Deputy General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mustapha Gbande, has strongly criticised Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the 2024 presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), for conceding defeat ahead of the official declaration of the general election results.

Dr. Bawumia publicly congratulated then-NDC flagbearer, now President John Dramani Mahama, before the Electoral Commission (EC) formally announced the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.

Appearing on Face to Face on Channel One TV with Umaru Sanda Amadu on Tuesday, July 8, Gbande described Bawumia’s action as “populist and dangerous,” arguing that it was premature and undermined the authority of the EC.

“The day of declaration, right from the time Dr Bawumia made that pre-conceived defeat, needless because if you’ve lost an election, you wait for the Electoral Commission to declare, he made himself the Electoral Commission to come and declare a defeat for himself,” he said.

Gbande stressed that a true concession should only come after official results are announced.

“Concession is not when you come and pronounce that you have been defeated. A concession is when a figure is declared, you disagree, but you concede,” he clarified.

He dismissed suggestions that Bawumia’s move helped preserve national peace, insisting the country was already calm and stable.

“They said because they believed that without him conceding the country was to be chaotic. Nothing was going to happen in the country. And the temperature was absolutely normal. Everybody was happy that the NPP had lost,” he remarked.

Gbande argued that the concession was politically calculated and aimed at scoring public sympathy rather than respecting due process.

“I think that it [conceding] was dangerous, because he created an impression that he had lost. By law, he was not the one to declare an election. It’s sloganeering and populist when you rush to do what you have not been sanctioned to do. Or what you needed not to have done and want to receive praise for it. The EC should be allowed to do its work,” he stated.

Dr. Bawumia’s early concession received mixed reactions at the time, with some praising it as a statesmanlike gesture, while others, like Gbande, viewed it as an overreach that undermined institutional processes.