Candidates in the ongoing district level elections at the Sokpayiri electoral area in the Wa municipality of the Upper Region are demanding an apology from the Electoral Commission for failing to conduct the District Assembly and Unit Committee Elections in the area.
They also want to be compensated for the money they invested in the cancelled elections.
According to them, the electorate turned out in their numbers for the exercise only to meet electoral officials without ballot papers.
One of the aspirants, Salifu Anas, in a Citi News interview, said the EC officials informed them that their ballot papers could not be traced and that the election can not be held for that matter.
“We are about seven candidates in the race so the election is keenly contested. It is not easy, we have incurred a lot of cost in this election but just today, we wake up and realize that election cannot take off. We have also not been able to get a concrete response from the Electoral Commission. So the seven aspirants together with the Unit Committee members have come together to petition the EC to explain to us why they were unable to organize the election. They should come out and apologize and most importantly, compensate us because we have incurred a lot of cost.”
EC responds
Meanwhile, the Upper West Regional Director of the Electoral Commission, Ali Adamu Osman explained that the issue is an anomaly beyond his control.
He said the matter has been communicated to the EC head office in Accra for redress.
“We realised that, their Assembly ballot papers were not with us. Based on that, we are calling off the election so we print the ballot papers for the election. We have relayed the information to Accra, so when they print it, tehy will send it to us.”
When Citi News visited the electoral area, turn out was visibly low as people were not seen in queues in most of the polling stations Citi news visited.