EC must tell Ghanaians how its system got hacked in 2016 – Mahama

According to him, the EC must publish all details regarding its investigations into the hacking of its transmission system during the last elections.

This, he said, is very necessary in order to restore voter confidence and to promote transparency going into the 2020 general elections.

Mahama made the comment during a presentation at the Saïd Business School, Oxford University, organised in collaboration with the African Studies Centre and the Oxford Africa.

John Dramani Mahama Pulse Ghana

“As I speak, I am not aware that the Electoral Commission has carried out any investigation into what compromised their IT system. And even if they have, we the stakeholders, the political parties, have not been briefed on what caused the corruption of the system,” he said.

“In the interest of transparency, it is important for Ghanaians to understand what happened before we go into another election.”

During the 2016 elections, the EC struggled to declare the results, a clear 12 hours after voting had closed.

The EC chair at the time, Charlotte Osei subsequently broke her silence with an excuse that their systems had been compromised for which reason she could not continue with the electronic transmission of the results.

Although she did not reveal what caused the compromise, she announced that the electronic transmission of the results was being ditched for the manual process.

The Commission also took to Twitter to condemn what it said were attempts to attack its website.