NPP Or NDC? Court Decides

One of the parliamentary seats in Dagbon that NPP campaign managers were quite sure their party would win in the December '04 elections was the Mion Constituency. The NDC snatched the seat by a very slim majority.

The NPP candidate relying on Article 99 of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana and the Representation of the Peoples Law 1992, PNDCL 284 petitioned the results which a High Court in Tamale has been hearing since January 2005.

Mr Mahama Negin Kwasi Samuel, the NPP candidate's petition stood on the grounds that the following results did not truly reflect the will of the people:

Mabe Yarbey Gabriel - 587

Mahama Negin Kwasi Samuel - 10,307

Alhassan Ahmed Yakubu - 10,568 NDC

Alabira Ibrahim - 4,616 CPP

Abu E Mush - 956 INDC

Sulemana Abu -

These figures showed Alhassan Ahmed Yakubu as having been duly elected. The Mion Constituency comprises 69 polling stations including Bofoyili from where the petitioner hails and resides. From the register printing checklist prepared by the Electoral Commission the village Bofoyili had 984 voters registered which was subsequently confirmed in the declaration of the voting results at the polling station.

On 6th December 2004 the Electoral Commission informed the parliamentary candidates for Mion Constituency that the ballot papers received for Mion Constituency were short and that they would be made good in the course of the voting on the 7th of December 2004.

However, no further ballot papers were brought to Bofoyili with and consequently only 650 ballot papers reached Bofoyili registering a shortfall of 334 of what was required for proper voting at that polling station. The result was that many voters who turned up to vote could not vote.