Ghana Chamber of Mines chief executive Dr Kenneth Ashigbey has warned that calls for President John Mahama to seek a third term could destabilise the country, insisting that the president is not interested in extending his time in office.
Speaking on Starr FM’s “Starr Chat” programme with Bola Ray, Dr Ashigbey said Ghana should learn from countries where attempts to pursue additional presidential terms had caused instability.
“Look at the things that have happened to countries that have tried to do this third term. Please, let’s stop it. Let’s keep this country going,” he said.
Dr Ashigbey said he believed President Mahama’s public comments showed that he had no intention of remaining in office beyond his current term.
“This is a president who does not have another term. Those of you talking about the third term, the president is not interested in that,” he said.
Although he said he had not spoken directly to President Mahama about the issue, Dr Ashigbey said he was confident that the president’s position was clear from statements he had made publicly.
“I’ve not had a personal conversation over the third term issue with President Mahama but I’m confident that’s the president’s position because of a lot of the things he’s said, that he’s not interested,” he said.
He added that Ghana’s Constitution did not support a third-term arrangement, saying “the law is clear” on the matter.
Dr Ashigbey also issued a strong warning to people campaigning for President Mahama to remain in power beyond his current mandate.
“God will deal with all of those people who want to destroy our country,” he said.
His comments came during a wider discussion about the government’s efforts to tackle illegal mining, widely known in Ghana as galamsey. Dr Ashigbey described President Mahama as Ghana’s “last hope” of bringing the problem to an end.
He said the president had only a limited period in which to address the environmental and other consequences of illegal mining, but maintained that President Mahama was the person best placed to make galamsey a thing of the past.
However, he rejected the suggestion that a third term would be necessary to complete that work.
Instead, Dr Ashigbey urged President Mahama to use the remaining time in his second term to deliver a lasting impact and accelerate action against illegal mining.
He said the president needed to act before he “becomes a lame duck”, referring to the period when the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) chooses a new leader to contest the 2028 elections.
The warning comes amid growing public discussion about whether President Mahama should seek another term, despite Dr Ashigbey’s assertion that the president himself has no such ambition. He said pursuing such an agenda would threaten Ghana’s stability rather than protect the country’s future.
