An National Democratic Congress (NDC) communicator has challenged New Patriotic Party (NPP) flagbearer Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia to apply the same standard to Abronye DC that he implicitly accepted when a broadcaster was jailed under his own government for similar conduct involving the judiciary.
Speaking on Asempa FM, lawyer Abass Nurudeen questioned Bawumia’s May 13 statement in which the former Vice President defended NPP Bono Regional Chairman Kwame Baffoe Abronye, who was re-arrested and remanded for two weeks over alleged threats against a Circuit Court judge and public accusations of political bias against police officers.
Nurudeen pointed to the 2021 conviction of Oheneba Boamah of TV XYZ, who was found guilty of scandalising the court after making public allegations against Supreme Court justices following the 2020 election petition ruling. Boamah served three weeks in prison while Bawumia held office as Vice President.
“Dr. Bawumia was in government when that judgment was passed,” Nurudeen said, noting that the former Vice President raised no public objection at the time.
The contrast is the core of his argument. Bawumia’s statement, issued under the headline “Democracy and Free Speech Under Siege,” framed Abronye’s arrest as part of a broader political clampdown and alleged an “unholy collaboration” between the executive, state investigative bodies and sections of the judiciary. Nurudeen countered that Abronye’s alleged conduct, threatening a sitting judge and publicly accusing police officers of political bias, mirrors the category of offence for which Boamah was prosecuted when the NPP held power. In his reading, the only variable that has changed is whose member is in the dock.
He pushed the argument further, asking what a future Bawumia administration would mean for institutional accountability: whether NPP members who attacked state institutions would be treated differently from opponents who had done the same.
Beyond the Abronye matter, Nurudeen also raised concerns about the internal health of the party, arguing that Bawumia needs to address structural fractures before the next election cycle rather than directing his energy outward. He alleged that members who backed rival candidates during internal contests are being shut out of party structures, while those who supported Bawumia benefit from an arrangement that favours them by default.
The lawyer linked that internal tension to reported violence at polling station elections in Tepa, where two people were allegedly stabbed, describing it as a foreseeable consequence of unresolved exclusion within party ranks.
He warned the NPP flagbearer that failure to build a genuinely inclusive party would carry a long electoral cost. A party that cannot manage its internal disputes or hold its own members to consistent standards, he argued, is a party that hands its opponents a ready argument at every turn.
Bawumia’s statement of May 13 also referenced the arrest of social media commentator David Essandoh, detained over comments about the return of power outages, as further evidence of state overreach. The government has not responded formally to the statement. Nurudeen’s intervention sharpens the political pressure on Bawumia by placing the debate on ground the NPP’s own record cannot easily support.
