Election 2020: We’ve slain Okoe-Boye, Afoley Quaye, Titus-Glover, Boniface, Buaben Asamoa – NDC

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has said it has slain several giants of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), saying that alone is a harbinger of the return of the biggest opposition party to government.

At a press conference on Tuesday, 8 December 2020, the NDC’s Director of Elections, Mr Elvis Afriyie Ankrah said: “It’s important that you take note of the various heavyweights of the NPP that have fallen: Elizabeth Afoley Quaye, Minister of Fisheries – gone down; Titus-Glover, Deputy Minister of Transportation – gone down; Bernard Oko-Boye, Deputy Minister of Health – gone down; Boniface Abubakar Saddique, Minister of Something-Something, I don’t remember – gone down; Yaw Buaben Asamoa, [Adentan MP and Director of Communication of the NPP].”

At the same press conference, the party said it has won 140 parliamentary seats so far and accused the NPP of attempting to steal the will of the people through recounting “tricks”.

“Since our last press briefing, our opponents have made desperate attempts to throw dust into the eyes of Ghanaians”, Mr Afriyie Ankrah told journalist, adding: “The first point we want to state clearly, emphatically and unambiguously is that it is not true that NPP has a majority in parliament”.

“Currently, we are leading with 140 parliamentary seats. It is not true that the NPP is leading in the three regions up north. We won 14 out of 15 seats in the Upper East Region; we won 8 out of eleven constituencies in the Upper West Region; in the Northern Region, we won nine out of 18 constituencies”, Mr Afriyie Ankrah said.

According to him, the trend of the results points to victory for the NDC’s presidential candidate, Mr John Mahama, since, in his analysis, “except in a few cases, wherever a parliamentary candidate wins, the presidential candidate also wins and more often than not, the presidential candidate gets more votes than the parliamentary candidate, so, it is absurd for anybody, in the face of these facts, to say that in spite of the fact that we are leading in the parliamentary, we have won regions, constituencies that we’ve never won before, won the key swing regions: Great Accra, Central, the western enclave, we have won them and turned them around, seats that we’ve never won before as we said earlier, flipped around almost 38 seats, so, how can anybody that in the face of this, they are leading?”

Mr Afriyie Ankrah gave the following details of the number of seats the party claims it has won so far: Upper West – 8, Upper East – 14, North East – 2, Northern – 9, Bono – 6, Ahafo – 2, Bono East – 9, Western – 9, Western North – 7, Greater Accra – 20, Central – 13, Oti – 8, Volta – 17, Savanna – 4, Eastern – 8 and Ashanti – 4.

“So, the trajectory is clear; indeed, based on the figures that we have, we’re leading in the Greater Accra Region in the presidential, we’re leading in the western enclave, we’re leading in the Bono enclave and we’re confident that by the time we compile the rest of the [results for the] presidential candidate, we’ll be in pole position to be the one that will become the President, John Mahama will be the President of the Republic”, Mr Afriyie Ankrah said.

He alleged that the NPP, sensing defeat, is playing tricks to steal the polls.

“Now, we are aware of the tricks the NPP is playing to change results by ordering recounts of ballots at the collation centre, which is illegal. If you want a recount, there’s a process that you have to go through. The first recount, you must request it at the polling station, when that is done, if you are not satisfied, you have to request for the second collation at the collation centre.

“We’ve had situations where there were no recounts at all ab initio and then they go to the collation centre and they insist on recounts and by the time those recounts start, then funny things happen: ballot boxes are swapped, we’ve had situations where, in Sefwi, a ballot box was swapped and so many others so we see that as a strategy, that because they know they are losing, they use the recount and then in the process they do all kinds of things.

“That is why we were calling on people to be at the collation centres to support our agents because sometimes you have only two or three agents there and they come and mass up with their macho men, beat up our people, so, we need the numbers there …” he said.

The NDC also said it has intelligence that the NPP has sent a team to its stronghold, the Ashanti Region, to try and manipulate the figures to its favour because it has realised it is losing.