New Patriotic Party (NPP) 2024 running mate, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh (NAPO), has admitted that the party’s failure to listen adequately to Ghanaians was the primary reason for the breakdown of trust that led to its devastating defeat in the December 2024 general elections.
Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express on Tuesday, November 18, 2025, the former Energy and Education Minister said months of reflection have made one truth painfully clear: the Akufo-Addo government assumed too much and listened too little.
“One thing I’ve concluded in the last 10 months is that there was a broken trust between citizens and government. The trust that was broken hurt so much that we saw the results so broken,” Dr Opoku Prempeh stated.
When asked directly what caused the rupture, he was candid: “We didn’t listen enough; we assumed a lot of things we shouldn’t have assumed.”
Dr Prempeh acknowledged that the global economic and health crises exacerbated the situation, citing unprecedented shocks such as the cost of shipping a container from China rising from US$1,200 to US$14,000 and the massive loss of life during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“People had died in their droves that had never been seen before, without a military crisis or World War,” he noted, adding that governments worldwide were swept away by similar anti-incumbency waves, with only autocratic regimes largely surviving.
Despite the difficult external environment, the former Minister insisted that the NPP’s biggest misstep was internal.