John Mahama took the oath of office as Ghana’s new president at a ceremony attended by world leaders.
Mahama was sworn in at Black Star Square in Accra, the Ghanaian capital on Tuesday.
The new president took over from Nana Akufo-Ado who succeeded him in 2017. Before Mahama’s swearing-in, Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang was inaugurated as the country’s first female vice president.
The Chief Justice of Ghana Gertrude Torkornoo administered the oath of office at the event.
“Today should mark the opportunity to reset our country,” the 66-year-old new president, wearing the West African country’s national dress, told a jubilant crowd decked in the green, red, black, and white hues of his National Democratic Congress (NDC) party.
Energy radiated from Accra’s Black Star Square, as a sea of elate faces waved Ghanaian and NDC flags, chanted, and broke into spontaneous dance to the beat of drums and the blaring honk of vuvuzelas.
Among those present were Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Senegal’s Bassirou Diomaye Faye, Burkina Faso’s leader Ibrahim Traore, Kenyan President William Ruto, President Felix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Gabon’s Brice Oligui Nguema.
Presidents Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone and Mamadi Doumbouya of Guinea as well as former leaders and officials also attended the inauguration.
The duo won the election held in December with Mahama returning to the post he left seven years ago with a mission to revive Ghana’s ailing economy.
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) candidate polled 50 per cent of the votes to beat the then-vice president Mahamudu Bawumia of the ruling party.