How INEC Taught Ghana To Conduct Elections – Mahmood Yakubu

Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu, has claimed that Ghana’s decision to decentralise its electoral system was copied from Nigeria leading to a seamless election result announcement.

The INEC chief spoke as he commended the smooth conduct of the General Election in Ghana that led to the emergence of the opposition candidate, John Mahama in the presidential election.

GWG.ng reports that Yakubu who has been repeatedly flayed over the use of collation centres by INEC to manage elections in Nigeria was part of the observer team in Ghana.

Noting how constituency-level officers in Ghana were able to announce results leading to the easy computation of the results which he claimed was inspired by what INEC did in Nigeria, Yakubu said:

“The second thing for me is the lesson that Ghana also learned from Nigeria in the area of managing constituency election results. Until the last election in Ghana, all results came to the Electoral Commission’s headquarters in Accra, both parliamentary and presidential.

“Although Ghana is not a federal system, they learned from Nigeria, where you have returning officers who announce results for parliamentary elections in various constituencies around the country. Only the presidential election results come to Accra.

“In Nigeria, this is what we have done, and they borrowed a leaf from us, and this is the second time they are implementing that. That is why, as you can see, the declaration of the presidential election result was a lot faster than it used to be in the past,” he said.

Yakubu further observed the political stability inherent in Ghana’s democracy, noting the consistency of its political party structures and voter loyalty.

He cited the perseverance of the main opposition candidate, a former vice president, and the current President, Akufo-Addo, who contested multiple elections before achieving success.

“Rarely in Ghana do you see people moving from one party to another with every general election. So, that is important.

“It provides stability. It also provides their supporters with stability. So, there are people who have supported political parties for many years. Whether the party is in power or opposition, they stick to the political party,” the INEC chief said following the smooth conduct of the election in Ghana.

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