As Ghana stands in a cross road of peace and conflict over its general, an independent election observation body has thrown in fireball, which gives conflicting outcome of the result declared by the Electoral Commission of Ghana (EC).

According to the independent electoral observation body, the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO), in its tabulation of the presidential results, achieved 50.98 per cent for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) candidate while the EC puts at 51.302 per cent and scored 47.66 per cent for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) candidate as against EC’s 359 per cent.

These results disparities had raised the question of how same electoral process could produce different percentages of same poll result.

Thus, CODEO calculation accounts a percentage difference of 1.20 percent and 1.19 percent respectively for NPP and NDC candidates.  

Despite the mismatch, the Acting Chair, CODEO Sheikh Arimiyawo Shaibu addressing the media yesterday explained that Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) methodology that the Coalition deployed to observe the 2020 presidential election, had been the same system used for 2008, 2012 and 2016.

He their findings were based on the data received from all 1,502 PVT polling stations across the 275 constituencies in the country’s 16regions.

Interesting not a single result calculated by the Coalition corresponds with that of the EC, including finger on voter turnout and rejected votes, the Acting Chair explained that “given that the official result announced by the Electoral Commission for each candidate falls within their respective PVT estimated confidence ranges, CODEO can confidently confirm that its PVT estimates are consistent with the official presidential election results.”

Thus, the EC chair claimed that voter turnout was 79.00 per cent and rejected ballots, 2.33% but CODEO estimates voter turnout and rejection at 2.33 per cent and 2.25 percent respectively.

He stressed that “Not only do CODEO’s PVT estimates match the official results of the EC, but our Observers also reported that the two main parties (NDC and NPP) had party agents at over 99%of polling stations and that both NDC and NPP party agents also signed the official declaration of polls and were given copies of those documents.”

Ironically, a professor at a university in Ghana who spoke to the an Accra based radio station Adam FM on a condition of anonymity, has challenged the credibility of the result declared by the Electoral Commissioner, Mrs Jean Mensa.

According to the anonymous professor, Mrs Mensah going ahead to declare result without adding votes at the Techiman South Constituency was wrong and her claim that if the entire votes are added to that of the NDC candidate, it will not overturned election was false.

The professor said if the entire results is added unto that the NDC candidate would have pushed the country going into a run-off, since the vote difference, according still 515,524.

The opposition NDC is also contesting the election presidential declaration as being fraudulent, since the figure the EC called out was a total mismatch of the fingers on the pink sheet or the declaration form.

Although the EC had stood its grounds that the declaration was excellence and a true picture of what has been collated for each candidate.

However, for the first time the EC after less than 24 hour has made u-turn, pointing out that the chair declaring the presidential inadvertently used 13,433,573, as the total valid votes cast was 13,119,460.

The, however, EC chair vowed that “This does not change the percentages stated for each candidate and the declaration made by the Chairperson”

By Akutu Dede Adimer