Three arrested as Court Injunction, Electoral Commission withdrawal fail to halt Bantama poll chaos

Man in handcuffs escorted by uniformed officers as a crowd watches at an outdoor event.”,

By Yaw Opoku Amoako July 12, 2026

Police have taken three individuals into custody following a violent disruption of the New Patriotic Party’s Bantama constituency executive election, with authorities charging the detainees with orchestrating the destruction of voting materials and assaulting election officials at the Kumasi Cultural Centre on Saturday.

People stand and sit on a tiled patio, with scattered broken chairs and colorful bins in the foreground after an event at a decorative building.

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The arrested individuals have been identified as Shaibu Bamba, serving as Constituency Organiser, and Abu, who held the position of Adoato Polling Station Chairman. A third suspect remains unidentified pending further investigation.

Eyewitness accounts describe how the three, accompanied by what observers characterised as heavily muscled individuals, breached the inner perimeter of the polling centre and commenced systematic destruction of ballot boxes and ballot papers.

Election officials attempting to maintain order sustained physical assault, with one officer absorbing injuries to the foot sufficiently severe to necessitate emergency transport to Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital.

The disruption unfolded against a backdrop of institutional fragmentation. A court injunction had reportedly been placed upon the Bantama election, a judicial restraint apparently designed to prevent the polling process from proceeding.

Crowd gathers around a blue police pickup with officers in black uniforms and red-and-black shoulder cords near tents and trees.

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Simultaneously, the Electoral Commission had withdrawn its institutional support for the election, signalling that the party apparatus was conducting the exercise without the Commission’s sanction or oversight.

Yet elements within party leadership proceeded regardless of both judicial and institutional restraint. Police personnel were deployed early Saturday morning to monitor the election, suggesting that security authorities recognised potential for disorder and sought to maintain presence throughout the polling process.

A dramatic institutional reversal altered that calculus. Ashanti Regional Police Commander DCOP Osei Akoto Arthur visited the polling centre and issued orders directing the withdrawal of police personnel from the premises. As officers prepared to depart, the disruption commenced — heavily built individuals entered the facility and began vandalising voting materials with apparent coordination and purpose.

The temporal and spatial proximity between police withdrawal and the eruption of violence has prompted questions regarding whether the commander’s decision facilitated the subsequent disruption.

Sources have suggested that the court injunction and Electoral Commission withdrawal had created uncertainty regarding the election’s legal legitimacy, potentially influencing the police commander’s judgment that security presence was no longer warranted.

The voting process has been halted entirely.

The election’s resumption or cancellation now awaits determination by the party’s National Executive Council, an institutional body possessed of authority to override constituency-level processes and impose national party discipline on disputed elections.

The incident illuminates the collision between judicial authority, party institutional processes and security force discretion when factional disputes within political organisations escalate into violence.

The court injunction represented clear judicial instruction; the Electoral Commission withdrawal signalled institutional disapproval; yet the election proceeded until violent disruption rendered continuation impossible.

The police commander’s withdrawal order remains the subject of investigation and institutional scrutiny, with observers questioning whether security force presence might have prevented or deterred the violence that materialised following their departure.