Mohammed Sayibu Bob addressing journalists in Yendi
SOME YOUTH believed to be affiliated to the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Yendi constituency have vandalised the party office and other properties.
The youth destroyed posters of Farouk Aliu Mahama, party billboards, chairs, among other properties belonging to the party.
The youth accused the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Yendi constituency, Farouk Aliu Mahama, of trying to manipulate the polling station elections in the constituency.
According to them, the MP manipulated the polling station elections register to ensure that his preferred people are elected to run the affairs of the constituency.
Some have also suggested that party faithful, who are supporters of Hajia Abibata Shanni Mahama Zakaria, the Chief Executive Officer of the Microfinance and Small Loans Centre (MASLOC), have been taken off the register because they might not vote for the incumbent MP, Farouk Aliu Mahama, during the party’s primaries.
Mohammed Abdulai Fuseini, Electoral Area Coordinator for Yendi SHS, at a press briefing said, “We have seen a register on social media purported to come from the MP and his followers, telling us that this is the register they have for the constituency, but before that we were told that no existing polling station executive will be removed from the register, but the register on social media now has removed about 165 existing polling station executives from it.”
He indicated that the register on social media had names of family; friends and people who do not vote at the various polling stations.
“If you look at our law, it says that before somebody becomes a polling station executive he/she should be a voter at that polling station, but what do we see now? Somebody will be voting at Yendi SHS and is made a polling station executive at a different polling station,” he disclosed.
Mr. Fuseini hinted that the existing polling station executives would resist any attempt by the regional executives to change the polling station register.
“If the regional executives have been bought we want to tell them that we cannot be bought, because we have been loyal to the party for a very long time and we are truly party members, and we are not going to allow this to happen to our party,” he stressed.
Mr. Mohammed Sayibu Bob, a polling station secretary, wondered why their polling station register is put together in Tamale instead of Yendi.
“We won’t allow or accept the register we are seeing in this constituency, because it was an agreement and what we are seeing in the register is totally different from what we agreed, so if they insist to use that register they will hear from us, in fact how can you pick someone and the wife, plus his brother and sister can you imagine? This is family and friends register and we won’t accept it,” he added.
FROM Eric Kombat, Yendi