Filson Awankwa, a defeated regional chairman aspirant of the New Patriotic Party(NPP) in the Upper East Region has attributed his loss to the monetization of the election.

The engineer and leading member of the NPP in the Upper East Region polled 42 votes in the recently held Regional Executive Elections, sealing his second failure to be elected regional chairman after a similar defeat in 2018.

Speaking on Dreamz Fm in Bolgatanga,  Mr Awankwa said his fortunes were crashed a few hours before the elections when another Chairmanship aspirant doled out huge sums of money to delegates.

He intimated that the juicy offer made to the delegates effectively collapsed his chances which hitherto pointed to him winning the elections.

“In fact I lost the election on the day of the election. Anyone who followed the NPP campaign in the region from the day of the opening of nomination even before then, the national security report, NIB report and even the Jubilee House Director of Research report and a report by even the party’s young guys in the system all showed the gap between me and my opponents was very wide,” he said.

Narrating how he panicked when he saw bundles of cash being carried to delegates lodging at a hotel in Bolgatanga, Filson Awankwa stated that he felt helpless because he could not raise any more money to counter what was being offered to delegates.

“I went to one of the [hotels] where some constituency executives were lodging. I had gone there to greet them in the morning because they had come from far and possibly to give them some breakfast as the norm. When I and my team were leaving the hotel just across the Premier Lodge area there, one of my team members told me ‘Chairman Chairman turn and look’. When I turned the money that I saw I panicked and there and then I realized I lost. An aspiring chairman group was entering when I was exiting. I was like so NPP we have this kind of money in the region? Such money should go into the general election to help the party beat the NDC and not to help a fellow party man beat another. It was scary,” he told host Albert Azongo.

The expression of shock by the aspirant follows similar concerns raised by the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Buffer Stock Company Alhaji Abdul-Hanan Adoliba.

Mr Adoliba revealed that an unnamed regional chairman aspirant dolled out Ghc 30,000 to each delegate.

A move he has said was shocking.