Kojo Fosu Boadu’s election as First National Vice Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has revived a legal question his party has not publicly answered: does his criminal record bar him from its national executive?
Boadu, known as Kojo Bamba, topped 13 candidates with 3,116 votes at the party’s conference in Kumasi on 3 October 2026. Critics say he should never have been cleared to contest. The answer matters beyond the NPP, because Ghana’s Constitution ties eligibility for party leadership to eligibility for Parliament.
The record, correctly stated
Bamba has two convictions, both from 2017 and both arising from the conduct of Delta Force, the pro-NPP vigilante group he led in the Ashanti Region.
In March 2017, Delta Force members attacked George Agyei, newly appointed as Ashanti Regional Security Coordinator, in protest at his appointment. When Bamba and 12 others were in court over the attack, fellow members stormed the building and freed them. The 13 later pleaded guilty at Kumasi Circuit Court 4 to escaping from lawful custody and were fined GH¢2,400 each, the equivalent of 200 penalty units.
On 19 October 2017, the same 13 pleaded guilty to a substituted misdemeanour charge of conspiracy to commit a crime by rioting. Each was fined GH¢1,800, with 12 months in jail in default.
Some reports now describe convictions for assault on a public officer and causing unlawful damage. Contemporary court reports do not support that. The pleas recorded at the time were to escape from custody and to conspiracy to riot.
What the law says
Article 55(8) of the 1992 Constitution bars a political party from having as a leader or executive member anyone who is not qualified to be elected to Parliament.
Article 94(2)(c) sets out who is not qualified. It covers people convicted of high crime, treason, offences involving state security, fraud, dishonesty or moral turpitude; offences punishable by death or at least 10 years in prison; and offences connected with elections. The NPP’s own disqualification clause, as quoted in media reports, follows the same grounds and lifts the bar on the most serious offences only after 10 years have passed since the sentence was served, or with a full pardon.
How the record measures up
Neither of Bamba’s convictions involved elections, treason or state security. Neither, on its face, involved fraud or dishonesty.
The 10-year point, which some critics have raised because his convictions date from 2017, is often misread. The clause applies to offences punishable by at least 10 years in prison, so the test is the maximum penalty the law allows for the offence, not how long ago the conviction came. The rioting count was a misdemeanour, and both cases ended in fines.
That leaves moral turpitude, a phrase the Constitution does not define. Whether rioting, or escaping custody, meets that standard is a question for the courts. No Ghanaian court has ruled on it in Bamba’s case.
The arguments
The Member of Parliament for Akwatia, speaking on Metro TV’s Good Morning Ghana, said he was shocked that the NPP had elected an ex-convict and argued that the party’s eligibility rules should have been applied before Bamba was cleared to contest. The discussion turned contentious when panellists disputed whether the conviction actually amounted to a disqualification.
NPP communications team member Kwesi Botchwey Jr has said criticism of Bamba’s election shows the National Democratic Congress (NDC) is worried about the party’s new leadership ahead of 2028.
The fines themselves were controversial at the time. The Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) said in 2017 that the lenient penalties could foster impunity. Bamba later announced, as a youth wing officer, that Delta Force had been disbanded, and Parliament outlawed party vigilante groups in 2019.
The NPP had already accepted him into office once. In October 2018, a year after the second fine, the party appointed him Deputy National Director of Operations of its youth wing.
