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Professor Smart Sarpong, a Senior Research Fellow of the Kumasi Technical University, has cautioned the National Democratic Congress (NDC) not to underestimate the influence of Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia going into the 2024 elections.

Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has been elected flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party, with the party hoping to set a record by breaking the eight-year governance cycle.

Dr. Bawumia beat Assin Central lawmaker Kennedy Agyapong and two other leaders in the ruling party to become its presidential candidate and will be competing with former President John Dramani Mahama of the opposition party in next year's general elections.

The NDC believes the choice of Bawumia to lead the NPP has made their work easy, but to Professor Smart Sarpong, they are making a big mistake.

"If the NDC takes it light, they will be taken by surprise in 2024," he said on Peace FM's morning show "Kokrokoo".

He explained that Dr. Bawumia has proven to be a formidable force, particularly in the northern sector of the country, stating that he shook the strongholds of the NDC in previous elections.

To him, the NDC should be guided by the things that Bawumia has done and could do to pull massive votes from the northern parts for the New Patriotic Party, and if they downplay it, they will pay dearly.

"The stronghold is now almost 50/50, and if I were the NDC, I would be threatened...The NDC should not take what has happened for granted . . . They must take it very seriously and find a strategy that will help, or else, on the surface of it, the five northern regions are going to turn to the NPP; that is the most probable event," he asserted, and warned the NDC, stressing that "it will be too early for them to underrate what Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia is bringing to the table. It will be very, very difficult and very dangerous for them to underestimate that thing".