointment to ministerial positions without James Agalga being given any slot there. So, why does the President now want the public to believe that James Agalga is an appointee of the President and not the NDC as a party? A struggle for the ownership of the 2028 elections campaign within the NDC has already begun with intra‑party elections for branch executives upwards to the national level.

A President elected to office under the auspices of the NDC automatically becomes the leader of the party, but that does not give the President the authority to usurp the functions of the duly elected executive officers of the NDC. As the NDC General Secretary’s damage‑control letter states, James Agalga was appointed the substantive Majority Leader “following consultations between the Leadership of the Party and the Presidency.” The NDC has demonstrated maturity in the face of the power‑grab letter of nomination from the Presidency.

President Mahama and his handlers in the Jubilee House have an obligation to explain to the public their reasons for nominating James Agalga in writing to the Speaker as Acting Majority Leader when he had no power or authority under the Constitution to do so as President of Ghana.

The Speaker of Parliament and the leadership of the NDC can do whatever damage control they wish to do with the President’s letter, which is a clear abuse of the process enshrined in Article 110(1) and the Standing Orders of Parliament, but no one can deceive the reasonable public that there is not a world of difference between the Majority Caucus and the NDC appointing James Agalga as the Majority Leader and President Mahama nominating the same person as Acting Majority Leader.

The President’s letter nominating James Agalga as Acting Majority Leader is another symptom of the mismatch between the agenda of the President and some political public officeholders at the Presidency on the one hand, and the NDC represented by the National Executive Council on the other, towards the 2028 elections. The President may be the leader of the NDC when it forms the government, but that does not put the President above the elected executives of the NDC chosen at Congress.

President Mahama contested the 2024 elections as a candidate of the NDC, which enabled him to be President of Ghana for a second term. Whatever the agenda in the Presidency may be, the NDC as a party — founded at meetings convened under the co‑chairmanship of the late Justice D. F. Annan and the late Captain Kojo Tsikata (to which I was invited as the Chairman of the House Committee of the Consultative Assembly and Deputy Attorney‑General) in April and May 1992, and later registered as a political party when Jerry John Rawlings was the Chairman of the PNDC — must not be allowed to be treated as an appendage of any President. The NDC must always remain supreme as a legacy to its founder!

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