We’ll swear Mahama into office as President on January 7 – Sofo Azorka vows

Former Northern Regional Chairman and current First Vice Chairman for the opposition National Democratic Congress, Chief Sofo Awudu Azorka, says the National Democratic Congress (NDC) intends swearing in John Dramani Mahama as President on January 7.

Sofo Azorka believes that John Dramani Mahama is the legitimate President of Ghana and no human can change that because, from all indications, the National Democratic Congress won the just ended general elections.

“We are swearing John Mahama next month 7th January, where they swear people in? Accra,” he told Journalists at Tamale Jubilee park today, December 16, where the party ended its demonstration to protest against the Jean Mensah led Electoral Commission covered by MyNewsGh.com

Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo was re-elected for a second term with 6,730,413 votes representing 51. 59% of votes, beating the former president who obtained 6,214,889 votes representing 47.36%.

According to the Electoral Commission, there were 17,027,641 registered voters with few election-related mishaps such as missing names, or misplaced polling stations.

Since polling day, 13,434,574 votes were counted in 48 hours, representing 79% of the total registered voters.

But the NDC insists they won the election and will not accept the results until the legitimate winner is declared by the electoral commission.

John Dramani Mahama has said that he and his party will only walk away when an independent audit is conducted on the results.

“In the interest of the more than six million people who voted for me i must uphold our democracy and hold the electoral commission to higher standards and hold this government to higher standards in terms of our democracy. The way they conducted this election, the government, President Akufo-Addo and the electoral commission is dent to our democratic credentials as a government.

"So in my principles as a democrat, I can’t be seen to be sweeping it under the carpet and just letting it go. I think that we must bring closure to this and see exactly where the issues are and I mean if an independent audit is done by the EC, we bring somebody in to do an independent audit why not, I mean I will be the first to concede and walk away but as long as that is not done and I know that there was a deliberate attempt to subvert the will of the people in favor of the incumbent, it will be wrong for me in terms of our democratic principles to just leave it because we will not learn the lessons of this election, I think that we must learn the lessons of this election so that we don’t repeat it in the future,” the NDC leader said.