The Gambia’s election tussle took another turn yesterday when military forces invaded the building of the Independent Electoral Commission, and instructed its chairman to leave thereby barring other employees from entering.

Ceoafrica gathered that the seizure came after West African leaders’ arrived the country to mediate in President Yahya Jammeh’s decision to annul the election whose result he accepted after defeat by the President-elect, Adama Barrow.

Worried by the development, Alieu Momar Njie, the electoral commission’s chairman said "The military came to my office and said I am not to touch anything and told me to leave, I am worried for my safety."

However, a delegation led by Liberian leader Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Nobel Peace laureate and the current chairwoman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), alongside Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, Sierra Leone leader Ernest Bai Koroma and outgoing Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama visited Gambia to foster peace.

The African Union said in a statement late on Monday that it also planned to send a high-level delegation, led by Chad's long-ruling President Idriss Deby, to facilitate a "peaceful and speedy" transfer of power.

Therefore, the streets of the Gambian capital Banjul were calm on Tuesday, with a high security presence, as armed guards surrounded a hotel where the delegation was due to meet Barrow, Gambia's president-elect, later on Tuesday.

Barrow has said that he will annul Jammeh's declaration of Gambia as an Islamic republic despite Jammeh’s concession of defeat in the December 1 polls.

However, last week Yahya Jammeh made a U-turn by saying he doesn’t want the results as he discovered some anomalies, thereby calling for another vote. As we report, Gambians fate hang in the balance as the electoral future looks bleak.