Rap star Edem has asked the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) to improve on its social media engagement.

He spoke to Nana Romeo on Accra 100.5 FM’s Ayekoo Ayekoo midmorning show, recalling the campaign season of 2024 when he had people thinking he had ventured into politics and was vying for a leadership position.

“No, it wasn’t a game. It was a social experiment. So we wanted to see how people think, right?” the singer-songwriter explained.

He said he and his team were “doing a photo shoot” and spontaneously decided to take a picture that was fit for “an MP poster”.

He noted there was a flaw in the viral poster which surprisingly went unnoticed.

“The flaw is that when you’re going for MP and you really take pictures, you don’t wear dark glasses. The branding people will [always] tell you your eyes have to show. I was wearing dark glasses, right? That was the first flaw but people didn’t notice. And I wasn’t even in town when the poster came out. I think I was going to Memphis,” Edem pointed out.

He said the results from the experiment blew his mind “because when the first poster came out, every name you can think about on that side who is somebody of power reached out to me”.

The first poster had NDC colours, Edem’s image and official name, with the inscription: “Big announcement soon. Fully active.”

“Bro, if you want to come to us, we’ll support you. You have what it takes,” Edem recalled some of the remarks from NDC folks.

While this was going on, he said “everybody” on the New Patriotic Party (NPP) side “started jabbing me, and I’m talking Whatsapp.

“They asked me, ‘What decision are you taking? Why are you doing this? Are you sure this is what you want to do?”

When he shared his image on NPP colours, he observed NDC folks started attacking him, while NPP folks praised him.

He said, from the incident, he learned, “[In politics] you have to decide whose ideologies you believe in and support the person. The only reason the other side is not happy is that you’re a person of value and they wish you were on their side.

“Two, I realised from the experiment that the NPP poster had more engagement than the NDC poster. I don’t know [why]. I don’t have the analytics. This one unless we ask… Maybe the momentum built up from day-one of the first poster [and] maybe dropped a little [later].”

The third observation, he recounted was receiving calls from “a lot of people” asking him to “take up a leadership position” because of “the way your brand is”. The musician and entrepreneur said these people offered “advice” and “direction” in case he ever needed it.

Another thing was, he added, the poster “made some of my friends my enemies and they only told me later when they realised I wasn’t running.

“Somebody who was standing as an MP messaged me. When I returned to Ghana he told me I nearly killed him and that was why he wasn’t picking my calls because I thought you were coming to compete in my constituency.”

He noted other artistes leveraging the buzz at the time, including Pappy and Frank Naro.

He lightheartedly highlighted he suffered abuse from those who had initially praised him and vice versa when the two posters we released on social media a day apart.

“The NPP poster got more engagement, that is day-two. So if NDC is day-one and it didn’t get more engagement, maybe NDC my recommendation from this committee is that you guys should strengthen your online game,” the decorated Hiphop/Hiplife artiste said.

Ghana went to the polls on December 7, 2024. On December 9, the EC Chair Jean Mensa declared John Mahama of the main opposition NDC the winner of the presidential race. On December 5, during the NDC's final rally in Madina, Edem performed to the large crowd.