The Electoral Commission (EC) has taken on IMANI Africa and its Honourary Vice President, Bright Simons for what it described as “the persistent misinformation” by the Civil Society Organisation.

The Deputy Director of Research, Monitoring And Evaluation, Fred Tetteh, in a signed statement dismissed a series of accusations levelled at the Commission by Mr Simons and his colleagues at IMANI Africa.

Notable was the allegation that the Commission was acquiring new BVDs and BVRs just for a ‘procurement gig’ when there was no need to procure the new equipment.

According to Mr Tetteh, IMANI Africa omitted the portion that the “previous administration had planned to refurbish obsolete BVDs, BVRs and data centre tor millions of dollars for short term use only- namely, to conduct the 2018 Referendum and 2019 DLE.”

The Deputy Director also highlighted several accusations by the CSO in 2020 including the amount that IMANI claimed the Commission spent in procuring BVDs and BVRs.  

“The public may recall that as part of Imani's negative campaign against the Commission's decision to compile a new voters register ahead of the 2020 elections, Bright Simons claimed that by his scientific queue management theory, the Commission could not register 12 million voters in 40 days,” portions of the statement read.

It also added, “… during the 2020 Voters Registration Exercise, Mr Simons, using selective photographed images of the obsolete BVRs, falsely peddled that the obsolete 2012 BVRs were being used for the registration of voters in Kumasi when this was far from the truth. When challenged to identify the polling centres where the kits were being used, he could not substantiate his claims.”

Mr Tetteh then urged the public to disregard statements from Bright Simons and IMANI related to the Commission’s matters adding that “they are false and misleading.”