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Politics of Saturday, 5 May 2012

Source: GNA

Border dwellers need education to stop cross border registrations-NPP

Mr Richard Kwadekpo, Head of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Communication Team in Ho-Central Constituency, has called for regular education of dwellers in border communities to stop crisscrossing borders to register for political polls.

He said observations by NPP agents at the various Biometric Registration Centres in the border communities along the Ghana-Togo frontier, especially to the east of Ho, indicates that the practice was rife and might have been going on for some time.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA), Mr Kwadekpo said the incentive to acquire the ballot cards of either country include propping preferred political parties of compatriots on the other sides of the border, baits of cash or materials and easy identification and acceptance at the borders.

Mr Kwadekpo said, NPP Agents at Shia, Atikpui, Nyive and other border communities had had to file many challenge forms to protest the registration of people thought to be non-Ghanaians.

He said it was regrettable that political appointees, acting in concert with some public officers, would seek to facilitate such cross border registrations to the detriment of their individual and national morality and integrity.

Mr Kwadekpo alleged that the NDC had caused announcements to be made in Nyete and Zukpe, as well as other communities in Togo, urging people to cross over and register in Ghana for gifts such as bars of key soap, cutlasses, and cash.

He said the Togolese were also enticed with supposed services they could enjoy free of charge in Ghana by obtaining the Biometric Voters Cards.

Mr Kwadekpo said, funerals and Church progammes were also used as pretext to get people from Togo to come over to register in the constituency.

Mr Kwadekpo dismissed as “mischievous and without merit” media reports that the NPP was buying registration cards from people in the constituency in order to disenfranchise them.

He said those assertions defied any logic.**