By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Jan. 7, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia may be aptly described as a man who goes around scraping for water from silted gutters after a heavy downpour. And by the latter imagery, of course, I am referring to his belated joining of the Akufo-Addo debate on the need for the Electoral Commission (EC) to scrap the current voters' register and replace the same with a new one in the lead-up to Election 2016.

Well, I have already fairly adequately addressed this matter in at least two previous columns and so do not intend to belabor the same. Suffice it, however, to observe, at least in passing, that having twice suffered the long-nurtured jealousy and political animosity of his old university roommate and now EC Chief, Nana Akufo-Addo appears hell-bent on thoroughly erasing any hints, or traces, of an Afari-Gyan mischief in the lead-up to Election 2016.

Mr. Asiedu-Nketia's response to Akufo-Addo's claim that the present voters' register's figure of 14 million, based on Ghana's 2010 census figure of 25 million, reeks of nothing short of the downright illogical and outright preposterous, needs to be critically examined (See "Mosquito Bites Akufo-Addo In Voters Register Drama" MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 1/7/15). It needs to be examined because on the face of it, the General-Secretary of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) appears to have a point. Interestingly, however, whatever point the man popularly known as General Mosquito may be seem to have does not go very far beyond the ken of this former high school teacher's academic credentials.

In other words while, indeed, Ghana's population must have remarkable inched up, it is still significant for the Government's Statistician to work out the details of how a nation of 25 million people came to amass the undoubtedly humongous voters' register figure of some 14 million citizens. What the latter figure means is that Ghana, in 2010, had an eligible voting population of at least 56-percent or approximately two-thirds of the population of the entire country. I may be exaggerating my estimate a bit, but it is not very far from the reality.

And, well, nearly a half-decade on, and heading steadily towards the watershed moment that is Election 2016, Ghanaians need to know how many more people have been added onto the 2010 figures, by way of both births and citizenship acquisition or naturalization, and then factor out the population of eligible voters as it ought to stand in the EC's voters' register. Indeed, Mr. Asiedu-Nketia is darn right that a lot might have changed, but it is highly unlikely for there to have occurred a sea change, as he would have the rest of the world believe.

In fact, it just could well vindicate Nana Akufo-Addo's argument, were a tally of the country's population since 2010 be taken and the number of eligible voters added onto the current voters' register reckoned. This argument is valid precisely because in the lead-up to Election 2012, Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, Ghana's now-outgoing Electoral Commissioner, publicly admitted that a remarkable percentage of underage teenagers, or statutorily ineligible voters, had, nevertheless, found their names entered into the voters' register.

At the time, as yours truly vividly recalls, Dr. Afari-Gyan also stated that there was absolutely nothing that he could do to bump these kids off the voters' roll, and that short of dissuading these ineligible registered teenagers from casting their ballots, presumably on moral grounds, even the legitimate threat of criminal prosecution could not do the trick, as it were.

I, personally, am of the well-measured opinion that if Nana Akufo-Addo really believed in electoral justice and fair-play, it was on this count that the 2016 Presidential Candidate of the main opposition New Patriotic Party ought to have drawn the proverbial line in the sand. I also sincerely don't know why General Mosquito thinks that getting the right thing done "flies in the face of logic," and also that "it would be a total waste of the country's meager resources" to establish a new and authentic voters' register.

Well, I wish General Mosquito had been this perceptive while he collaborated with Mr. Jabesh Amissah-Arthur, the CEO, to scam the poor Ghanaian taxpayer by deliberately overcharging the Bui Dam Authority for ordinary cement blocks produced by a private company owned by the NDC General-Secretary.

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