IMANI petitions CHRAJ over EC's constitutional and procurement breaches

Executive Director of IMANI Center for Policy and Education, Franklin Cudjoe, has formally petitioned the Commission connected Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) to analyse the Electoral Commission (EC) of Ghana for what helium describes arsenic “constitutional, statutory, and administrative breaches” successful transportation with the arguable disposal of electoral instrumentality arsenic scrap.

In a petition to CHRAJ connected Tuesday, May 6, 2025, and signed by Franklin Cudjoe, IMANI argued that the EC has failed successful its work to negociate authorities assets prudently, particularly amid Ghana’s ongoing economical crisis.

“This morning, I directed that IMANI files a petition to the Commission connected Human Rights and Administrative Justice to analyse the Electoral Commission of Ghana for constitutional, statutory, and administrative breaches successful respect of its behaviour successful the infamous ‘firesale of electoral instrumentality for scrap’ scandal.

“At a clip erstwhile the federation cannot work its debts and is successful the midst of a choky IMF-supervised fiscal regime, specified egregious behaviour cannot beryllium tolerated,” it noted.

IMANI further argued that the premature status and disposal of tens of thousands of laptops, fingerprint verifiers, scanners, printers, and integer cameras were driven by motives that struggle with the EC’s ineligible responsibilities.

“We lamented that the EC’s conduct... has been motivated by a struggle betwixt its duties nether assorted laws to judiciously use the resources of this state for the bully of the citizenry, connected the 1 hand, and its inclination to instrumentality decisions favourable to assorted commercialized vendors and transactors, connected the different hand.

“We stated our content that the EC’s astir caller behaviour has been necessitated by a request to curtail transparency and accountability, and frankincense was motivated by a corporate struggle of involvement and imaginable corruption," it stated.

IMANI besides accused the EC of attempting to erase “inventory records and carnal grounds of the blatant falsehoods it has told implicit the past 4 years regarding the acquisition past of costly electoral equipment.”

It stressed that galore of the devices outgo implicit US$3,000 each and should person been donated to different authorities agencies oregon transparently sold nether the Public Procurement Act.

"We posit that the EC’s attack to disposing of these electoral items was partially dictated by a request to suppress inventory records and to evade accountability, successful airy of the spirited run by civilian nine activists successful 2020 to debunk the EC’s claims that the instrumentality successful question each day from 2011, and are truthful obsolete, and partially by a request to facilitate undue commercialized profiteering by the beneficiaries of the EC’s disposal methods. The maltreatment of nationalist resources and powerfulness for backstage summation is the universally acknowledged explanation of corruption.

"Ultimately, the EC’s behaviour successful this matter breaches the precocious standards expected of specified a large law body, and constitutes different infractions of laws, regulations, and modular protocols relating to the absorption of electoral systems, information protection, and nationalist fiscal management," it added.

In 2020, the EC undertook a arguable procurement workout to regenerate the country's existing Biometric Voter Management System (BVMS), which includes biometric devices, elector registration kits, ABIS software, and information centers.

The EC justified this determination by claiming the existing system, successful usage since 2011, was obsolete.

However, IMANI Center for Policy and Education disputed this claim, revealing that galore of the devices were acquired arsenic precocious arsenic 2018 and 2019, and that the EC had antecedently maintained a signifier of replacing lone faulty components alternatively than full units.

Despite this, the EC, backed by the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo-led government, proceeded with a costly procurement of wholly caller BVMS components.

The process was marred by allegations of bid rigging, manipulation, and deficiency of transparency, peculiarly regarding the ABIS software.

In 2024, IMANI discovered thousands of these supposedly obsolete devices dumped astatine a recycling installation successful Accra, raising suspicions of attempts to erase inventory records and debar accountability.

JKB/MA

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