Tragedy has a way of reminding a nation of its deepest bonds. Recently, Ghana has been drawn into collective mourning several times. On July 26, the country lost Daddy Lumba, the beloved highlife icon whose music carried the rhythms of the country. Less than two weeks later, a military helicopter carrying senior government officials to a programme against illegal mining crashed in the Ashanti Region, killing all on board. Only days before that, sixteen schoolchildren from Obogu, Asante Akyem, had perished in a horrific head-on collision with a truck on their way home from an event.
Each time, grief swept across political divides. Flags lowered, and the Ghanaian public found itself, momentarily, bound together not as supporters of one party or the other. The country did not feel like NPP and NDC, majority and minority, or members of an ethnic group. It felt like a one Ghana facing the enormity of its loss. As the funerals fade, however, politics resumes its old rhythm. The spoils and the combative trench warfare between green and blue return.
What if Ghana could harness the sense of unity born from grief and translate it into effective governance? What if the same shared fate that binds us in mourning could be institutionalised into a Government of National Unity? A time-bound, five-year compact to address the crises too urgent for partisan gridlock? This will not be a permanent suspension of democracy; it could be its revival.
The Cost of Divisive Politics
Ghana’s Fourth Republic has endured three decades. Nevertheless, it has not shed the zero-sum instincts of a winner-takes-all democracy. Every election resets the board. Ministers, boards, contractors, and even security commands change hands. Projects associated with one administration are often abandoned by the next. This constant churn undermines continuity and leaves the critical national challenges hostage to the electoral cycle.
Road carnage is one. In the first half of 2025 alone, nearly 1,400 Ghanaians died in road accidents. This is more than seven lives a day. The Asante Akyem disaster that killed sixteen schoolchildren was shocking. Yet it was routine. Road crashes consistently rank among Ghana’s leading causes of death. Successive governments treat road safety not as a national emergency but as a political afterthought.
Illegal mining, or galamsey, is another. For decades, small-scale mining has been both a lifeline and a curse. Recently, it has threatened Ghana’s water resources, eroding farmlands, and reduced cocoa exports. Each government declares war on galamsey, yet each war fizzles in the face of political patronage and complicity, even as the menace sinks the country. Financiers are shielded by political connections while enforcement collapses along partisan lines. The ministers who died in the helicopter crash were travelling to launch yet another programme against illegal mining—an eerie symbol of how fragile and frustrated national efforts have been.
Then there is the decades-old conflict in Bawku. For decades, this ancient town has been riven by a chieftaincy conflict that has claimed hundreds of lives. Troops are deployed, curfews imposed. However, killings continue. Communities view interventions through a partisan lens, accusing one side or the other of bias. What should be a national security priority has been reduced to another partisan football. Civilians are left to bear the brunt and to bury their dead without closure.
The divisiveness extends beyond these crises into costly political dishonesty. For instance, there is enough evidence to accept that the Mahama-led NDC government initiated measures to resolve the energy crisis of dumsor before leaving office on January 6, 2017. Yet the incoming NPP administration refused to acknowledge it. Having campaigned on the claim that the NDC’s incompetence created the crisis and was doing nothing about it, admitting the truth would have forced them to credit their rivals—the first taboo in the rule book of vindictive politics. Political dishonesty prevailed over national honesty.
In 2025, the tables turned. This time, the outgoing NPP government implemented some measures to stabilise the collapsing cedi. However, the cedi’s rebound coincided with the NDC’s assumption of office in January, and the NDC took all the credit to the chagrin of NPP leaders. Once again, dishonesty triumphed and continuity succumbed to rivalry.
The outcome is the oxymoron of a Ghana that is praised for its democratic credentials, yet recorded 14 deaths in the last two elections.
These examples illustrate the true cost of divisive politics. It is not just about wasted resources. It is about lives lost on the roads, poisoned rivers, unresolved conflicts, and dishonest narratives that leave citizens trapped in cycles of failure.
Imported Adversarialism
If grief reveals the truth, why does everyday politics conceal it? Why do Ghanaians seem only capable of unity at funerals, while their political life remains poisoned by rivalry? The answer is that the adversarial system under which Ghana governs itself may not be truly Ghanaian.
The Westminster-style winner-takes-all framework was designed for a different society and imposed during decolonisation. Not because it reflected Ghana’s traditions but because it reproduced colonial preferences. In Ghana’s indigenous traditions of governance—from the deliberations of the Ashanti Asanteman Council to the consensus practices of Ga, Ewe, Dagomba, and countless other groups—the essence of politics was not annihilation but compromise.
Chiefs and councils reached decisions after listening, consulting, and negotiating until consensus emerged. The point was not to obliterate opposition but to accommodate it. Colonialism largely disrupted this fabric. The consequence is the toxicity of politics.
Imported adversarialism has trained Ghanaians to think that the essence of politics is to win office, monopolise resources, and punish rivals. It has turned governance into a spoils system that rewards partisan loyalty rather than communal service. It has fragmented the nation’s solidarity into ethnicised constituencies. It has taught ordinary citizens to accept that only in death can leaders and people stand together. This is not authentic Ghanaian politics. It is a mimicry that shames us into abandoning our humanity.
What About A Five-Year Compact for Unity?
A Government of National Unity is not a new invention. Kenya and Zimbabwe experimented with them after contested elections. South Africa used one to manage the transition from apartheid. In Ghana itself, General Acheampong floated a “Union Government” in 1978, though his proposal collapsed under suspicion of dictatorship. More recently, politicians such as Alan Kyerematen, civil society figures, and ordinary citizens frustrated by NPP-NDC trench warfare have called for inclusive governance.
The difference today is that a GNU need not mean one-party rule or indefinite suspension of competition. It can be explicitly time-bound, say five years, with elections scheduled as normal at the end. It can be designed to keep Parliament alive, parties intact, and oversight strong. Its mandate would not be to end politics. It’d be to refocus it on three or four urgent priorities: road safety, environmental restoration, peace in Bawku, and perhaps one or two flagship development reforms. Restoring Ghana’s railway system and giving it a nationwide network could be one example. Another could be establishing a true welfare state.
A five-year horizon matters. Two years is too short to build infrastructure, restructure enforcement, or mediate intractable conflicts. Five years, however, is long enough to test whether cooperation can break deadlocks, without asking citizens to suspend their democratic rights indefinitely.
What a Ghanaian GNU Could Look Like
Imagine a cabinet divided proportionally between the major parties, with space reserved for technocrats and civil society leaders. Imagine a constitutional instrument binding the cabinet to publish all appointments and procurement processes in the open. Imagine an independent oversight council, composed of chiefs, religious leaders, and civil society, mandated to audit progress and report quarterly to Parliament.
Such a GNU could commit itself to specific, measurable goals. On road safety: reduce the death toll by a third within five years through a package of engineering, enforcement, and emergency reforms. On galamsey: restore all of Ghana’s destroyed major rivers to drinkable condition, and prosecute high-level financiers without fear or favour. On Bawku: broker a durable settlement, anchored in community dialogue and backed by impartial security guarantees. These are things that Ghana’s duopoly has failed to deliver in 30 years of alternating rule. A unity government could be the arrangement to finally move the needle.
Anticipating Resistance
Of course, there will be opposition. Party elites in government live off spoils, and a GNU threatens to dilute their monopoly. Opposition leaders will fear absorption; ordinary citizens may recall Acheampong’s UNIGOV and worry about creeping authoritarianism. However, safeguards can help. Spoils can be curbed through transparent appointments and procurement. Clear portfolio allocations can preserve party brands. And a sunset clause to guarantee parties a return to full electoral competition in five years. These can reassure citizens that democracy is not being abandoned but that governance must focus on the people, not political parties.
Turning Grief into Resolve
Why push for unity now? Because recent bouts of national grief have stripped away illusion. The Obogu parents who buried their children did so as Ghanaians first. The soldiers who lifted the caskets from the helicopter wreckage saluted as patriots, not as party members. The fans who mourned Daddy Lumba went to vigils as one people. These moments of collective mourning reveal to us who we are when stripped of division. We are a people who know, at our core, that we rise and fall together.
Ghana should not need mass funerals to rediscover its common ground. By institutionalising unity through a five-year Government of National Unity, the country can transform tragedy into resolve. It can give grief a legacy other than despair. It can fulfil the promise that those we have lost did not die in vain. That their deaths mark the beginning of a more united, more effective Ghana.
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Dr Muhammad Dan Suleiman is the founding director of the Centre for Alternative Politics & Security West Africa (www.caps-wa.org). He is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Saudi Arabia, and a research fellow at the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry at Curtin University, Australia. Email: [email protected]
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