Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has accused the Electoral Commission (EC) of disenfranchising students in the
Adding his voice to a similar concerns raised by the University Students Association of Ghana (USAG), Bawumia noted that during the 5-day process on campus, EC officials had been able to register about 400 students. This number according to him was very minuscule as compared to a âconservative number of about 8000 registrable studentsâ.
âThe first five days have registered about 400 people. There are about 8000 potential people to be registered.
âSome students are staying all day in the queue and sometimes not even getting to register at the end of the dayâ, he continued.
The vice presidential candidate blamed the âpractical disenfranchisementâ of the students on the EC not providing enough registration centers to serve the Legon campus of the University of Ghana.
âThis cannot be news to the EC, they should know this, they should have an idea how many potential registrable students there are on campus and plan appropriately for itâ.
Bawumia said he wanted to believe that this disenfranchisement was not a deliberate act, but said, it was âunbelievableâ the EC had just once centre on campus.
âIf you say youâre not doing it intentionally, practically youâre doing so. We need to bring in adequate registration centers to cater for the population of the campuses.â
Bawumia exhorted the EC to âdo the right thingâ and bring in more registration centers to the Legon Campus and other places where the âgo-slow was being experiencedâ.
Similar concerns were raised by Henry Nkosuo, the national president of USAG, who said it was âsick on the part of the ECâ to allocate a single registration center to the Legon campus of the University of Ghana.
He highlighted that for a campus with over 28, 000 students, a single registration center was greatly inadequate. According to him, an institution like UG should have about 5 registration centres.
Nkosuo also alleged that this was a deliberate attempt by the EC to limit the number of students who would be involved in the electioneering process come November.