The National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, has been leading the charge for his party’s ‘Enough Is Enough’ demonstration against the EC, scheduled for Tuesday, September 17, 2024.

Asiedu Nketiah was the one who announced the 'mother of all demonstrations' across the length and breadth of Ghana.

Addressing the media after filing the nomination of the Flagbearer of the NDC, John Dramani Mahama, at the head office of the EC on Monday, September 9, 2024, the NDC national chairman said that his party would be joined by other political parties and Civil Society Organisations to demonstrate against the EC for failing to address issues with the 2024 voter register.

The NDC chairman cited the EC's objection to his party's demand for an independent audit of the voter register, which it said was full of irregularities, including illegal voter transfer and corrupted files, as reason for the protest.

“A draft register is not a register. Today, if we have to do any election, we have to rely on the 2020 register… On the 17th of this month, the NDC is embarking on a massive nationwide demonstration in all 16 regional capitals.

“Descend on the Electoral Commission offices, and we in Accra would descend to the headquarters and present a further petition as to why we think that they should conduct themselves in a manner that would guarantee a peaceful, free, and fair election,” he said.

Many Ghanaians, including the former General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Kwabena Agyapong, have called out the NDC for its insistence on an audit of the voter register, pointing to the party’s resistance to a similar demand when it was in government in 2015.

Kwabena Agyapong has indicated that the NDC is the last entity to be making such demands.

“I don’t think they have that moral authority to be saying those things. They say things just for political expediency. It doesn’t augur well for the government,” he is reported to have said by JoyNews.

What Asiedu Nketiah said in 2015:

Prior to the 2016 general election, Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, who was then the General Secretary of the NDC, refuted similar demands by the then largest opposition, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), on the grounds that the calls were unnecessary because the voter register is cleaned through the voter exhibition exercise.

The NPP had called for an audit of the voter register, citing the presence of foreigners and dead people in the register.

Speaking at a stakeholder engagement in 2015, Asiedu Nketiah pointed out that the voter exhibition can be used to remove the names of dead people and other anomalies in the register.

"I have indicated that the process of deleting deceased persons is the process of exhibition of the register. After every provisional register is compiled, it is exhibited. Before we go into the elections, the register is exhibited. And the main purpose of the exhibition is for us to raise objections to people whose names are there which ought not to be there.

"There are forms and a means of processing those objections that will lead to the deletion of those names. And it includes the deletion of names of dead people too. So, the opportunity is given for people to present evidence," he said.

The then NDC General Secretary then joked about the then NPP General Secretary, Kwabena Agyapong’s name being deleted from the register if someone accuses him of being a dead person without providing evidence.

"Let's face it, the environment we are operating in, it will say people should go and pinpoint the names of dead people for deletion without any evidence. I will go and pinpoint Kwabena Agyapong’s name and say he's dead," he jokingly said.

Watch videos of Asiedu Nketiah’s remarks in 2015 and that of 2024 below:





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