The chants that ‘Odeneho antumi Wontumi’ have not been for anything because when it mattered most, the outspoken, popular, and daring Ashanti Regional Chairman of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) lived up to his brags.
Ahead of his re-election bid for the slot, Chairman Wontumi (real name ‘Bernard Antwi Boasiako’) was given a thin line of confidence and hope for his chances, much so that even one of Ghana’s most celebrated pollsters, Ben Ephson, also waded into it with his ‘authoritative’ prediction.
Ben Ephson has in the past successfully predicted the outcomes of some elections – especially parliamentary, but he has also gotten many others wrong.
“I am not God…I am a servant of God that is what people forget. I do research. If people say the obvious then they are naive. I could have listed hundred constituencies which were obvious,” he said of one of his predictions in 2020, reports primenews.com.gh.
And whether it was God who was not on his side this time, or his research that was misleading, the pollster once again wrongly predicted the results of a crucial election: the NPP Ashanti regional chairmanship race.
NPP regional elections held:
Delegates of the NPP across the country gathered in their various regions from Friday, May 27, 2022, through Sunday, May 29, 2022, to elect new executives for the party at the regional levels.
With stakes very high in some particular regions, the regional delegates conference to elect new executives saw a number of shocks as well as victories with the way the results went.
In the Bono East region, for instance, the incumbent regional chairman, Thomas Adu-Appiah, lost his seat to Ibrahim Baba Bukari.
Thomas, who was seeking re-election, garnered only 78 votes while his contender – the one who eventually won, polled a total of 151 votes.
What did Ben Ephson say about Chairman Wontumi’s chances in the elections?
About a week before the elections began, pollster, Ben Ephson, predicted that the incumbent Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Ashanti Region, Bernard Antwi Boasiako (Chairman Wontumi), would lose.
Giving his reasons for such a prediction, the pollster said this is due to the challenges the party is facing as things are not going on well within the party.
“I think Wontumi will lose. After the first term, things were not going well within the party. We are doing some work there because I am writing a book, my 7th book on elections, part of it is towards the NPP’s flagbearership.
“The party being thrown out of rented premise was the last straw, they felt very embarrassed. The NDC in the Ashanti region has been teasing them that Wontumi says he has so many thousands of cedis and you have not been able to even build. I will be very surprised if Wontumi wins,” he explained.
Wontumi damns predictions, declares his confidence to win:
Making it abundantly clear that he has served the party well, Chairman Wontumi watered down all other predictions about his chances of winning the elections, declaring without a shred of doubt that he will win the election.
“Since 1992 to 2016 the elections have been different or every 8 years, elections change so in 2016 it was about 2.2million people who voted in Ashanti region
“We have increased the votes in Ashanti region since I became the chairman by God’s grace. We have another strategy to break the 8,” he told journalists after his vetting in Kumasi on Thursday, May 19, 2022.
While it is a fact that Ben Ephson has ever eaten humble pie and admitted to having gotten a prediction wrong, like he did in 2016 after he predicted a one-touch victory for then incumbent, John Dramani Mahama, he is yet to publicly comment on this latest prediction on the election of Chairman Wontumi.
