Cotonou: Come home, register to vote - Asiedu Nketia

Mr Johnson Asiedu Nketia, the general secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has asked sympathisers of the party living in neighbouring West African countries to come home and register when the Electoral Commission (EC) begins the process of limited registration. Urging them to disregard the ‘noises’ from some political parties calling for a new voters register, Mr Nketia, who was addressing sections of the Ghanaian community in Cotonou last Wednesday, said the current register was the best the country had ever produced and they should come home to register in order to vote in the 2016 election.

 The general secretary was among the entourage of the Vice-President, Mr Kwesi Amissah-Arthur, who attended the investiture of the newly elected President of Benin, Mr Patrice Talon.  Touching on the brouhaha that had characterised the voters register, Mr Nketia said there was no basis for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to call for a new register when it was that same party that proposed the idea of a biometric registration, which was agreed upon by the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC).

 “For that same party to turn round and claim the register is bloated is untenable,” he said. According to the NDC scribe, the government was on course to delivering its campaign promises to Ghanaians, adding that President John Mahama was focused on his mandate. Mr Nketia explained that there would be time for continuous registration which would afford Ghanaians abroad the opportunity to come home and register at their own convenience.

Mr Nketia presented “Accounting to the people”, the green book that catalogues development and ongoing projects undertaken by the Mahama-administration to the Ghana mission in Cotonou and asked members of the Ghanaian community who wished to apprise themselves of the current state of development in Ghana to go through the book.

He assured them that the NDC would make more copies of the book available to the Ghanaian community in Benin as part of efforts to sell the government’s message of development to Ghanaians in the diaspora. The Vice-President urged the Ghanaian community in Benin to unite and live in peace with one another in order not to offend the law in the country they resided in. Mr Amissah-Arthur reaffirmed the government’s commitment to free and transparent elections.