The New Patriotic Party (NPP) parliamentary candidates for Okaikoi South, North and Central Constituencies in Accra are going back to parliament after securing another four-year term each in this year’s polls.
Patrick Boamoah, the party’s parliamentary candidate for Okaikoi Central, polled 28,505 of total votes cast to edge out his closest contender, Abdul Rashid Issah of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), who had 17,630 votes.
Two other parliamentary hopefuls – Michael Miraku Sasu of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) and Sophia T. Annan, Convention People’s Party (CPP), managed 246 and 94 votes respectively.
For the presidential election, Ivor Greenstret of the CPP had 73; Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, National Democratic Congress (NDP), 20; John Mahama, National Democratic Congress (NDC), 19,353; Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom, Progressive People’s Party (PPP), (478); Nana Akufo-Addo, (NPP) 26,603; Dr. Edward Mahama, People’s National Convention (PNC) 14 and Jacob Osei Yeboah, (independent) 9; and 206 ballots were rejected.
In the Okaikoi South Constituency, the incumbent NPP Member of Parliament (MP), Ahmed Arthur, garnered 36,000 of the total votes cast to secure another 4-year term in parliament, beating NDC’s Alexander Akuako.
Mr. Boamah, speaking to newsmen, said his victory is an opportunity to serve his constituents and was grateful to God for a successful collation of the results.
He said he’s optimistic that Nana Addo would finally be declared the president-elect of the country.
Earlier, confusion rocked the collation process when the NPP representative at the Ghana Telecom University collation centre raised an alarm over the disappearance of 140 ballots which were in favour of Nana Addo.
The party had identified what it termed “thievery” when it was handed a final copy of the print-out of the presidential results to cross-check before they were transferred to the Electoral Commission (EC).
This gave rise to minutes of heated argument between the EC officials and the IT officials and the NPP representatives compelled them to call for police officers to be deployed to the scene.
The NPP parliamentary candidate for Okaikoi North, Fuseini Issah, retained the seat for the party.
He polled 28,083, as against his closest contender, NDC’s Abdul Razak Issah, who had 23, 617.
Fuseini Issah is replacing Elizabeth Sackey who decided not to seek re-election during the NPP’s primary.
Ahmed Arthur is the incumbent MP for Okaikoi South.
By Jeffrey De-Graft Johnson