Bawumia explains NPP hunt for winnable parliamentary candidates, not deep-pocket primary winners

New Patriotic Party (NPP) flagbearer Dr Mahamudu Bawumia says the party has commenced a nationwide search for parliamentary candidates with the potential to win seats in the 2028 general elections.

The exercise, according to Dr Bawumia, is being conducted across constituencies as the party seeks to complement its internal parliamentary primaries with independent assessments of candidates’ electoral prospects.

He made the disclosure on Sunday, October 4, following the NPP’s recently concluded national executive elections, which produced a new team of national officers.

Dr Bawumia said the party was also working to organise its parliamentary primaries as soon as possible to complete the internal election process and focus its attention on the 2028 general election.

He said the candidate-selection process must be transparent and should not allow financial strength to become the decisive factor in determining who represents the party in a constituency.

“We want to make the process as transparent as possible. On the parliamentary candidate side, what we are trying to do is to do candidate selection across all the constituencies because some people can win parliamentary primaries. After all, they have money, but they cannot win the election,” he said.

The NPP flagbearer warned that winning a parliamentary primary would mean little if the candidate could not secure victory in the subsequent general election.

“If you leave it to them to win the primary, but you've lost the seat ab initio,” he said.

Dr Bawumia disclosed that the party would rely on more than one independent assessment of prospective candidates before making decisions on who could best secure particular seats for the NPP.

“The work on the candidate search is going on, and we're going to have more than one candidate search from independent sources, and we'll compare what they are saying,” he said.

He explained that where the assessments point to an individual as the strongest candidate for a constituency, the party would engage the person and encourage them to contest.

“If we find out that this is the person who can win, as we see, we'll persuade that person to come on board,” he said.

The exercise is expected to form part of the NPP’s broader preparations for the 2028 elections, as the party seeks to select candidates based not only on their ability to secure internal victories but also their prospects of winning the parliamentary seats in the general election.