President Nana Akufo-Addo has forwarded the new petition for impeachment filed against the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC), Charlotte Osei, to the Chief Justice, Sophia Akuffo.

Confirming this, the Director of Communications at the Presidency, Eugene Arhin, revealed the petitioner to be one Douglas Seidu.

Mr. Seidu delivered his petition “around August 18, 2017,” and President Akufo-Addo referred the petition to the Chief Justice on August 29.

“Once a petition has been brought to the Presidency trying to invoke the relevant portions of the Constitution with regards to the removal of the Chairperson a body like the Electoral Commission, the President has no choice but to forward the petition to the CJ,” Mr. Arhin explained.

Without getting into details, Mr. Arhin outlined some of the grounds of the petition as being “financial misconduct, incompetence, conflict of interest, breaches of the public procurement processes, amongst others. It is an eight-page petition.”

“He [President Akufo-Addo] has done his part so we will just leave the rest to the Chief Justice to handle. For the Chief Justice, I am sure she has instituted her own processes to handle this,” he added.

Earlier reports from the Daily Guide Newspaper indicated that at least 15 allegations have been leveled against Mrs. Osei in this new petition. Some of the allegations involved the unilateral award of contracts by the EC boss in the run-up to the 2016 general election.

There is already a petition from unnamed EC staff, who are being represented by Lawyer Maxwell Opoku-Agyemang, against Mrs. Osei, which is pending before the Chief Justice.

The earlier petition leveled allegation, including the funneling of GH¢3.9 million to partition an office, the receipt of a Toyota Land Cruiser from the Mahama government, the expenditure of about $14 million when the Public Procurement Authority had authorised her to use only $7.5 million.