The former Chairperson of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), Samia Nkrumah, has alleged that 7,000 more people registered in the Jomoro Constituency of the Western Region, adding that many of them were outsiders possibly from Ivory Coast.
She noted that in 2012, 11,000 people were added to the voters’ register in Jomoro and this compelled her party to closely monitor the just ended limited registration exercise to understand better what happened last year.
[contextly_sidebar id=”p1vYzhsvEgdGjnSfTkcbWShhYmjwlDUn”]Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show, Samia Nkrumah indicated that their polling agents alerted them about the presence of non-Ghanaians.
“…Whenever our polling agents called us, we went to see what was happening and indeed we did see a big number of non-Ghanaians.”
She explained that a number of Nzema people reside in Ivory Coast who came in to register but this did not account for the hundreds of people who were bused in from towns on the Ghana and Ivory Coast border.
“…But there are some Ivorians as well who should not be voting in the district of Jomoro because what is the point of demarcating our country into different districts if we can see an influx… like when you see hundreds of people coming in on buses.”
She however commended the Electoral Commission officers whose thorough assessments of prospective registrants revealed that there were particular guarantors guaranteeing the nationality of scores of individuals who were not from the electoral area.
Checks by the EC officers also revealed that hundreds of the people coming in to register from outside shared identical addresses or gave out fictitious addresses according to the former CPP Chairperson.
“These people coming to register did not know their addresses, they could not say where they were living and in some cases they gave fictitious addresses and in other cases, hundreds of people gave the same address which was non-existent,” Ms. Nkrumah stated.
High number of registrants in NDC, NPP strongholds
The former CPP Chairperson also scrutinized the registration patterns in the strongholds of the parliamentary candidates of the two main political parties, the National Democratic Congress and the opposition New Patriotic Party, which recorded unusually high numbers of registered persons per her assessment.
According to the former Jomoro MP, the average number that registered daily in their strongholds was close to 100, which was significantly higher than other places with similar population which recorded an average of 15-20 persons registering a day.
“So when it is the stronghold of one candidate or another, the electoral area registered a very high number of voters,” she remarked.
Jomoro residents outnumbered by outsiders
Ms. Nkrumah further bemoaned the fact that these developments have set the tone for an election that will be unfair to the people of Jomoro since they will be outnumbered by outsiders.
“This can have an impact on the residents of Jomoro because if we go on by this trend, the number of voters outside the district of Jomoro is going to be more than the number of residents… we cannot conduct elections in this way and say they are fair.”
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By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana