John Mahama, full name John Dramani Mahama, is a Ghanaian politician who was elected Vice President of Ghana in 2009. He was born on November 29, 1958, in Damongo, Ghana. Mahama was elected president when President John Evans Atta Mills died in July 2012. Later that year, he was elected president and served until 2017.
Mahama was born into a family of political activists. His father, Emmanuel Adama Mahama, was a member of Parliament and a regional commissioner in Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah's, administration. John Mahama went to the Achimota School in Accra for primary school and the Ghana Secondary School in Tamale for secondary school. He graduated from the University of Ghana, Legon, with a bachelor's degree in history in 1981 and postgraduate studies in communication in 1986. Mahama spent a few years teaching high school history before earning a doctorate degree in social psychology from Moscow's Institute of Social Sciences in 1988.
After returning to Ghana, Mahama served in the Japanese Embassy in Accra as the Information, Culture, and Research Officer until 1995. He later served as the international relations, sponsorship, communication, and grants manager for Plan International's Ghana office, a humanitarian and development organization.
He was first elected to Parliament in 1996 under the National Democratic Congress (NDC) banner, and he was re-elected in 2000 and 2004. He held many positions in Parliament, including Minister of Communications (1998–2001), before being chosen as the NDC's vice presidential candidate in 2008 alongside John Evans Atta Mills. Mills and Mahama were inaugurated on January 7, 2009, after Mills won the presidential election in December 2008. Following Mills' untimely death on July 24, 2012, Mahama was promoted to the presidency, just months before Mills' term ended.
Mahama was chosen by the NDC as their candidate for the December 7, 2012 election, in which he faced seven other contenders. Mahama was declared the winner with 50.7 percent of the vote, narrowly avoiding a runoff election with his nearest competitor, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), who had earned 47.74 percent. However, Akufo-Addo and the NPP claimed that there had been electoral fraud and filed a suit with the Supreme Court disputing the results. The court denied the NPP's petition in August 2013 and upheld Mahama's victory.
Meanwhile, Mahama continued to serve as president, having been inaugurated on January 7, 2013, despite the country's deteriorating economic circumstances. Ghana's economy was harmed by falling global prices for Ghana's key exports, as well as rising public pay expenditures and rising debt. Power shortages, which had become an unfortunate hallmark of his administration and led to a nickname for the president that Mahama himself joked about: Mr. Dumsor, dum-sor meaning "off-on" in the local Twi language and describing the frequently occurring incidents of the power cutting off and then turning back on, were also affecting the economy.
As the 2016 elections neared, voters were disgruntled by economic hardships and power shortages, as well as resentment over corruption scandals. Mahama, on the other hand, was able to alleviate some of the anger by emphasizing his achievements and highlighting infrastructure projects accomplished under his presidency, such as those in the transportation, health, and education sectors. In the election on December 7, 2016, he ran as the NDC's presidential candidate against Akufo-Addo for the second time and five other contenders. Akufo-Addo, who received nearly 54 percent of the vote, defeated Mahama. Mahama, who came in second with around 44% of the vote, conceded and stood down in January 2017 at the end of his mandate.
Mahama remained politically active. He was named the NDC's presidential candidate for the 2020 election in 2019. Mahama, who was one of 11 candidates running against President Akufo-Addo in the December 7 election, came in second with around 47% of the vote; Akufo-Addo was proclaimed the winner with slightly more than 51% of the vote. Mahama, on the other hand, filed a petition with the Supreme Court, saying that irregularities influenced the election's outcome and seeking that it be replayed. The court dismissed his petition in March 2021, citing a lack of evidence to back up his assertions, and maintained the election results.
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