The outgoing General Secretary for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and a National Chairman hopeful, has dropped a bombshell ahead of Saturday’s National Delegates conference at the Accra Sports Stadium, saying most leaders of his party are into night-time underhand dealings with the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP).
Johnson Asiedu Nketia, cited the contract to collect party dues through Mobile Money (MOMO), for the largest opposition NDC, saying it was initially awarded to an NPP stalwart, Sammy Crabbe, but he got annoyed and terminated the deal and re-awarded it to another company through a competitive tender process.
He, however, failed to do this in the case of collation of electoral results by IT Directorate, despite reports from the NDC’s National Organizer, Joshua Akamba that the party’s IT Director, had been compromised by the Vice-President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia.
These were captured in a 14-minute explosive audio in which the General Secretary was secretly recorded lamenting how his party failed to properly collate its 2020 presidential results, because the IT system deployed by the National Chairman, Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, was of inferior quality and collapsed midway into the collation process.
“After collating five regions, we were told that the system that would help with that job had crashed and that is why, in truth, we did not have results to challenge the Electoral Commission,” he said, thus clearing the air on reports that the Director of Elections, Elvis Effriyie Ankrah, who is also vying for the General Secretary position, had failed in his duties.
The NDC scribe, denied that he awarded the said contract to his beloved son as widely reported by sections of the media recently from a statement from the Deputy NDC General Secretary in-charge of Finance and Administration, Barbra Asamoah, as well as Edem Agbana, the NDC’s Deputy National Youth Organizer turned Spokesperson for the Aseidu Nketiah Campaign.
He described the dealings with the NDC elements dealings with the NPP as huge “problem” for the party, adding one had expected that gunning down the enemy at the least opportunity was the ideal thing to do, however, in the case of the NDC, the most bigwigs were wining and dining with enemies, hence very difficult to bomb and kill them.
The outgoing General Secretary, insisted that the NDC, would be further auctioned at a knockdown price if he ceases to be an executive of the party, adding but for this avowed stance, he would not be vying for any position, but relocate to his village to wait for the party to win power and take up a government appointment, however, he cannot ignore the danger.
Mr Asiedu Nketia, revealed how Mr Ofosu Ampofo at one of their meetings ahead of the 2020 elections slammed his hands on a table and threatened to resign as Chairman, when John Dramani Mahama, wanted to have an input into who becomes Director of Elections and the Director of IT, after a flagbearer had been chosen for the NDC.
The NDC became a laughingstock after the 2020 election, because of the party’s failure to collate its results.
At the Supreme Court, they could not provide the court with any form of evidence backing their claims of electoral fraud in favour of President Nana Akufo-Addo.
Mr Asiedu Nketia, who has been the General Secretary for 17 years, is contesting to become the party’s chairman, neatly distanced himself from any blame, telling the party’s delegates during his campaign the failed IT system, should be placed at the doorstep of the National Chairman. He promised to do something different if elected National Chairman come Saturday.
“Chairman Ofosu Ampofo said he will resign because John Dramani Mahama had said that he should wait for a Director of elections to be appointed after Primaries. He said that he was the party’s leader at the time and will not be dictated to by John Dramani Mahama who was not yet a party flagbearer.
Even though he was spoken to, Chairman Ofosu Ampofo, said he will resign if we heed to President Mahama’s call. We had to appoint Osei Kwame Griffith whose appointment was opposed by Joshua Akamba, because he believed he had something to do with Bawumia. This same Griffith provided us with a collation system that crashed five minutes into the collation. This is the truth and that is why we did not get the results at the right time to challenge the electoral commission,” he said.
“We appointed Griffith who was recommended by Chairman Ofosu Ampofo. He designed our collations software for the 2020 elections. The software crashed five minutes into the collation, so that is why we did not get the results to challenge the Electoral Commission,” he said.
He continued “we knew that Akufo-Addo didn’t win the first round of the elections considering the figures from each region, however, we did not have evidence to support our claim because the system crashed”.
“So we resorted to manual collation. We took the pink sheet from the various regions and Chairman Ofosu Ampofo said he will still be a member of that committee. He brought in some people from the Universities in the country. When it was time for me to be cross examined, I asked for the results they had collated and the results they gave me was a disgrace. I am well known when it comes to elections in Ghana so I decided I cannot go with those figures. Even Lawyer Tsikata rejected the data they presented,” he said.
If made National Chairman, Aseidu Nketiah, promised to reach out to sister socialist parties abroad which the NDC belongs to, to assists it with a robust IT infrastructure to help with collation of results, saying he had already spoken to President Mahama to that effect and even sent some three individuals to meet him.
He mentioned how certain parties in Russia, Ukraine, Brazil, China, Israel among other countries are part of the Socialist International platform with over 160 members, and he plans to get them to assist the NDC when made the NDC’s National Chairman.
