Felicia Adjei
The mass registration exercise
currently being carried out by the National Identification Authority (NIA) in
the Bono, Bono East and Ahafo regions turned chaotic when the opposition
National Democratic Congress (NDC) Member of Parliament (MP) for Kintampo South,
Felicia Adjei, disrupted it with heavily built men, aka macho men.
The unruly incident occurred at one
of the centres at Jema, the district capital of Kintampo South.
The MP stormed the centre with some
NDC constituency executives and macho men to disrupt the exercise, forcing the
NIA officials to end the exercise for the day.
The NDC MP and her macho men allegedly
rained insults on and assaulted the NIA officials on
duty, making officers of the authority to run for their lives.
An official complaint was lodged
with the police but no arrest had been made as of press time on Saturday.
The NDC MP in the company of her
constituency chairman and secretary as well as macho men entered the Jema
Methodist Primary registration centre last Saturday at about 11:24 am and
suddenly began accusing the personnel of making ‘the system too slow’ and also
registering only New Patriotic Party (NPP) members.
The legislator, who first
introduced herself as part of the committee in Parliament responsible for the
exercise, engaged the NIA officials in verbal exchanges which led to the
unfortunate incident.
“At about 11:24 am, I saw a V-8
vehicle coming towards the registration centre. When it reached the centre, the
MP and about six persons came out of the vehicle. She first asked one of the
officers why our system was too slow,” an NIA official at the scene of the
incident told DAILY GUIDE on condition of anonymity.
“It was explained to her that it
was not the case that the system was slow but rather the long procedures that
one needed to through rather made the exercise slow. The MP was not satisfied
with the explanation and started murmuring and so the officer asked her to talk
to the Supervising Registration Officer (SRO), who is responsible for the
centre,” the source said.
“Then one of the macho men who came
with her queried the officer for speaking on top of his voice with the
MP.Then all of a sudden, one of the macho men hit one of our Card Verification
Officers (CVO). It appears to me that it was carefully planned just to cause
commotion and disrupt our work because we have not recorded any such incident
here ever since we started,” the source narrated.
“I am an NDC member, my sister even
holds an executive position in the NDC but the truth is that it is never true
that we are only registering NPP members because we don’t ask anyone his/her
party affiliation before we begin the process. Surprisingly, the MP stood
unconcerned while her boys insulted and assaulted us,” the source
said.
Two other NIA officials told the
paper that “the incident really happened and after that the exercise was
halted.”
The MP, when reached by the police
for her comments, said it was not her ‘intention’ to cause confusion at the
centre.
When contacted, the police confirmed the incident and said they were investigating it.
FROM Daniel Y Dayee, Kintampo
