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Interesting details have started emerging, barely four days after potential presidential and parliamentary candidates of the various political as well as independent candidates set the office of the Electoral Commission bubbly in their attempt to serve the people, about how some who race to the Commission went there oblivious of the baggage trailing them.

One such person is the defeated parliamentary aspirant of the Afram Plains South Constituency, and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Food Buffer Stock Company (NAFCO), Eric Osei Owusu, who, smarting under the mysterious withdrawal  of the candidature of the incumbent Member of Parliament (MP) and the winner of the primary in the area, Joseph Appiah Boateng, raced to the office of the  commission to file his nomination forms without purging himself off a power theft case hanging around his neck.

Somewhere August 2007, Eric Osei-Owusu, then Proprietor of the Coliseum Nightclub, near the Tetteh Quarshie Interchange was arrested for illegal connection of electricity.

Under the headline: “Nightclub Owner Held Over Illegal Connection”, the State-run Daily Graphic reported in its 20 August edition, that “Eric is also alleged to have been “supplying the illegal power to two churches which have been housed by the Coliseum for between 400,000 cedis and 500,000 cedis monthly” for a year.

The story continued that “Briefing journalists in Accra on Monday, the Head of the Fraud Unit of the Criminal Investigations Department at the Police Headquarters, Chief Superintendent Abdulai Mohammed said the police on acting upon a tip off carried out an operation at the premises of the nightclub”.

He said it was detected that the room which the electricity meters were fixed was under lock and key, thereby heightening the suspicion of the police.

He said when the police demanded the key to the room; the caretaker could not supply it, forcing the police to break into the room where they detected the crime.

The Senior Public Relations Officer of the Electricity Company of Ghana, Erasmus Kyere Baidoo said Eric would be charged with power theft.

He said Eric had evaded the payment of tariffs amounting to 250 million cedis and said the Revenue Protection Unit of the ECG had intensified its operations to track down all such economic saboteurs.

“We wish to warn that the exercise to track down persons who indulge in such illegal practices is ongoing and it will soon reach hotels and barbering shops”, he said.

Nine years on, this case is resurrecting to haunt the man who wants to represent the people of Afram Plains South. What became of the case remains a puzzle but tongues are wagging as to why a man who has had run-ins with the law is now moving heavens down to be the people’s representative in the august house of legislature.

Heady days to the real do, some party executives in the constituency are gearing up to drag the National Food Buffer Stock Company to court to explain what become of his power theft case and why he is bent on representing the people.

Meanwhile, all efforts to reach Mr. Osei Owusu for his response to the allegation flying over his head proved futile. Stay tuned.