Hawa Koomson's Victory and the Pepper Spray Question: What It Says About Women in Ghanaian Politics

Mavis Hawa Koomson has won the National Women's Organiser position of the New Patriotic Party (NPP). At the party's National Delegates Conference at the Baba Yara Sports Stadium in Kumasi on October 3, 2026, she polled 783 votes against 429 for Hajia Safia Mohammed.

For a former Awutu Senya East MP and Fisheries Minister who lost her seat in 2024, it is a significant comeback. It also reopens a question the party cannot avoid: what does Ghana expect of its women leaders when politics turns violent?

The pepper spray episode dates to the Ablekuma North parliamentary rerun in July 2025. Video showed Koomson being pushed to the ground and assaulted while she tried to defend herself with pepper spray, and other NPP figures were also attacked.

Her allies said she was targeted, and Akosua Manu relayed that Koomson reached for the spray only after seeing what looked like a weapon. Koomson later complained that neither the President nor the Vice President, herself a woman, had called to check on her, and in her campaign she faulted the NPP's own women's wing for a disappointing response.

The reactions revealed a double standard in how we treat women in public life. Violence against any woman in an election is indefensible, whatever her party. Yet in Parliament, NDC MP Helen Ntoso described the attack as "an eye for an eye", while the Pusiga MP, Ayamba Ayii Laadi, questioned why Koomson went to a polling station with pepper spray at all.

NDC Women's Organiser Dr. Louisa Hannah Bissiw said she felt no sorrow, citing past allegations against Koomson, which Koomson has not been shown to have answered in the sources I found. Critics are entitled to ask hard questions about her record. In 2020 she admitted firing a warning shot at a registration centre, and many called for her prosecution.

But accountability for conduct cannot become permission for a mob.

Both things can be true. A woman leader carrying pepper spray into a charged polling station raises legitimate questions about election-day conduct, and a crowd that overpowers the police and beats her is a failure of law and order. Ghana's parties have to say both, without reserving condemnation for the other side's victims.

That is Koomson's test now. As National Women's Organiser she pledged reconciliation, a nationwide tour to revive an inactive wing, and leadership marked by experience and maturity. A women's wing that wants to be taken seriously should set a code of conduct for its own members at polling stations, push for firm police protection for all women candidates and agents, and speak out when women of any party are attacked.

Her victory shows grassroots delegates still trust a bold, battle-tested woman. Whether that boldness becomes a force for peaceful politics is the question her tenure will answer.

Mustapha Bature Sallama
Medical/ Science Communicator,
Private Investigator, Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Analysis,
International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding. (USIP)
[email protected]
+233555275880

Sources: GBC Ghana Online, Pulse Ghana, YEN, The Ghana Report, MyJoyOnline (Oct 3-5, 2026, results and her post-victory remarks); Citi Newsroom, July 2025 (Akosua Manu on self-defence); Adom Online (Bissiw; Koomson on the response from the Presidency and the NPP women's wing); Yen.com.gh (Ntoso and Laadi in Parliament); Citi Newsroom, July 2020 (warning shot). One outlet reports 782 votes instead of 783.