Ghana’s Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia has accepted defeat in Saturday’s election and congratulated the opposition candidate, former President John Mahama, on his victory.
“The people have voted for change,” said Bawumia.
The elections come amid the country’s worst economic crisis in a generation, which saw the cost of basic goods shoot up, while young people struggled to get jobs and the country was unable to repay its debts.
Despite Bawumia’s concession, no official results have been declared.
The Electoral Commission (EC) said results had been delayed because supporters of the two main parties were impeding the process and it had asked the police to clear the collation centres.
Mahama’s supporters have taken to the streets around the country to celebrate, cheering, waving flags, blowing horns and spinning motorbikes.
“I’m so excited for this victory,” Salifu Abdul-Fatawu told the BBC in the central city of Kumasi.
He said he hoped it would mean that he and his sibling would get jobs, while the price of food and fuel would come down.
Even NPP supporter Nana accepted that “my party is NPP, but whatever they did was not good.
“The system was so bad in an election year and so most people were not happy.”
Although the election has generally been peaceful, two people were shot dead on Saturday in separate incidents, while the electoral commission office in the northern town of Damongo has been destroyed, allegedly by NDC supporters angry at the delays in announcing the results.
Ghanaians had expected the first results to be announced within hours of the polls closing, however the head of the Electoral Commission has asked for patience, noting that it has 72 days to declare the results.
Warehouses have also been looted in both Damongo, and Tamale, also in the north.
Bawumia said he was basing his concession on internal tallies from the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP).
He said these showed Mahama had won “decisively”, while the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) had also won the parliamentary election.
Mahama confirmed that Bawumia had called to congratulate him on his “emphatic victory”.
The NDC earlier said that its internal results showed Mahama had won 56% of the vote against 41% for Bawumia.
The vice-president said he was accepting defeat before the official announcement of the results “to avoid further tension and preserve the peace of our country”.
The US embassy in the capital, Accra, has congratulated Ghana on “a successful election”.
President Nana Akufo-Addo is stepping down after reaching the official limit of two terms in office.
Mahama, 65, previously led Ghana from 2012 until 2017, when he was replaced by Akufo-Addo. Mahama also lost the 2020 election so this victory represents a stunning comeback.
Since the return of multi-party politics to Ghana in 1992, the NDC and the NPP have alternated in power.
No party has ever won more than two consecutive terms in power – a trend that looks set to continue.
Mahama’s previous time in office was marred by an ailing economy, frequent power-cuts and corruption scandals.
However, Ghanaians hope it will be different this time round.
During the campaign, Mahama promised to transform Ghana into a “24-hour economy”.
In Tamale, NDC supporter Gajia One told the BBC: “We handed over to them [NPP] and thought they could manage the country well, but they have failed, and we take over again.”
“John Mahama is the right man to rule this country. We are fed up.”
The new president will be sworn in on 7 January 2025.