He told Accra-based Citi FM: “The facts of Ghana’s economic situation are found out in two ways. One, the annual budget funding presented to parliament [and] the annual growth rate, the annual debt numbers, the annual growth projections, the annual deficit, were known to everybody, government and opposition.

READ MORE: NDC lost because Nana Addo promised heaven to Ghanaians - Mahama

“We looked at those, the same numbers that the former administration was looking at. It was based on that same numbers that we said we can do XYZ.”

He said the NPP’s “promises or vision that we shared with the people of Ghana was not put out there without recourse to a knowledge of what the situation was. We knew because those numbers were available to everybody.”

According to him, “the status of Ghana was felt by Ghanaians in their pocket and in their lives. So it cannot be the cause that somebody did not know the situation. We all knew the situation.”

Former President Mahama had suggested that he lost the 2016 elections because President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo gave Ghanaians gargantuan promises.

He said he was honest to Ghanaians about the state of Ghana’s economy but his [Nana Addo] promises swayed votes in his favour.

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According to him, he had an "incumbency disadvantage".

He made the comments at the World Economic Forum in Durban, South Africa on Thursday.

"I knew what the economy could give the people and I told the people the truth that we need more hard work to be able to get out of where we are; my opponent promised heaven and you have the constraints of not being able to promise all the rosy things he was doing."

Mahama added that "The people made a choice and voted me out"...it is part of the learning process for all of us."