The New Patriotic Party (NPP) wants the flagbearer of National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Dramani Mahama, to apologise to Ghanaians for raising ethnic sentiments during the just ended voter registration exercise.
Speaking at a press conference on Monday, August 10, 2020, the General Secretary of the NPP, John Boadu, said the actions of the NDC during the exercise sparked fear and tension in the country.
“Having initially bastardized the voter registration exercise, he [John Mahama] has however considered that the exercise has been extremely successful. So we in the NPP expect him to go further to apologize to this nation for the dangerous ethnic sentiments he raised, jeopardizing the security of the state with unwarranted attacks.”
“His actions which were mirrored by the leadership of his party unduly created fear and raised political tension in the country. Certainly, Ghanaians didn’t deserve this from an immediate past President of this great nation of ours who again is seeking for the mandate of the people,” he stated.
John Boadu further justified the government’s attempts to guard Ghana’s borders during the registration period.
He said, “We should not confuse the genuine efforts to police the borders throughout the country to mean that the NPP is against anyone. Elections in Ghana are for Ghanaians. Yet as we speak, a number of Togolese and Nigerians have either been convicted or have their cases pending at the Keta Circuit Court charged with registering for a Ghanaian voter ID card.”
“So in the midst of all these things, it is also true and it has been established beyond a reasonable doubt that people that are not Ghanaians have tried. Some of them succeeded in getting their names in our registered. They were arrested and tried by a competent court of jurisdiction.”
The voter registration exercise started on June 30 and officially ended on August 6, in 33,367 polling stations. It was done in six phases with each phase assigned six days for eligible applicants to register.
This was followed by a two-day mop-up exercise on Saturday, August 8 and Sunday, August 9, 2020, at the various district offices of the EC across the country to enable eligible applicants who were unable to register in the mass registration exercise to do so.
In all, the Electoral Commission registered over 16,663,699 persons during the mass voter compilation exercise.
Source: Citifmonline.com
