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President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has spoken about the pain of losing an election while speaking at a high-level meeting of lawmakers from across the ECOWAS sub-region.

Akufo-Addo, however, stressed that by the very nature of competitive democratic elections, there was bound to be a winner and a loser.

He advised that the pain of losing an election should, however, not induce a sense of suspicion of having been cheated.

“It is painful enough to lose an election. I can testify to that. There will always be winners and losers in an election.”

He continued that, "the pain (of losing) should not come with a suspicion of having been cheated.”

President Akufo-Addo advanced that “the winner should be warmly congratulated and support extended to enable our many problems to be tackled.”

Then-candidate Akufo-Addo lost two successive presidential elections - to John Evans Atta Mills in 2008 and John Dramani Mahama in 2012. He subsequently won two successive victories in 2016 and 2020 beating John Dramani Mahama.

He spoke on Wednesday, 13th October 2021, at the ECOWAS High-Level Regional Parliamentary Seminar held in Winneba in the Central Region.

It was on the theme “Two Decades of Democratic Elections in ECOWAS Member States: Achievements, Challenges and the Way Forward.”

"I applauded the ECOWAS Parliament for the theme of this seminar, the relevance of which is evident in the light of recent happenings in the ECOWAS Community, especially in Guinea and Mali.

"By choosing to address this topic at this time, ECOWAS’s Parliament has demonstrated vision, courage, and the spirit to search for solutions aimed at consolidating the democratic growth of the Region, and help realise the dreams and aspirations of the peoples of the Community for a democratic future," he wrote in a Facebook post.