Gombe Council elections: Opposition parties want EFCC to investigate GOSIEC

A coalition of opposition political parties in Gombe State, yesterday called on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to immediately commence the investigation of the Gombe State Independent Electoral Commission (GOSIEC) over failure to conduct the Local Council election on Saturday.

The election, according to the Coalition’s spokesman and Acting Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Alhaji Idi Barde Gubana, was not held as there was never a release of election materials as well as casting of votes after the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) led Gombe State Government expended millions of Naira for the election.

Alhaji Idi Barde said, “it is needless to inform you that the Gombe state Government has voted millions of Naira specifically for the conduct of this election and now that election has not been conducted, we call upon the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to investigate the whereabouts of these monies and to prosecute anybody found to have misappropriated the public funds meant for the council election.

“The coalition of political parties call upon GOSIEC to immediately refund all monies collected from candidates for the purpose of participating in the Local Government election since there was no election anywhere in the State. We paid no less than N25 million non refundable fees for all our candidates in the APC alone”.

GOSIEC was said to have collected N500, 000; N250, 000 and N150, 000 for candidates seeking election to the position of the eleven Chairmanship seats, their deputies as well as the 114 councillorship positions of the State respectively.

The coalition of opposition political parties comprising, AD, DPP, PDC, PRP, ADC, UDP, ACPN, PPN, KOWA and APC also noted that despite several complaints made individually and collectively to the electoral commission before the Election Day did not receive any attention from the commission.

But responding to the allegations, the Commissioner in charge of Public Affairs at GOSIEC, Mr. Kalagar Kudi Lubo told journalists that there was peaceful conduct of the election throughout the State capital. He explained further that there was delay in the release of election materials in some areas because of security concerns which he added was later taken care of and said results would be announced in due course.

As at the time of filing this report, announcement of results of the elections were still being awaited.

END.