Allegations by the opposition NPP that President John Mahama tried to bribe their Northern regional chairman are serious enough to warrant police investigations, a law lecturer Yaw Oppong has explained.

Although the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has expressed disinterest in reporting to the police, the legal practitioner said, an official complaint is not needed to trigger investigations.

The NPP last Tuesday alleged the President tried to corrupt their regional party chairman, Bugri Naabu to turn against their presidential candidate Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

They presented a V6 Mitsubishi, a brand new V8 Landcruiser as evidence of the October 28,2016 meeting with Mahama in Accra.

The NPP Northern regional chairman had also been promised ¢3.3 million if he can cast the NPP flagbearer as an 'ethnocentric bigot', Mustapha Hamid, a spokesperson for Akufo-Addo told the press.

The governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) has strongly rejected the claim as a ploy to throw dirt with barely a week to the general elections.

Steering clear of the politics and teasing out the legal issues, Yaw Oppong explained that the allegation against the President is a national security issue.

This is because the President is enjoined to safeguard the 1992 constitution. If he is breaking provisions in it, then the security of the state is compromised.

He established that bribery is a criminal offence according to Section 33 of the Representation Of The People Law - 1992 (PNDCL 284).

(1) A person commits the offence of bribery-

(c) if before or during an election he directly or indirectly, by himself or through another person acting on his behalf, receives, agrees or contracts for money, gift, a loan or valuable consideration or an office, place or employment for himself or for another person for voting or agreeing to vote or for refraining or agreeing to refrain from voting; or

The NPP has indicated that it has not reported the matter to the police because it is interested in the political point that the President is corrupt.

Yaw Oppong cited a case in which in the absence of an official report, the Police stepped in to investigate a media report accusing a doctor of sodomy.

As sodomy is criminal as bribery, therefore, the NPP do not need to report officially, he indicated.