Emmanuel Bonney (left), Staff Writer with the Daily Graphic, interacting with Lawrence Lotsu Sebuabey, a registered voter, during the exercise. Picture: ESTHER ADJORKOR ADJEI

Retiree urges citizens to show interest in voter exhibition

Emmanuel Bonney Politics Nov - 07 - 2023 , 09:17

An 83-year old retired technician of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) has charged Ghanaians to make it a civic duty to check their names in the ongoing voter exhibition exercise.

The pensioner, Lawrence Lotsu Sebuabey, who has participated in every election after completing secondary school in 1962, said there was the need for all Ghanaians to show active interest in the process to elect leaders of the country.

"If you do not do that who do you expect to fight for you," Mr Sebuabey told the Daily Graphic yesterday after walking under the scorching sun to go and check his name in the voter register at the Osu Home Junior High School.

That was after a Daily Graphic team visited some voter exhibition centres in Accra to ascertain the level of participation.

Idle

During the visit to the centres, the team saw electoral officers sitting idle at all the centres visited.

It was only at two centres that two individuals, a male and female visited to check their names.

The centres visited included the St Barnabas Primary School, Osu Manhean Junior High School (JHS), Osu Home Primary & JHS and the Male Dada Primary & JHS and African Unity centres.

At all the centres, electoral officers were idle waiting for registered voters to come and check their names.

Centres

At the St Barnabas School where there are three centres; 1A, 1B and 2, three persons, a male and two females had checked their names last Friday.

A total of 42 persons (30 males and 12 females) had checked their names at 1B as of 10 a.m. yesterday.

Centre 1A, however, had 30 people (16 males and 14 females) checking their names as of yesterday.

Meanwhile, there are a total of 406 people on the voter roll for Centre 1A, 405 for Centre 1B in the 2020 register and six people in the 2023 register.

Centre 2 has 127 persons in the 2020 register and 28 for the 2023 register.

At Osu Mahean, 25 people had checked their names at the time of the Daily Graphic visit.

The centre has a total of 565 people in the 2020 register.

The names of 58 other registered voters had also been transferred to the area.

The Osu Home JHS had recorded no voter showing up as at 11 a.m. yesterday. In all, about 12 people had also checked their names.

The Osu Home Primary School with two centres — A&B, had a total of 98 people checking their names.

Fifty were for Centre A and the 48 for Centre B. Eight persons had checked their names as of yesterday.

The total number for Centre B is 436 and then Centre A, 439.

Only one person had checked his names at the Male Dada JHS which has 495 registered voters on the list, at the time of the visit.

The primary school has 652 and the African Unity School, 479.

Meanwhile, the registration exercise is expected to end on Tuesday, November 7, 2023.

Importance

Mr Sebuabey noted that it was very important for people to exercise their civil responsibility when it came to electoral matters.

In 1996, he said he had to travel all the way from Tarkwa to come to Accra to vote because he did not want to miss the voting.

“It is a civic duty that should be undertaken by all of us,” he emphasised and indicated that those who were yet to check their names did not know their duties as citizens and the importance of voting.

“I have not missed any election since I Ieft secondary school (St Peter’s).

I don’t remember missing any.

Moreso, I don’t belong to any political party, I am a free thinker,” he said.

Asked how he made his decision, he said he looked at the prevailing situation to vote.

He worked at GBC for 40 years.

In Osu Manhean, Gladys Bortey and Evelyn Nyarko, two registered voters, who were yet to check their names, said they would do it before the close of the exercise.