A total of 120 monitors across the country have been trained as part of the project, which is being implemented by three civil society organisations (CSOs) - The Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), and GACC.

The training, which was concurrently held in Accra, Kumasi, and Tamale by the three CSOs sought to equip participants with the requisite skills and tools to effectively monitor campaigns of political parties and report their funding and abuse of incumbency.

The goal of the project is to scrutinise expenditures, the misuse of state resources, and vote-buying practices, which are persistent issues in Ghanaian elections.

Misuse of State assets, media manipulation and the use of security forces by incumbent governments are common practices which undermine fair competition and fuel electoral fraud.

Also, the rising cost of political campaigns has been exacerbated over the last three decades, prompting CSOs to demand comprehensive reforms to address the current legal framework which has several loopholes, allowing donations to bypass political parties to candidates, thereby undermining transparency and accountability.

The data collected by the monitors will therefore be crucial in supporting post-election advocacy and reform initiatives. Participants drawn from Ashanti and Bono Regions attended the Kumasi training which was supervised by the GACC.

Mr. Solomon Nyankah, Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, GACC, explained that the training would focus on two main activities which included Campaign Finance Monitoring (CFM) to provide a systematic estimate of the cost of presidential campaigns and Abuse of State Resources (ASR), an estimate to what extent the incumbent party uses state resources to campaign

The CFM, according to him, covers 41 constituencies purposely sampled from the country's 275 constituencies, with the ASR covering 87 constituencies randomly selected using a stratified sampling method.

Mr Nyankah said each monitor would be provided with a tablet for data collection and an amount of GHS 500.00 for the months of September, October, and November with an additional GHS 100.00 for internet data during the period.

He noted that taxpayers' monies were used by some politicians for their campaigns and that the project would help educate citizens to appreciate the need to reject any form of vote buying in the upcoming elections.