Franklin Cudjoe, Executive Director of the IMANI Centre for Policy and Education, has formally petitioned the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) to conduct an investigation into the Electoral Commission.
The suit, filed on Tuesday, May 6, 2025, claims the EC of “constitutional, statutory, and administrative breaches” relating to the contentious disposal of election equipment as junk.
In the petition submitted by Cudjoe, IMANI claims that the EC failed its fiduciary obligation to handle state resources responsibly, which is especially important given Ghana’s present economic woes under an IMF-supervised fiscal program.
“This morning, I instructed IMANI to submit a petition to CHRAJ requesting an investigation into the Electoral Commission’s conduct regarding what has now become known as the infamous ‘firesale of electoral equipment for scrap’ scandal,” tweeted Franklin Cudjoe. “In a period where Ghana is struggling to meet its debt obligations, such reckless management of public assets is unacceptable.”
The think tank chastised the EC for prematurely retiring and discarding tens of thousands of valued gadgets, including laptops, fingerprint verifiers, scanners, printers, and digital cameras, the majority of which cost more than $3,000 each. IMANI claims that these items may have been recycled for use by other government entities or disposed of publicly in compliance with the Public Procurement Act.
According to the petition, the EC’s decision appears to be motivated by reasons that contradict its legal and ethical responsibilities.
“We expressed deep concern that the EC’s actions reflect a conflict between its legal duty to safeguard public resources and an apparent preference for decisions that benefit certain commercial interests,” according to the petition.
IMANI further claimed that the EC’s activities were part of a larger effort to disguise its procurement history and destroy data that would contradict the narrative it presented throughout the 2020 election cycle. At the time, civil society organisations had contested the EC’s claims that the technology in question, which dated back to 2011, was outmoded.
“We believe the EC’s disposal practices were designed, in part, to conceal inventory records and physical evidence that contradicted years of deceptive comments. Furthermore, they permitted possible profiteering by private benefactors, which is a textbook example of corruption, defined as the abuse of public office for private benefit,” IMANI claimed.
