IMANI/EC Brouhaha: Set Up Committee Of Inquiry; Televise Proceedings - Nana Akomea

Chief Executive Officer of the InterCity State Transport Corporation (STC), Nana Akomea has called for a Committee of Inquiry to be set up to assess the concerns raised by IMANI over the Electoral Commission's disposal of election-related equipment.The Electoral Commission's recent disposal and auctioning of equipment it deemed obsolete has incurred the wrath of IMANI, a policy think tank, causing them to petition the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) to investigate the electoral management body.IMANI's AccusationsThe Executive Director at IMANI, Franklin Cudjoe, in a statement on Monday, May 6, cited the EC’s actions as constituting “misappropriation”, “wastage,” and “misuse” of resources."We do not believe that the EC and its commercial counterparties in these transactions complied with the highest standards of data handling and protection required in the transfer and/or disposal of such sensitive equipment.

At any rate, none of them had the requisite certifications to be trusted with such a task”, he asserted.The institution's statement further read that "the EC’s most recent conduct has been necessitated by a need to curtail transparency and accountability, and thus was motivated by a collective conflict of interest and potential corruption.

By its actions, it is attempting to erase inventory records and physical evidence of the blatant falsehoods it has told over the last four years regarding the purchase history of expensive electoral equipment”.“We asserted our longstanding claim that the EC’s electoral equipment is a portfolio of multiple items, bought and refurbished at different intervals between 2011 and 2019.

That portfolio does not uniformly date to 2011 or 2012 as the EC has falsely and persistently claimed, and could thus not be so uniformly obsolete as to warrant a firesale to mysterious bidders, who have kept the prime portions for themselves and discarded the rest to be used as scrap.

Ghana cannot continue to be milked in this fashion”, it added.Akomea's RemedyIn Nana Akomea's reaction, he argued that a higher authority must be constituted with the EC and IMANI present to argue out the issue.The Committee, he maintained, should "televise the proceedings" so that "at the end of the day, the important thing is that probity and accountability is served" for Ghanaians to know which party is telling the truth or otherwise.He believed this will grant a final resolution and settle the case.

 

 

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