Did journalists count ballots at the polling station?-Umaru Sanda asks NDC

One of the fast-rising plucky journalists, Umaru Sanda Amadu, the host of Face to Face on CitiTV has questioned the National Democratic Congress over their call for the EC to annul the 2020 presidential results.

As we all know, the largest opposition party, NDC following the election results declaration by the Electoral Commission has come out to reject it. They deem it to be flawed and rigged in favour of the NPP.

The flagbearer of the party John Mahama during a press meeting a week ago underlined that the NDC will not accept the outcome of the elections announced by Jean Mensa.

He explains there were many inconsistencies of the EC during the voting exercise insisting that the results are flawed and highly discredited by the many Ghanaians who voted for him.

Mahama in his speech whiles addressing journalists mentioned that Jean Mensa declared over 100% of the results which he said is a clear cause of wrongful act on her side.

The former president again stated Jean Mensah in haste declared the election results thus favouring his political opponent, President-elect Nana Akufo-Addo to win the elections.

Again, the NDC, through its General Secretary Johnson Asiedu Nketiah during one of their press conferences hours after the declaration attacked the media for scheming with EC to rig the elections.

According to him, some media houses soiled their reputation and took on the ‘armor’ of unprofessionalism to go against the ethics of their field of work to be used by the NPP to win.

Reacting to this, Umaru Sanda Amadu believes the NDC’s claims cannot hold water in the sense that elections are not by any means conducted by the media. As a matter of fact, they (media) do not declare election results.

He mentioned that the media only go to report on certified counted ballots by the EC at various polling centres and at best, report on the conduct and maybe project who will win, based on what the EC officials declare at the end of collation.

The journalist voiced out his concerns regards to the NDC’s unnecessary attack on the media on social media in a long post. Take time and read the full writings;

“Dear NDC supporters,
Media houses do not conduct elections. They do not declare election results. At best, they report on the conduct and maybe project who will win, based on what the EC officials declare at the end of Voting or collation.

Media houses are not by law, entitled to copies of the pink sheets. Your party agents are. It is therefore shocking that your leaders are inciting you against us. They are simply passing the buck and I urge you not to pay heed.

Hold your party leaders responsible for your defeat (albeit disputed). If there is anything we learnt from the 2012 Election Petition, it is that ELECTIONS ARE WON AT THE POLLING STATION.

Did you see journalists counting ballots at the POLLING Station? Why blame us then? We only tabulated what the EC confirmed.
I see some of you saying media houses should come out with their independent tallied results. That is so flawed, it feels pathetic.

There were over 38,000 polling stations this election. No media house has sent up to 1,000 journalists to cover the election. Team Citi did around 400. How can we have a parallel tally with 400 people against 38k stations?

I know your party had at least, 1 agent in all the polling stations. Yet, we still haven’t seen your party’s independent tally sheet. This is the same thing that the NPP keeps mocking you about after you lost 2016. They say you didn’t have an independent collated results.

It turns out, your party leaders haven’t learnt from 2016. So they keep screaming that they’ve been cheated, yet, there is no hard collated results to prove this. That’s disappointing for a party that ushered us into democracy.