Parties must disband their Vigilante groups – EC

The Chairman of the Electoral Commission, Jean Mensa has called for the disbandment of all vigilante groups.

According to her, lessons learnt from the just ended Ayawaso by- election requires that all citizens and especially party leaders, take all processional measures to ensure peaceful and crime free events.

“I think we need to call on our parties to do away with the vigilantism and call on our citizens to condemn it, because I think the peace of this country thank any political interest or any”, she stated.

“It’s also important for the political parties to ensure that they disband their vigilante groups, if we look at the history and what even happened at Ayawaso its centering around this sort of thing. If you look at what transpired at the polling station it was not a fault on the part of police officers, it was not because of the misconduct of any of the presiding officers or election officers”, she maintained.

She revealed to the Emile Short commission that the EC, as part of efforts to ensure peaceful elections in 2020, will do their best to engage the security agencies ahead of the polls such that, adequate measures are adopted and a repeat of such clashes are averted.

“On the part of the Electoral Commission also, we will continue to engage the security agencies and provide them with the flash points to ensure that they take adequate measures”.

In the meantime, she advised that,“We must educate the public and empower the citizens to inform the proper agencies of early warning signs”.

“It’s very important to ensure that we are all responsible”, she added.