Desperate to win the 2016 general elections at all cost, the opposition NPP has resorted to registering minors (under-aged children) in the Ashanti Region in the on-going limited registration exercise organized by the Electoral Commission.
Undercover investigations carried out in many constituencies in this region by the ‘Daily Post’ since the exercise began revealed that thousands of children below 18 years have been illegally registered at the instance and instigation of the NPP with the collusion of registration officers, some policemen and the mothers of the children.
Ironically, while the General Secretary of the party, Kwabena Agyapong, told Peace FM last Friday that the registration of 44 people in one day at some registration centres in the Volta Region was abnormal. Yet, this paper can state that almost 3,000 people were registered in the Afigya Sekyere Constituency within three days in the Ashanti Region with many of those registered being minors.
In the Subin Constituency in Kumasi, One Prince, the Youth Organiser and Mr. Yeboah, the Assembly Member of Adum Electoral Area led in the registration of the children. Whenever the ages of the children are challenged at the registration centre, the mothers of the children are brought in. These women come hurling insults at those who challenged the ages of their children. Spitting fire, cursing and sometimes heckling those who challenged the ages of their wards, the women will insist that the children were 18 years old.
The modus operandi of the NPP officials in the region is to hide the children at various locations near the registration centres. Once a registration centre has fewer people around, the signal is given and the children are brought in and registered. The children often have fear written all over them as they undertake the illegal exercise.
At the Aboagye Memorial polling station in the Subin constituency, many under-aged children were brought in and registered. Two of the under-aged children were Mavis Boateng and Hajara Mohammed, who were, like others, registered as eighteen-year-olds. Covert investigations by this paper however established their true age to be 15 and 16 respectively. While Mavis was born on 11th January 1998, Hajara Mohammed was born on 6th September, 1997.
Other under-aged the NPP activists gone registered include Ofori Gyasi, Abigail Koranteng, Ohemeng Comfort, Emmanuellen Osei Bonsu, Derrick Antwi and George Ampong among hundreds of other names.
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