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The Chairman of the National Democratic Congress says the party will do away with self-delusion and self-contradiction when it returns to power in 2020.

Kofi Portuphy acknowledged the four-year rule of former President John Dramani Mahama was dogged by self-contradictions among appointees that affected the past government’s endeavors.

Speaking at the launch of the party’s academy, Ghana Institute of Social Democracy in Accra Thursday, he said the NDC will educate its supporters on the party’s ideas as a way of weeding out inconsistencies in the future.

“We will all be glad [that] when we return to power…we will not have contradictions which accompanied our endeavors in the last four years,” he said.

Some senior members of NDC have ascribed the failure of former government appointees to articulate the party’s message to Ghanaians, for Mr Mahama’s defeat in the 2016 presidential poll.

NDC General Secretary, Johnson Asiedu Nketia told Joy News in July, some former ministers offered inconsistent positions because they lacked ideological depth.

He was forthright that an ideological training for party functionaries and grassroots is key to building the NDC’s social democratic credentials.

The Ghana Institute of Social Democracy has been created to provide the needed training to NDC members, Mr Portuphy has said.

The NDC Chairman said the Institute will dish out training in areas such as Democracy and principles, political economy and grassroots mobilization to the party’s members.

When this is done, Mr Portuphy said the party will not have people who will push for programmes that will not favor the masses.

Adding his voice, Mr Asiedu Nketia said the school has become necessary because the Ghanaian electorate has proven more sophisticated and discerning to be deceived.

"Winning the minds and heart [of the electorate] goes beyond the mundane political rhetoric [and] as a party [the NDC] is challenged to equipped our activists with the right working tools which are the knowledge on the philosophical underpinnings of the party," he said.

The two-time architect of the NDC's electoral victories in 2008 and 2012 said the future of Ghana's democracy lies in the conscious and concerted effort to shift politics away from personalities, ethnicity and religious identity towards ideas and good programmes.

"Our hope is that as our democracy matures, political parties in Ghana will be able to offer the electorate clear, distinct and implementable policy choices," he added.