By Mohamed Kamara
A mirage of suspicion over the falsification of the Tribal Authorities list in the first gazette published by the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development is now the news the moment in most of the 24 chiefdoms scheduled to conduct paramount chieftaincy elections before or on June 6, 2022.
Aspirants, members, and supporters of the five ruling houses at Dibia Chiefdom have made reference names in a gazette of tribal Authorities published in February 2022 (names withheld) with prominent political positions in the Bio Administration included their names for the first time in the chiefdoms paramount chieftaincy Electioneering process. They argued that with reference to the Local Council Act, all Tribal Authorities whose names are mentioned in the gazette should ensure that they are a frequent taxpayer. They further claimed that the names in the gazettes were published before 2009 and 2019. Investigations have indicated that although they are indigenes of the Dibia Chiefdom, they have never paid their local tax in 2019, 2020, and 2021. They said this would have automatically disqualified them, however, the concerned indigenes told this medium that they have registered their concerns with the Ministry and hope that the errors contained in the first gazette being will be corrected in the final gazette or else they will out rightly use the media and CSO’s to name names. They also called for fairness in the process. In response to these allegations, the Ministry of Local Government said all concerns raised by indigenes of the various chiefdoms in respect of the tribal authority list(TA) would be treated with great concern by the ministry and corrected where possible
