Civil Society Organization, IMANI Africa has petitioned the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) to investigate the disposal of some Biometric Voter Management Systems (BVMS) by the Electoral Commission of Ghana (EC).
According to IMANI, its vigilant monitoring of the EC led to the discovery that thousands of BVMS components have been found in a recycling plant in Accra owned or operated by a company called Electro Recycling Ghana.
“We write to invoke the jurisdictions, powers, mandates, and duties under chapters 18 and 24 of the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, which entrust the care of national resources and the charge of ensuring sound conduct among public officers to the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ/” the Commission”).
The petition signed by the leadership of IMANI Africa has attached exhibits to aid the Commission in its investigation.
“We also refer to section 7 of Act 456 in this same regard. We are gravely concerned by the Electoral Commission (EC) of Ghana’s handling of the nation’s scarce resources in the discharge of its duties, which conduct we believe amounts to “misappropriation”, “wastage”, and “misuse” of said resources.
“The EC’s conduct appears to us as evincing a conflict between its duties under various laws to judiciously apply the resources of this country for the good of the citizenry, on the one hand, and its tendency to take decisions favourable to various commercial vendors and transactors, on the other hand. Furthermore, we believe that the EC’s most recent conduct has been necessitated by a need to curtail transparency and accountability, and thus was motivated by a collective conflict of interest,” IMANI stated.
Attached below is the full petition to CHRAJ