President of the Republic of Ghana

Jubilee House, Accra

May 12, 2026

Your Excellency,

Let us dispense with the pleasantries, because the situation you have created in this country demands plain language rather than the usual diplomatic cushioning that powerful men tend to hide behind. What is unfolding under your watch is a slow, deliberate strangling of the democratic freedoms that Ghanaians have shed blood to earn, and the time for polite concern has long passed.

You came to power on a platform draped in the language of restoration, rule of law, democratic values, and the dignity of every citizen. You stood before God and Ghana on January 7, 2025, raised your right hand, and swore to protect and uphold the Constitution of this Republic. Less than eighteen months later, that oath seems to have been thrown into the Korle Lagoon.

The latest chapter in this rapidly darkening story is the arrest of David Essandoh, the New Patriotic Party's Agona West Constituency Organiser. He was snatched from his own home in what can only be described as a Rambo-style operation. Armed police and national security personnel swarmed his residence as if he had planned an insurrection. His alleged offence? Telling the truth.

Think about that. Millions of Ghanaians are sitting in the dark again. Not metaphorically, but literally. Dumsor has returned with a familiar arrogance, the same load-shedding menace that shadowed your first term from 2012 to 2016. And now it has followed you back into power like a stubborn ghost that refuses to be exorcised. Even prominent citizens have quietly noted that the President's name has, over time, become almost synonymous with “Dumsor” in this country. That is not propaganda, Mr President; that is undeniably a fact.

Essandoh did not incite violence. He did not threaten anyone. He simply shared what citizens were already whispering over candles, “bobo,” and phone torches. His crime was echoing it loudly and publicly enough that made someone with authority felt uncomfortable. And instead of fixing the lights, your government chose to lock up the messenger.

What followed his arrest was perhaps even more disturbing than the arrest itself. Even his own political party could not locate him after a day in custody. The CID said they did not know of his arrest. The National Intelligence Bureau also claims to be in the dark, or pretending to be.

Mr. President, in any functioning democracy, that is not an arrest, that is a disappearance. And in a country with Ghana's troubled history, the years when people simply vanished for speaking out, the difference between the two is a line your administration appears increasingly willing to blur.

But this is not an isolated incident. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It is a systematic pattern, deliberate, and growing bolder by the month. First Sir Obama, then Baba Amando, then Abronye, then Fante Comedy, now Essandoh among others. The names are piling up faster than the load-shedding schedules your minister has refused to officially release.

Mr. President, in September 2025, you publicly declared that your government had acquired sophisticated surveillance equipment to trace and arrest social media activists who post content deemed to be fake news or unverified information. You announced this not with embarrassment but with pride. That announcement which we all know was a declaration of war, not against misinformation but against dissent. Because the targets since that announcement have not been anonymous propaganda factories, but named, known, politically affiliated critics of your administration. The selective application of this surveillance apparatus speaks for itself.

Your Excellency, the NPP is not without fault in this country's political history. That is not the argument being made here. The argument is simpler and more fundamental, the Ghana Police Service and the national security apparatus belong to Ghana, not to the NDC. They were built with the taxes of every Ghanaian, including the ones who did not vote for you, and the ones posting criticism of your government on Facebook, TikTok, X and other social media platforms.

Every concerned citizen believes these developments are signs of troubling erosion of civil liberties and rule of law, with state agencies answering not to law but to political masters. And to be fair, they are not wrong.

The Criminal and Seditious Libel Law was repealed in 2001 because Ghanaians of an earlier generation refused to live under exactly this kind of arrangement. They understood, because history had taught them through the suffering of the culture of silence, that a government which arrests its critics has run out of arguments. When you cannot counter someone's point, you counter their freedom instead. That is not governance. That is fear dressed up in a uniform.

Your Excellency, you have been in the political arena long enough to know how these stories end. Ghana has seen governments that confused loyalty with sycophancy, that mistook silence for support, and that conflated the power of the state with their own personal authority. None of them held onto that power forever. The oppressed, as history has demonstrated without a single exception, always find their voice again. The question is not whether the people of Ghana will reclaim the democratic space being slowly taken from them. The question is what will be written about you when they do.

Mr. President, you are not merely the leader of the NDC. You are the President of the Republic of Ghana. That title carries an obligation, not to your party, not to your supporters, not to those who flatter you in the corridors of Jubilee House, but to every Ghanaian, including David Essandoh, Baba Amando, Daniel Adomako, Abdul Hanna Abdul Wahab Aludiba, and Abronye among others. Including the young man scrolling through his phone in Kumasi right now, wondering whether sharing his honest opinion about the darkness in his neighbourhood will result in armed men at his door before dawn.

Respectfully, Your Excellency, ask yourself honestly, if the boot were on the other foot, if an NPP president were deploying national security operatives to arrest NDC communicators for Facebook or social media posts and AI generated images, what would John Dramani Mahama be saying? What would the NDC be saying? You know the answer, your advisors, Assemblies of God Pastor, Council of State, Christians and Muslims Council, Peace Council and in fact the entire country knows the answer. That answer is why I have painfully penned down this letter to you.

Ghana will not go back to the culture of silence. Not for you, not for anyone.

With all due respect Your Excellency, start acting like the President of all Ghanaians, or prepare to be remembered as the man who had the chance to be, and chose otherwise.

God bless our beloved motherland, and make its relentless citizens great and strong.

Yours faithfully,

Jamaludeen A. Abdullah
A Concerned Citizen