Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama will be sworn into office today following last month’s polls in a ceremony to be boycotted by the Opposition, which has claimed fraud and challenged the results in court.

The 54-year-old Mahama, who initially became head of state after the death of his predecessor John Atta Mills in July, won December 7 elections with 50.7 per cent of the vote compared to the main Opposition candidate Nana Akufo-Addo’s 47.7 per cent.

Observer groups hailed the polls as another successful election in the country viewed as a stable democracy in turbulent West Africa, but Akufo-Addo’s party has alleged the vote was stolen.

The stakes were especially high in the election, with the newly elected president in charge of a growing stream of oil revenue.

West Africa’s second-largest economy and a long-time producer of gold and cocoa, Ghana started pumping oil in 2010, and now produces 105,000 barrels per day.

With oil flowing and Ghana’s economy growing at a rate of 14.3 per cent in 2011, how Mahama invests the country’s boom money will be closely watched.

While it is considered a lower middle-income country by the World Bank, Ghana continues to struggle with infrastructure development. Rural areas are plagued with potholed roads and most people rely on fresh water sold in sachets.

Though high-rise malls and apartments are being constructed across the capital Accra, Isaac Owusu-Mensah, a lecture at the University of Ghana, says Mahama will be judged on how much he improves the lives of Ghanaians in the far-flung reaches of the country.

“The primary issue that will guide everybody in the run-up to the next four years is how the economy is being managed,” Owusu-Mensah said. “If they don’t utilise (the oil revenue) quite well, there’s going to be a big problem.”

During the campaign, Akufo-Addo had proposed using revenue from oil to pay for free high school, a proposal Mahama and his National Democratic Congress said would be too costly. Besides managing the increasing revenue, Mahama must also be mindful of the court challenge to his election.

Akufo-Addo, who lost to Mills by less than one percentage point in 2008, has yet to concede defeat.

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