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National

Police probe NSS Boss over electoral fraud

The police in Accra are investigating the Deputy Executive Director of the National Service Secretariat (NSS), Sophia Karen Ackuaku, for her alleged involvement in a voter reg­istration scandal.

Mrs Ackuaku, who is currently the ruling National Demo­cratic Congress (NDC) par­liamentary aspirant for the Obom-Domeabra constituency in Greater Accra Region, has refused to respond to Daily Guide's inquiries over her alleged involvement in the forging of signatures in the recent biometric registra­tion exercise by the NDC.

Not only has she refused to answer calls made to her phone in an attempt to get her side of the story, but she has also refused to respond to a text message sent to her.

The Greater Accra Regional Police Crime Offi­cer, Chief Superintendent Paul Kontomah, has con­firmed to the paper that they are investigating her over such an issue.

According to Chief Superintendent Kontomah, his outfit had invited Mrs Ackuaku for questioning over the matter but the woman had not honoured the invitation.

Issues

The police action fol­lows a complaint lodged by six members of the NDC in the Obom-Domeabra constituency, including Edward Nii Krowey, Jackson Kweku Addo, Francis Henyo, Vin­cent Homadzi and Mershack Addo Kwei, over alleged forging of their sig­natures during the biomet­ric registration exercise organized by the party towards its presidential and parliamentary primar­ies.

This was after an attempt to get the leader­ship of the party to resolve the issue in-house had failed.

In a petition dated Sep­tember 26, 2015 and addressed to NDC General Secretary, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, the party's ward coordinators in the con­stituency sought to call the attention of the leadership at the national level to address what they called 'serious infractions' against the constitution of the NDC and the guidelines for the party's 2016 parlia­mentary election.

They claimed "the aspi­rant used the names of branch executive members without their knowledge and this has caused a major unrest and disappointment among the entire member­ship within the constituen­cy."

The ward executives also observed that the nomination forms submit­ted by Sophia Ackuaku were not comprehensively completed as the guide­lines explained in the col­umn of the 'party ID card number' and that "only the first 3 pages were complet­ed with member ID card number; only 49 out of 549 were fully completed," claiming that their "investi­gations revealed that the 'at least one branch executive member endorsement' was not met."

Forgery

The petitioners there­fore insisted that "sequel to the above, members' signa­tures were forged / faked even in cases thumbprints are used to identify them. Per the guidelines for the parliamentary elections, - the aspirant failed to meet guideline provision C (b) and NDC constitution Arti­cle 43 (b)."

In that regard, they were calling for further investigations and disqual­ification of Mrs Ackuaku whose locus according to them, could not be established as her whereabouts in the constituency were unknown.

Police Action

The six persons later lodged a formal complaint at the Adjen Kotoku police station in Accra on October 16, 2015 and according to an extract from the station diary - a copy of which is in the possession of DAILY GUIDE - they alleged that a week earlier they had detected that "the aspiring Member of Parliament by name Sophia Karen Edzem Ackuoku, has forged their signatures in filing her forms without their knowl­edge as such informing the police for action."

But till date, the police have not been able to take any action on the case, except the verbal invitation that they claim to have sent to Mr Ackuoku - which she had since failed to hon­our.

 

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DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.