NPP desperation to rig the December elections has now been extended to the Senior Secondary Schools (SSS) where it is known that the vast majority of the students are below the voting age of 18.

Since the school-going age is six years, the primary school takes 6 years and the JSS takes three years, the maximum age of most Ghanaian pupils at the time they enter SSS is 15 years.

At best therefore, most SSS students are between the ages of 15 and 18. Over 90% of those in SSS1 and SSS2 will definitely be below the voting age of 18 years. Yet the NPP has taken its campaign to the SSSs in a big way.

More seriously, the Party is not only doing what it does best, lying to the students, but is also bribing the students.

In Year 2000, many SSS students were made to wake up and vote early before the polls' opening time of 7.00 a.m with the excuse that most SSS classes begin at 7.15 a.m.

The real reason as uncovered by 'Ghana Palaver' was that most of the students were below voting age and were bound to be challenged by the Party agents during the regular voting period.

And it had been possible for the under-age students to register as voters because the then Director-General of the Ghana Education Service, Professor Christopher Ekumfi-Ameyaw, who apparently had all along been a closet card-bearing NPP member, countermanded the instructions of the then NDC Minister of Education Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, and ordered the Headmasters and Headmistresses of the SSSs to allow all the students to be registered as voters irrespective of their ages. The students were then instructed by their pro-NPP Heads to vote for the NPP.

Professor Ekumfi-Ameyaw, after the elections, was rewarded by being appointed by President Kufuor as the NPP's first Minister of Education.

After an abysmal performance however, which saw him, among other things paying for ?50 billion worth of SSS textbooks to last for five years, spanning a period during which the syllabus would have been changed, he was demoted and assigned to a sinecure ministerial position at a newly-created, amorphous Ministry of Railways, Ports and Harbours.

It looks as if the same rigging system has been put in place this year to enable under-aged SSS students who have been indoctrinated to vote for the NPP to vote again.

From the Accra Training College last week, 'Ghana Palaver' undercover scouts reported that an NPP propaganda team had the entire student body assembled and told then that because of the extreme mismanagement of the economy by the NDC Government, President Kufuor had been compelled to increase school fees to their present levels in order to stabilise the situation.

According to the propaganda team, now that the NPP Government has a handle on the situation, the NPP will reduce the school fees if the students and their teachers vote for President Kufuor and the NPP candidates to win the December elections.

The NPP propaganda team then donated ?2 million to the students to buy sachet water and ?500,000 to the Headmaster "for the trouble".

A similar scene was enacted at the Aggrey Memorial School in Cape Coast, but there our scouts could not determine whether any monetary donations were made to the students and staff.