The fairytale haunting the NPP and NDC

“There are men who walk into history with a script. And there are those who arrive like a storm—unwritten, uninvited, but undeniable.”

The Unearthing: The One Who Opened the Gate

Before Bawumia became the fairytale that haunts both NPP and NDC, before he was seen as the tsunami that unsettles the old order, there was a quiet act of unearthing.

President John Agyekum Kufuor, with the eyes of a watcher and the heart of a steward, discerned in Bawumia a vessel for civic disruption. He did not wait for consensus. He acted. He was appointed. He endorsed it. And in doing so, he opened a gate that many thought would remain closed to men like Bawumia.

But the gate did not swing open on foresight alone. President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, in a gesture of rare political humility, sought Kufuor’s counsel before naming Bawumia as his running mate. He did not force the gate. He knocked. He aligned. He honored the lineage.

This moment was not a detour. It was the hinge. For the dread that now grips the old order began with a blessing. And the fairytale they now fear was once a seed planted in reverence.

Let the parties remember: the gate was opened not by ambition, but by alignment. And the one who walks through it now does so with the weight of that legacy.

The Emergence: The tsunami they did not predict

Dr Mahamudu Bawumia entered Ghanaian politics not as a prince of the party, nor as a product of factional grooming, but as a technocrat summoned for electoral balance. To many within the NPP, he was a placeholder and very useful, but dispensable. To the NDC, he was a lightweight. An economist with no political muscle.

But what they failed to see was the undercurrent beneath his calm: a civic force gathering strength, silent but certain.

Today, that undercurrent has become a tsunami. And both parties, NPP in opposition, NDC in power, now feel the tremors.

The Transformation: The fairytale that became a threat

In the beginning, Bawumia’s story read like a fairytale: the banker plucked from obscurity, the economist who spoke in charts and calm cadence, the outsider who stood before the Supreme Court and held his own against Tsatsu Tsikata.

But fairytales, when they linger too long, become unsettling. They haunt the halls of power. They whisper of change. They threaten the old order.

And so, what began as a charming subplot has become the central dread of Ghana’s political elite.

The Internal Fracture: The dread within the NPP

Within his own party, Bawumia’s rise has exposed deep discomfort. He is not of the old stock. He does not carry the tribal credentials or the factional debts that have long defined succession. His nomination as flagbearer was not just a political decision, it was a rupture.

A northern Muslim now leads a party historically anchored in Akan strongholds. For some, this is progress. For others, it is heresy.

The dread is not just about ethnicity. It is about control. Bawumia’s ascent threatens to rewrite the rules of inheritance. And those who built their careers on those rules now find themselves unmoored.

The Strategic Puzzle: The dread within the NDC

For the ruling party, Bawumia is a puzzle they cannot solve. They have thrown words at him, stooge, poodle, puppet, but none have stuck. He does not fit the caricature. He does not rise to the bait. His mystique remains a headwater they cannot dam.

He is not a populist. He is not a tribalist. He is not a firebrand. He is something else. Something they have not yet named.

The NDC’s dread is strategic: how do you fight a man who does not play by the old rules? How do you campaign against a symbol of generational shift without appearing regressive? How do you attack a man whose very presence reframes the contest?

The Paradigm Shift: The devourer of the old order

Bawumia is not merely rising. He is devouring. Not with arrogance, but with inevitability. He consumes the assumptions of succession. He unsettles the comfort of tribal arithmetic. He renders obsolete the idea that power must always return to the familiar.

This is why the dread is bipartisan. It is not about policy. It is about paradigm. It is not about the man. It is about the mirror he holds up to a political class that has long mistaken longevity for legitimacy.

The watcher’s remarks

To the watcher, this moment is not chaos. It is clear. The dread surrounding Bawumia is not a flaw in the system. It is the system revealing its fear of change. And in that fear, the people must find their courage.

Let the write-up be read not as prophecy, but as preparation. For the fairytale is no longer fiction. The tsunami is no longer distant. The devourer has arrived. Not to destroy, but to demand a new reckoning.

And those who cannot swim in this new tide will be swept away by it.

The Fulfillment: The prophecy of Bawumiaphobia

“They bonded together not because of Akufo-Addo, but because of Bawumia.”
“The scare of Bawumia will one day devour the old order.”

These were not recent commentaries. They were warnings—penned by Nana Akwah a decade ago, when Bawumia was still seen as a fairytale. In those write-ups, the term Bawumiaphobia was born. Not as an insult, but as a diagnosis. It named the quiet dread that would one day rise to the surface, not because of what Bawumia had done, but because of what his presence threatened to undo.

Today, that prophecy has ripened.

Within the NPP, the fracture is visible. The Akan hegemony, long assumed to be the party’s immovable spine, has been shaken. Not by rebellion, but by resonance. Bawumia’s rapport with the younger generation, his digital fluency, his calm defiance of tribal arithmetic, has redrawn the map of loyalty.

Those who once held the center, like Prof. Frimpong-Boateng and others, now find themselves at the fringes, disturbed by a tide they cannot redirect. Alan Kyerematen and his cohort have stepped out entirely, unable to reconcile with the new rhythm.

And yet, the dread is not confined to the opposition.

Within the NDC, Bawumia remains a puzzle they cannot solve. He is not loud enough to vilify, nor tribal enough to isolate. His mystique remains a civic riddle. He is not a populist. He is not a firebrand. He is something else. Something they have not yet named.

This is the dread: that Bawumia’s very existence reframes the contest. That he is not merely a candidate, but a civic disruption. That the old tools, ethnic arithmetic, factional inheritance, caricature warfare, no longer work.

And so, the watcher’s prophecy stands fulfilled. Bawumiaphobia is no longer a whisper. It is a reckoning.