#SONA2025: Kojo Oppong Nkrumah’s claim on Mahama’s 2013 SONA speech misleading

On March 4, 2025, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, MP for Ofoase Ayirebi Constituency, read an extract of a speech on the floor of parliament while criticising President Mahama for lamenting in his 2025 State of the Nation Address (SONA).

“Mr Speaker, we inherited an economy that was running a high deficit, with increasing inflation and interest rates. It was also characterized by a rapidly depreciating currency. This unstable macro environment created an unfavourable investment environment for both indigenous and foreign capital,” Mr Oppong Nkrumah said, reading from a mobile gadget during the parliamentary debate on the 2025 SONA.

After reading, the former Works and Housing Minister asked the majority caucus if they heard those words in the SONA President Mahama delivered. Some majority members responded in the affirmative. However, Mr Oppong Nkrumah revealed that the extract was from the 2013 SONA by President Mahama, leaving some of the members of the majority confused.

“You see, this was not in the [2025] State of the Nation Address. You have just exposed yourselves. This was President John Dramani Mahama in 2013. This was President John Dramani Mahama in 2013, lamenting about the economy he inherited from the former president,” Kojo Oppong Nkrumah said, amidst cheers from the Minority caucus.

“You know who the former president is? Prof John Evans Atta Mills. You can check the Hansard. There’s a similarity between what the president did in 2013 and what he did here in the Chamber of parliament in 2025. You know what the similarity is? Lamentations. Mr. Speaker, there’s a phenomenon of new heads of states spending a lot of time lambasting, berating, demonizing their predecessor,” he added.

Fact-check Ghana has verified Kojo Oppong Nkrumah’s claim, which suggested that the extract he read was from Mr Mahama’s 2013 SONA. Below are the facts.

When Fact-Check Ghana transcribed and Google searched the speech, the team confirmed that the excerpt Mr Oppong Nkrumah read was not part of John Mahama’s 2013 State of the Nation Address (SONA). While Mahama did deliver the quoted statements in a previous SONA, they were not made in 2013, the year Mr Mahama assumed office as Ghana’s newly elected president.

Rather, Mr Mahama delivered those lines during his final State of the Nation Address (SONA) on January 5, 2017, in the aftermath of the December 2016 elections (Read the 2017 SONA speech here) . By then, Mr Mahama had completed his four-year term as elected president (2013–2017), having initially assumed the presidency in July 2012 after the death of his predecessor, Prof. John Atta Mills, under whom he served as vice president (2009–2012).

In his 2017 SONA, Mahama highlighted policy achievements under his administration and drew comparisons between his National Democratic Congress (NDC) government and the previous New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration (2001–2009).

In conclusion, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah’s claim that the excerpt of the speech he read was delivered by John Mahama in 2013, when he was newly elected as president, is misleading.