EC office shut after gunshots

Police in the Northern Region have closed the offices of the Electoral Commission (EC) in the Tamale South sub-metropolis as they hunt for gun-toting assailants who disrupted the election management body’s vote transfer exercise on Thursday with gunshots.

Reports indicate that some students of the University of Development Studies who went to the offices of the EC to have their votes transferred were intimidated by gun-wielding men who prevented them from undertaking the exercise on Thursday October 6.

Some of the students claimed the attackers issued threats to kill them if they went ahead to vote on December 7.

One of the students said she “saw some men in cars coming this way as we queued and waited to be served by the EC officials and all we realised were two men coming towards us with a pinch bar and sticks and shouting, ‘If you value your lives, stay in your university and learn’”.

Confirming the incident in an interview with Emefa Apawu on Class FM’s 505 news programme, Northern Regional Police PRO, ASP Ebenezer Tetteh, explained that “the gunshots were fired into the air to apparently scare away the people who had converged to have their votes transferred”.

He indicated that no suspect had been arrested by the police but investigations were ongoing and the police were widening their search to have the culprits arrested.

He indicated that no injuries had been recorded yet as a result of the shooting incident.

“As we speak now, we have not arrested anybody. We have also not received any complaints of injuries as a result of the gunshots that were fired,” he disclosed.