Bright Simons: Why does IMANI always refuse to give EC the benefit of the doubt?

A. Because we know them more than you do. We’ve spent time reading 1000s of pages about their procurement work. You haven’t. Trust us, not them. 

B. We found them to be lying at every turn. Trust & lies don’t mix.

C. They announced to the whole nation that since 2011, they hadn’t bought new BVDs & BVRs. Lies. They spent $60m on these machines between 2015 & 2019. 

D. They rigged the $70m tender for the latest equipment from Thales so badly the head of the procurement committee resigned.

E. They decided to pay over $3.5m for biometric software frm Lithuania that the vendor sells for $350k. IMANI published the full scoping study online so everyone can check for themselves.

 F. They have never passed an asset audit & never auction discarded new machines.

G. They demonised their predecessors & called the vendors who worked on the 2016 system, which per CODEO reports, was more efficient end-to-end compared to 2020, crooked. 

H. Turns out that as late as 2019 and 2020, they were still paying the old vendors millions for services.

I. Had they spent the $15m we believe they needed for new equipment for new polling stations (instead of $70m) & not tossed $60m worth of good devices, they could’ve spent $5m in increasing collation centers

 J. Their new transmission network would not have failed to come online.

The writer, Bright Simons is a Ghanaian social innovator, entrepreneur, writer, and vice-president at IMANI.