The candidate of Ghana’s ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Akufo-Addo, on Saturday congratulated Prof. John Evans Atta Mills on his victory in the country’s crunch presidential election.
However, the losing candidate said that his party still had concerns about results in the Volta Region, Mills’ stronghold.
At a press conference here, Akufo-Addo criticised the Chairman of the Electoral Commission (EC), Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, for throwing out the party’s challenge of results in the Volta Region where, he claimed, there was widespread intimidation of its polling agents.
Dr Afari-Gyan said Prof. Mills polled 4,521,032 votes or 50.23 per cent while Nana Akufo-Addo had 4,480,446 votes or 49.77 per cent. Voter turnout was 72.91 per cent.
The declaration paves the way for Mills to be sworn in on Wednesday.
Dr Afari-Gyan said he looked at the evidence of the electoral fraud submitted by both parties, saying that the evidence submitted by the NPP bordered on criminality and fell outside the remit of the commission.
The NDC had also challenged results in Ashanti, Akufo-Addo’s stronghold.
He said: “The NDC failed to submit complete sets of polling station by polling station declaration result forms to enable a re-examination of the collated figures for the constituencies in Ashanti that they had complained about.
“In the purely electoral matters, the commission did not find the evidence provided to be sufficient to invalidate the result.”
But Akufo-Addo said he was surprised that Dr Afari-Gyan could arrive at such a conclusion.
He said that the results showed that he and Prof. Mills shared the votes and with him losing by some 40,000 votes, it was up to the EC to investigate the irregularities.
Prof. Mills, on his part, told a crowd of supporters that he would pray for God’s wisdom and humility to govern Ghana.
He said that he had accepted the challenge to be president and assured Ghanaians that he would be president for all.
“There will be no discrimination. Atta Mills will be father to everybody,” he said.
