The newly appointed National Deputy Director of Information Technology, IT, of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Stephen Forson, has rejected claims that he manipulated the 2015 University of Ghana Students Representative Council, SRC, elections.
According to him, the allegations are mere fabrications being promoted by the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), who have become wary of him joining the already formidable NPP IT team.
In a statement copied to GhanaWeb, the NPP deputy IT director said that the NDC compelled him to rig the SRC election, which he refused to do. As a result, the NDC ordered the Bureau of National Investigations to look into the incident (BNI).
“NDC in power then had tried to coerce me to manipulate a software I developed in favour of their sponsored candidate to win the SRC elections. For the purposes of Accountability and Transparency, I refused the offer and submitted to the school a software that ensured a free and fair elections, despite the threat on my life and that of my family.
“The NDC became apprehensive after failing to win that election for their sponsored candidate and immediately begun a political witch-hunt against myself, my crew, and my family. They caused the BNI to pick me up from my house for having developed a software that didn't favour a government in power,” parts of the statement read.
He further stated that the BNI, after a series of interrogations and investigations, could not charge him with any crime because he was innocent.
“The University of Ghana, based on the unbridled allegations of the NDC apparatchiks, conducted its own full-fledged IT investigation into the matter and still found no wrongdoing on my part. In fact, the University ascertaining the credibility of my system allowed me to work with the Students Union for several years. I have since worked with almost all tertiary institutions across the country. I have built extremely complex systems for corporate institutions both in the private and public sectors,” he added
Stephen Forson made these remarks after a systems analyst programmer, Yayra Koku, who was hired to look into the 2015 UG election fraud, said that his investigation of the incident pointed to the fact that the now NPP deputy director of IT manipulated the system in favour of one of the contestants.
In a post shared on Facebook on August 27, 2022, Yayra Koku also alleged that the person the election was rigged for is an NPP member who now works at the National Lotteries Authority (NLA).
“I was hired as a systems analyst and a cybersecurity consultant to help investigate an alleged rigging of Legon SRC elections using an electronic voting system developed by Stephen Forson.
“After 2hrs of interrogations and accessing the system, it was detected that a line of code was put in the system to benefit one guy called Fobi, a member of the NPP and now working at Sammy Awukus's office. Though Stephen Forson denied ever putting that code there, it was obvious the last update on the file had his laptop credentials.
“I remember asking him to “uncomment” a line in his code and vote for the other contestant. To our surprise, after voting, Fobi rather got the vote,” parts of the post read.
He added that the 2015 election fraud has not been resolved to date.
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Newly appointed National Deputy Director of IT of NPP, Stephen Forson