Asiedu Nketiah accuses Bawumia of influencing NDC’s Election 2020 results collation

The general secretary of the National Democratic Congress, Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, has accused the vice-president, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, of influencing the NDC’s strategy for collating presidential and parliamentary election results in 2020.

Asiedu Nketiah, in a leaked audio recording in which he is heard addressing party faithful at a sit-down meeting during his current campaign to be elected as the NDC’s national chairman, accused the vice-president of influencing Osei Kwame Griffiths, the NDC’s director of IT, to interfere with the collation system that the party set up for the 2020 presidential and parliamentary elections.

“Akamba [the NDC national organiser, Joshua Hamidu Akamba] during the meeting, mentioned that the person to be appointed as the director IT, Griffiths [Osei Kwame Griffiths], has some underhand dealings with Vice-President Bawumia, and that the party has to be extremely careful on handing over its election collation mission to him [Osei Kwame Griffiths],” Asiedu Nketiah said.

“The party ignored the caution of Akamba and went ahead to appoint Osei Kwame Griffiths as the director of IT. It was not surprising that the system that he [Griffiths] set up to collate the results of Election 2020 crashed after putting together results from only five regions out of the 16 regions.

“This is the truth and that is why the NDC was unable to get accurate and timely results to challenge that of the Electoral Commission,” Asiedu Nketiah said.

Anti-Mahama chairman
In the same recording, Asiedu Nketiah is also heard accusing Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, the NDC’s national chairman, of being anti-Mahama because he [Ofosu Ampofo] challenged a directive that Mahama sought to issue to the party leadership in the lead-up to the appointment of a director of elections and the director of information technology.

“Former president Mahama sent Julius Debrah [the chief of staff under the Mahama government] to plead with the party leadership not to appoint a director of elections and a director of IT until the party completes its presidential primaries because the flagbearers of the party must have a say in who becomes the director of elections and the director of IT,” Asiedu Nketiah said.

“As soon as Julius finished speaking, Ampofo said he considered the submission an offence to him and his authority as the leader of the NDC party.

“Ampofo said that Mahama can only become leader of the party after the flagbearership election has been held. Until then, he [Ofosu Ampofo] remains the only leader of the party and so he can do as he pleases, as he [Mahama] cannot stop him because he [Mahama] is an ordinary party member of the NDC.

“The position of Ofosu-Ampofo brought about a serious misunderstanding at the meeting. The meeting thus became a flight between the Mahama faction and the Ofosu- Ampofo faction. I [Asiedu Nketiah] sat down quietly and listened to all that was going on,” the general secretary reportedly said.