Ghana’s main opposition party has nominated former President John Mahama to challenge incumbent Nana Akufo-Addo in 2020 election, a party official said on Wednesday,

It will be the third consecutive poll in which the two will face off.

Mr Akufo-Addo, however unseated Mr Mahama in a 2016 election, capitalising on an economy that was slowing due to falling prices for gold, oil and cocoa exports.

Mr Mahama, who succeeded his deceased predecessor in 2012 and defeated Akufo-Addo in an election later that year, accepted defeat immediately in 2016, maintaining Ghana’s record of fiercely contested but peaceful elections.

“The National Democratic Congress’s (NDC) ticket designated Mahama its candidate for the December 2020 vote at a party congress over the weekend,’’ its director of elections, Elvis Ankrah, told Reuters.

Mr Akufo-Addo, who is expected to stand for re-election as the candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), campaigned in 2016 on promises to cut deficits following overspending by Mr Mahama’s government that blew a 1.6 billion dollars hole in the budget.

He has presided over an economic recovery, with growth of 6.7 per cent in the first three quarters of 2018.

Ghana is the world’s second-largest cocoa producer, Africa’s number two gold producer and it began pumping oil off its coast in 2010.

(Reuters/NAN)