Council Elections Hold in Taraba as Monitoring Group Kicks

Elections into the 16 Local Government Council sin Tara ba State takes place today. The exercise is expected to produce substantive members of the councils which include chairmen and council ors.

However, civil society organisations interested in monitoring the election complained that the state electoral commission was shrouding everything about the exercise in secrecy.

Campaign for the election peaked a few days ago with Governor Darius Ishaku joining street-to-street convoys of some candidates of the PDP in Wukari and Takum LGAs in his senatorial zone.

Friday was declared a workfree day in the state to enable the people, particularly civil servants to travel to their wards to vote. Gov. Ishaku also arrived Takum his hometown last night in order to be able to vote in his ward. He had earlier appealed to the people of the state to conduct themselves in a very mature manner during the election.

The PDP, the ruling party in the state, APC, SDP, APGA, Labour Party and several others are con testing in the election. The Local Government Councils in the state are currently being run by caretaker committee appointed by the governor.

However, Uncertainty pervaded the air yesterday with stakeholders lodging several complaints over the way the Gombe State Independent Elec- toral Commission (GOSIEC) is planning the Local Government Councils elections today.

Ibrahim Yusuf, Chairman of Civil Society Organisations in Gombe State, while addressing newsmen, alleged that the State electoral body had all along kept its activities secret especially the recruitmentofad-hocstaffforthe conduct of the election.

Earlier, a coalition of 10 opposition political parties in the state led by the all progressive CongressAPC, had on Tuesday approached GOSIEC with a complaintthattherulingPeoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) in the state was using Government machinery to twist the results of the election in their favour.

The Chairman of the Civil Society Organisations, while briefing the press, Thursday afternoon alleged that barely 24 hours before the election, all activities of the electoral body had been kept secret especially the recruitment of staff to oversee the conduct of the election.

According to him, “up till this morning, no list of these staff has been placed on their notice board and no official of the GOSIEC was on hand to make any explanation to us. We wrote them two weeks back including the National Orientation Agency (NOA) who also said they were not aware of anything. Nobody is just ready to respond to our demands”.