Sammy Gyamfi, the National Communications Officer of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has shared details of how a group of people obtained the ID number of voters to illegally transfer them in an alleged attempt to rig the upcoming elections.
According to him, these transfers involved the manipulation of the voters register where some individuals were transferred from their original constituencies to others without their knowledge.
In an interview on Metro TV he said, “In this preliminary, painstaking investigation we conducted, we saw things that blow our minds, things that shocked us. You see many a times when you hear the NPP or the Electoral Commission responding to the NDC, they say that, the EC is not a perfect institution and the voter register is perfect and whatever the reason for exhibition is to detect errors so that it can be corrected”.
He disclosed that, some of the errors they saw are not the kind of errors that can even be corrected through exhibition.
“Some of the things we have detected have never happened in the history of this fourth republican democracy. The first is the Pusiga case where we found out the first time that, 38 voters who registered to vote in Tamale South had been transferred to Pusiga.
“For those who don’t know where Pusiga is, Tamale South is in the Northern region and Pusiga is in the Upper East. It is a boarder town in Upper East and these people who have been transferred there have never been to Pusiga. They don’t live in Pusiga, and they were transferred by the EC’s district, retaining officer without the consent of the people, without their notice, without their knowledge” he said.
Sammy Gyamfi emphasized that such an act is impossible in our electoral system because, “per our electoral laws, specifically regulation 22 of CI, 91 as amended, you can only transfer a voter when he physically comes to a different office of the EC to physically apply for transfer, and when he’s able to justify that application, then you transfer the person when he is live in front of you. That is the law and that is what we have done since time immemorial” he added.
He noted that per the circumstances surrounding the incident, it was quite obvious that it was an election rigging agenda.
He added that this did incident did not only happen in Pusiga but also in Eric Opoku’s constituency where 32 people were also transferred to Nsuatre without their knowledge, notice or consent also done by the EC electoral officer.
The National Communications Officer of the NDC noted that this discovery underscores broader concerns about electoral transparency and integrity in upcoming elections.
