Update: Polls in one electoral area in Ekumfi called off after tyre-burning leaders fume ‘we are tired of voting’

Update: The Electoral Commission has called off polls in Immuna, an electoral area in Ekumfi in the Central region after violent protests.

Billowing smoke from burning tyres clutches the sky inside Ekumfi in the Central Region, where some opinion leaders furiously insist, ‘there shall be no elections for assembly members’.

They are fuming over a sense of exclusion from national development and importance only seen when elections are close.

So, on the day when district-level elections are being held across the country, Ekumfi is holding out.

The leaders have summoned fire and the gods, pouring libation to call on their deities to ‘come and support them carry out this action’, JoyNews Central regional correspondent Richard Kwadwo Nyarko has reported.

“It is action-packed,” he said on a day when political analysts have revived their fears that apathy in local level elections has reached a crisis point.

But in Ekumfi. it is an action-packed apathy.

Photo: A busload of used tyres is parked as fuel for the fires

The leaders of this hijacking of the polls fumed that they have had to watch for too long, their harvested crops go waste in the farms because of bad roads.

The reporter called it “incalculable losses.” And the residents say they have complained and complained and complained but it is plain to them, governments just don’t care.

And so, days to the elections when they began to see assembly member aspirants fixing streetlights and levelling stubborn roads, they felt patronised, the reporter narrated.

“They don’t want to elect anybody” Kwadwo Nyarko relayed their conclusion to their frustration and stressed on the length of their resolve.

“They are willing to demonstrate all day,” the reporter told JoyNews.

Electoral officials dispatched to the area have not set up, fearing the violence. There is also no police officer to make peaceful overtures to the ill-tempered leaders.

The leaders say Monday’s disturbance is a dress rehearsal for 2020 when big-name politicians invade their town with fresh concern for their over-flogged problems.