Interior Minister Ambrose Dery has justified actions by the Ghana Police Service to stop the fix the country campaigners from embarking on a demonstration.
The Police have through a number of court actions sought to stop the protest.
Former deputy Interior Minister and Ranking member for Committee on Defense and Interior, James Agalga has argued the troubles in Ejura caused by the death of a fix the country activist could have been avoided had the government allowed the demonstration to take place.
But speaking at the public accounts committee sitting to answer questions on the Auditor General’s 2017 report on MDAs, Ambrose Dery stated government has no intention to curtail the rights of citizens to demonstrate.
“We’re interested in making sure that our rights to demonstrate is free” he noted, adding that on the other hand the country is in a very critical condition, and “we shouldn’t rule out that extremists can use our demonstrations to cause problems.”
This corroborates the position of the National Peace Council (NPC) that cited existing internal conflicts in Ghana as loopholes through which violent extremists can march into the country to wreak havoc.
The NPC’s Upper East Regional Chairman, Alhaji Sumaila Issaka, says Ghana must rise to the occasion to avoid the fate that awaits the person who goes to sleep on a haystack that hangs dangerously over a lit candle.
“The Council has been engaged in tackling internal conflicts which border on land, chieftaincy, political, identity and religious issues. We believe that these internal conflicts can serve as levers for violent extremism. Extremists are known to have exploited existing cleavages to stoke local conflicts and eventually gain root in communities to advance their extremist ideologies. This has happened in our neighbouring Sahelian countries like Mali and Burkina Faso.
“Before 2015, Burkina Faso had never experienced any serious extremist activity. However, in three successive years— 2016, 2017 and 2018— that country suffered some of the worst terrorist attacks in West Africa. And just this month— June, 2021— the country suffered its worst attack. From Mali they have now deepened their roots in Burkina Faso and so we know they have the ability to enter Ghana if we do nothing,” he stated in Bolgatanga, one of the Ghanaian capital towns cited recently in a police wireless message as fresh targets for cross-border attacks by foreign bandits armed with military-grade weapons.
Source: Ghana/Kasapafmonline.com/102.5 Fm
