Bawumia uncovers 76,000 Togolese in Ghana's voter roll

Source: adomonline.com - New Patriotic Party's (NPP) 2016 Vice Presidential candidate, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has revealed that a team commissioned by the party to go into Ghana’s voter register has identified 76,286 persons with the same data in both Ghana and Togo’s voter register.

Dr. Bawumia, speaking at a widely publicized press conference in Accra on Tuesday, said the party’s team identified this suspected anomaly after comparing Ghana’s register with that of Togo.

These persons, he said, were mostly found in the Volta region with Ketu South cited as one of the constituencies where the anomalies are abound.

What made the team suspicious, he said, was the fact that pictures that accompanied the names in Ghana’s album were never taken from a ‘live environment’ but instead were scanned photographs thus suggesting the holders of the card were never present at the registration centres to register.

“What is damming is that many of the pictures were not taken from a live environment but rather scanned… we have examples from Ketu South where entire pictures were scanned and you will see staple marks depicting they were attached to documents…,” he said.

Dr. Bawumia’s presentation follows several calls from the rank and file of the opposition party for the EC to compile a new voters register ahead of the 2016 elections.

Their claim, Dr. Bawumia said, was earlier based on the conviction that the register is ‘incurably flawed’ intimating that it does not qualify to be used for next year’s crucial elections.

At the conference attended by various party bigwigs including party flagbearer, Nana Akufo-Addo, party chairman, Paul Afoko, General Secretary, Kwabena Agyepong, former trades Minister, Alan Kyeremanteng and a host of others, Dr. Bawumia said he could not comprehend how persons with same data could get into both Ghana and Togo's voters registers.

“The question, therefore, is how these scanned pictures got into the EC register…it is not a document we can rely on for free, fair, transparent elections…,” he said.

The identification of such persons, he said, only forms ten percent of the party’s inquiry into Ghana’s voters register, promising that the NPP is scheduled to present more shocking revelations from the voters register.

Ghana’s voters register, he said, would also be compared to that of Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast.

To help tackle this problem and make the next election more credible, Dr. Bawumia suggested that the Electoral Commission of Ghana compiles a new voters register by June 2016, saying the Commission should give Ghanaians a new Permanent Voters Card (PVC) as was done in Nigeria.

He further suggested that the EC grants a period of two weeks for the registration to be carried out simultaneously across the country.

The new compiled voters register, he said, should be edited by internationally reputed audit firms and all political parties given copies.