NPP to Identify Parliamentary Candidates With Strong Election Prospects – Bawumia

New Patriotic Party (NPP) flagbearer Dr Mahamudu Bawumia says the party has begun a nationwide search for parliamentary candidates it considers capable of winning seats in the 2028 general elections.

The exercise, which will cover constituencies across the country, is intended to complement the party’s parliamentary primaries by identifying individuals with strong prospects of winning in the general election.

Dr Bawumia disclosed this while speaking to some NPP executives on Sunday, October 4, following the party’s recent national executive elections.

He said the NPP also plans to organise its parliamentary primaries as soon as possible to bring the party’s internal elections to an end.

According to him, the candidate selection process must be transparent and should not allow financial strength to become the determining factor in deciding who becomes a parliamentary candidate.

“We want to make the process as transparent as possible. On the parliamentary candidate side, what we are trying to do is to do candidate selection across all the constituencies because some people can win parliamentary primaries. After all, they have money, but they cannot win the election,” he said.

Dr Bawumia cautioned that winning a party primary does not necessarily translate into victory in the subsequent general election.

“If you leave it to them to win the primary, but you’ve lost the seat ab initio,” he said.

He disclosed that the party intends to commission multiple independent assessments of prospective candidates and compare the findings before making decisions.

“The work on the candidate search is going on, and we’re going to have more than one candidate search from independent sources, and we’ll compare what they are saying,” he said.

Dr Bawumia explained that where the assessments identify an individual considered capable of winning a particular constituency, the party would approach the person and encourage them to participate in the contest.

“If we find out that this is the person who can win, as we see, we’ll persuade that person to come on board,” he added.