Keypoints:
- Three reported actions challenge the accepted limit
- Article 66 does not mention consecutive terms
- The ruling could reshape future presidential contests
GHANA’S Supreme Court is confronting a question that once appeared settled: does the Constitution prevent a person from being elected president more than twice in a lifetime, or does the restriction apply only when the two terms are consecutive?
The Ghana presidential term limit dispute reaches far beyond President John Dramani Mahama and the 2028 election. It could redefine eligibility for Ghana’s highest office and determine how far judges may go when interpreting an entrenched constitutional safeguard.
Why the cases matter
Media reports identify three Article 66 actions involving Azubila E. Salam, Kenneth K.A. Kuranchie and Ganiwu Alhassan.
Africa Briefing had not independently examined court-stamped copies of all three filings at publication time. The actions should therefore be described cautiously as reported cases rather than treated as fully verified entries on the Supreme Court’s docket.
The most detailed account concerns Alhassan’s July 9, 2026 filing. The teacher from Kpandai in northern Ghana argues that Article 66 bars only two consecutive presidential terms and does not permanently disqualify someone whose periods in office were separated.
His action names the Attorney-General as defendant and asks the court to declare that preventing such a former president from contesting again would contravene the Constitution.
The political implications point directly towards Mahama, but none of the sources reviewed for this analysis links him to the filing or financing of the cases. He has also publicly said he will not contest the 2028 election.
For now, this is a constitutional challenge brought by private citizens—not an announced Mahama campaign for another term.
Sixteen words carry the argument
The dispute begins with a short sentence in Article 66(2): ‘A person shall not be elected to hold office as President of Ghana for more than two terms.’ The constitutional provision published by Ghana’s Judicial Service does not use the word ‘consecutive’.
Supporters of the legal actions say that omission leaves room for the Supreme Court to distinguish between two uninterrupted terms and two terms separated by another government.
Under their interpretation, the restriction is principally intended to prevent a sitting president from remaining in office continuously. Once the person leaves power and another president serves, they argue, the original sequence ends.
The competing interpretation is more straightforward: ‘more than two terms’ establishes a numerical maximum. It does not matter whether the terms follow each other or are separated by four, eight or 20 years.
Nothing in Article 66 states that a completed term disappears after a president leaves office. Critics of the cases therefore argue that the plaintiffs are asking the court to supply a qualification—‘consecutive’—that the constitutional text does not contain.
That is the legal and political heart of the dispute.
Mahama’s unusual path back to power
Mahama’s political history has forced the question into public view.
He first became president on July 24, 2012, following the death of President John Evans Atta Mills. As vice-president, Mahama assumed office for the remainder of Mills’ term and later won the December 2012 presidential election in his own right.
He lost the 2016 and 2020 elections before completing a political comeback in the 2024 election.
Mahama has consequently taken the presidential oath three times, but he has been elected to serve two full terms.
Article 60(7) is important to that distinction. It provides that a vice-president who serves more than half of an unexpired presidential term is subsequently eligible to serve only one full term.
Because Mahama completed less than half of Mills’ unexpired term, Article 60(7) did not restrict him to only one subsequent full presidential term.
His period from January 2013 to January 2017 was his first full elected term. The mandate that began in January 2025 is his second.
His return after eight years outside office created a situation the Fourth Republic had not previously been required to address: a sitting president serving a second elected term that did not immediately follow the first.
The democratic argument for a return
The plaintiffs’ strongest case may not lie in Article 66’s wording alone.
They are likely to ask the court to read the provision alongside democratic participation, voter choice, presidential succession and the Constitution’s wider purpose.
Their argument is that term limits were designed primarily to stop incumbents from using the advantages of office to entrench themselves. When a president accepts defeat, leaves office and another administration governs for years, the immediate danger of uninterrupted personal rule has passed.
A former president returning through a competitive election, they may contend, presents a different constitutional problem from an incumbent attempting to extend an unbroken stay in power.
There is also a voter-choice argument. Why should citizens be prevented from returning an experienced former leader to office after a democratic transfer if the Constitution does not expressly use the phrase ‘whether consecutive or otherwise’?
That reasoning has political appeal. Ghana’s courts have also traditionally warned against reading isolated constitutional sentences narrowly while ignoring the broader democratic design.
But purposive interpretation has boundaries. It may explain uncertain language and reconcile different provisions. It becomes more controversial when the proposed interpretation introduces a missing word and changes the practical structure of the presidency.
Article 60 offers an important clue
Opponents of the cases could argue that Article 60 reflects a cumulative approach to presidential service.
The succession clause does not treat previous time in office as irrelevant once a president leaves. Instead, it measures how much of an inherited term was served and uses that period to calculate how many full terms the successor may later complete.
Article 60 does not conclusively settle Article 66. It deals with succession to an unfinished presidency, not a former leader winning two elections separated by another administration.
It nevertheless weakens the idea that every return to power begins an entirely new constitutional cycle. Ghana’s Constitution appears concerned with the total period for which one person may occupy the presidency, rather than only whether those years were uninterrupted.
The careful conclusion is that Article 60 could support a lifetime-limit interpretation. It does not decide the case automatically.
Review committee rejected ambiguity
Ghana’s Constitution Review Committee considered the meaning of Article 66 before submitting its final recommendations in December 2025.
The committee, chaired by constitutional lawyer Professor H Kwasi Prempeh, proposed no change to Article 66(2).
It said it found ‘no ambiguity’ in the provision and saw no need to extend the two-term limitation on the number of times a person may be elected president.
The committee separately recommended increasing an individual presidential term from four to five years. Even under that proposal, a president would remain limited to two elected terms.
That recommendation formed part of Ghana’s wider debate over five-year presidential terms without removing the overall ceiling.
The report does not bind the Supreme Court. The judges must decide the actions on their merits and on the arguments formally placed before them.
Still, the committee’s conclusion carries weight. It came after a national constitutional review led by a recognised constitutional scholar and treated the two-term ceiling as a settled safeguard, not a drafting gap waiting for judicial repair.
Dr Kojo Asante, Director of Policy Engagement and Partnerships at CDD-Ghana, has also argued publicly that ‘two terms mean two terms’, warning against interpretations that could weaken the limit.
Jurisdiction may come before politics
The Supreme Court may first have to decide whether there is a genuine constitutional question to interpret.
Article 130 gives it exclusive original jurisdiction in matters concerning the interpretation or enforcement of the Constitution. But the mere fact that opposing political views exist does not automatically create an interpretive case.
The test developed in Republic v Special Tribunal; Ex parte Akosah identifies circumstances that may trigger the court’s interpretive jurisdiction. They include unclear wording, rival meanings advanced by litigants, conflict between constitutional provisions and disputes involving the operation of constitutional institutions.
A later Supreme Court judgment restated that test when considering whether litigants had raised a genuine constitutional issue.
The plaintiffs can argue that the rival lifetime and consecutive-term meanings are enough to place the cases within the court’s jurisdiction.
The Attorney-General could counter that Article 66 is already clear and that the requested declaration would add a qualification rather than interpret one. On that argument, the actions seek constitutional rewriting under the label of interpretation.
The court’s decision on jurisdiction could therefore shape whether the central term-limit question is examined at all.
Interpretation or amendment?
Article 66 is contained in Chapter Eight, which is listed among Ghana’s entrenched constitutional provisions.
The formal process for changing an entrenched provision is deliberately demanding. Under Article 290’s amendment procedure, a bill must first be referred to the Council of State for advice.
It must then be published in the Gazette and remain there for six months before introduction in Parliament. After its first reading, it must be approved in a nationwide referendum.
At least 40 percent of eligible voters must participate, and at least 75 percent of those voting must support the change. Parliament may then pass the bill before it is sent to the President for assent.
The procedure places entrenched rules beyond the reach of an ordinary parliamentary majority—even one as commanding as the NDC’s current numbers.
That makes the cases institutionally important.
A finding that Article 66 covers only consecutive terms could produce consequences resembling a formal constitutional amendment. It could allow a person who has won two presidential elections to leave office, wait through another administration and return to seek power again.
Critics argue that such reasoning could create the possibility of repeated returns unless the court identifies another lifetime ceiling.
That outcome is not inevitable. The Supreme Court could issue a narrow judgment tied to the circumstances before it or develop a separate limiting principle.
But the possibility explains why the line between interpretation and amendment cannot be dismissed as legal semantics. The Constitution reserves some changes for the Ghanaian people acting through a referendum.
Mahama’s promise cannot settle the principle
During an August 2025 visit to Singapore, Mahama said he would not be a candidate in the 2028 election.
He linked his absence from the next ballot to his ability to maintain fiscal discipline without the pressure to spend heavily for re-election.
The NDC has also publicly rejected changing the presidential ceiling. Africa Briefing reported that Ghana’s governing party opposed a term-limit amendment and presented the restriction as a safeguard against the instability seen elsewhere in the region.
Those positions matter politically. They do not settle the Constitution.
A Supreme Court interpretation will survive Mahama’s administration. It could be invoked decades later by a former president from the NDC, the New Patriotic Party or a political movement that does not yet exist.
The court must therefore decide the enduring principle rather than tailor its reasoning to one president’s promise.
West Africa offers warning signs
Presidential term limits carry particular weight in West Africa because attempts to amend, remove or reset them have repeatedly fuelled mistrust and political confrontation.
In Guinea, Alpha Condé changed the constitution before winning a disputed third term in 2020. His decision provoked protests and became part of the wider political crisis preceding his removal in a September 2021 military coup.
The constitutional change was not the sole cause of the takeover. The soldiers also cited corruption and poverty. But Condé’s disputed third-term victory deepened the loss of confidence in his government.
In Cote d’Ivoire, Alassane Ouattara argued that a 2016 constitution had reset his term count, allowing him to contest again in 2020. The opposition rejected that interpretation, and protests against his third-term candidacy turned deadly.
More recently, Chad moved to remove presidential term limits entirely, reinforcing concerns about the steady weakening of leadership rotation in parts of the continent.
Ghana’s circumstances are different. The government has not introduced a third-term amendment, and private citizens—not the executive—have brought the reported court actions.
Yet the regional experience shows why public confidence matters. A legally reasoned judgment may still prove politically damaging if large numbers of citizens believe it has created a route around a safeguard they understood to be absolute.
What happens next?
The Attorney-General’s response should reveal whether the state will challenge the cases on jurisdictional grounds, contest the consecutive-term argument on its merits or seek to have related actions heard together.
The court could find that no genuine interpretive dispute has been disclosed. It could hold that Article 66 imposes a lifetime maximum of two elected terms. Or it could accept that the restriction applies only to consecutive mandates.
On the constitutional material currently available, this analysis considers the lifetime-limit interpretation stronger.
That reading gives ordinary meaning to ‘more than two terms’, fits more naturally with the cumulative approach to presidential service and avoids producing through judicial interpretation a result resembling the amendment of an entrenched provision.
But a brief dismissal may not end the controversy. Ghana has entered territory the Constitution had never previously been required to navigate: a sitting president serving a second elected term after eight years outside office.
A full and carefully reasoned judgment could provide electoral certainty and answer a question that will otherwise return whenever a former president considers another political comeback.
It could also settle whether two terms truly means two—or whether Ghana’s presidential clock can start again.
