WAS OCT 2024 BAWKU CONFLICT RESULT OF GOVERNMENT INDOLENCE AIMED AT DEC 2024 ELECTIONS?
WAS THE BAWKU CONFLICT OF OCTOBER 2024 THE RESULT OF GOVERNMENT INDOLENCE FOR PURPOSES OF THE DECEMBER 2024 ELECTIONS?
BY MARTIN A. B. K. AMIDU
The number of reshuffles the NPP Government has made since coming into power can be counted on one’s fingertips which puts the reshuffles undertaken in the election year 2024 and their impact on the security of the Upper East Region (UER) under scrutiny for purposes of a free, fair, and transparent election in the most populous part of the UER, the Bawku Traditional Area which consists of six constituencies. Free and fair elections under the 1992 Constitution is the life blood of the whole constitutional edifice under any government in a democracy and the rule of law worth the name.
The presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) for the 2024 elections who is the incumbent Vice President of Ghana, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, hails from the neighbouring North East Region (NER) which also has six constituencies with an approximate registered voter population of about 288,239. The Bawku Traditional Area alone of the UER, also with six constituencies has an approximate registered voter population of about 287,138 by a rough calculation, tabulating the provisional voter population by constituencies as published by the Electoral Commission. Their known voting patterns will definitely impact on the electoral fortunes of the two northern brothers contesting the Presidency and the number of Members of Parliament deliverable in a free, fair, and transparently contested election on 7 December 2024.
Unfortunately, the gazetted traditional chieftaincy Overlords of the Bawku Traditional Area and the NER under the Chieftaincy Act have been embroiled in an intractable chieftaincy conflict since independence which even though has affected the security of the Bawku Traditional Area particularly over the decades has never affected the ability of the citizens to exercise their right to vote during any elections in Ghana. The citizens of Ghana resident in the Bawku Traditional Area voted in the 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020 elections at which the President, Akufo-Addo and his running mate, Mahamudu Bawumia presented themselves as non-incumbent, and incumbent candidates, and won both the 2016 and 2020 elections nationwide without any security problems preventing the vote or interfering with its free, fair, and transparent nature in the Bawku Traditional Area.
It is within this context that the aftermath of the reshuffle swapping the Minster for the UER who hails from that region with the Minister for the UWR who also hails from that region announced with immediate effect on 4 April 2024 raises questions necessitating a deeper scrutiny and analysis of the current developments in the UER as a whole, considering the security implications for free and fair elections in the region on 7 December 2024.
The reasons assigned for the swapping of the Regional Ministers for the two neighbouring regions was that it was part of the President’s “on-going efforts to ensure effective governance across the country, and has tasked the Ministers to work tirelessly to promote the welfare and development of the Upper West and Upper East Regions respectively." The achieved purpose is, however, the development of the situation in UER where the votes of one-third of the region are under threat as though the reshuffle was purposefully planned and executed as part of a long game to facilitate a particular security and electoral objective of election interference in the 2024 elections in the Bawku Traditional Area of the UER. Paradoxically and instructively, it remains the only reshuffle swapping Regional Ministers within the past years of this Government’s administration.
The residents of the Bawku Traditional Area did not apply to any court for a warrant of arrest against any faction in the fratricidal conflict in the Bawku township. The Government on its own accord applied to the High Court, Bolgatanga, for an arrest warrant as the decision of the Court of Appeal dated 17 October 2024 bears witness to. The pendency of the appeal against the actions of the government and the decision of the High Court filed by the affected person had been pending against the Government as the Respondent since leave was granted to appeal on 20 December 2023 with the Attorney-General assigning only Assistant State Attorneys to hold the government’s brief in such a serious matter before the Court of Appeal. This contrast sharply with cases involving almost zero national security implications such as the Stephen Opuni, Ato Forson, Barker-Vormawor protests, and other lesser seemingly political cases in which the highest levels of the Attorney-General’s Department represented the Government in the High Court.
In the interregnum between the decision of the Court of Appeal and the return of Alhaji Seidu Abagre to Bawku township on 24 October 2024 the Acting President of the Republic of Ghana was the Vice President, Mahamudu Bawumia, who took no steps to address the nation on the measures the Government was taking to resolve the security situation occasioned by its security laxity and lapses in the Bawku Traditional Area. The fact that he hails from the NER is no excuse for his inaction when he is contesting to be the President of Ghana in the 2024 elections. On the contrary it shows a weakness of leadership at a critical time of the nation’s crisis heading towards an election in which he is a contesting candidate and ought to have asserted his capabilities of managing the crisis no matter whose ox is gored.
As Ghana Web reported on Monday, 28 October 2024, the conflict had “.... resulted in the death of some 15 persons” and: “A new attack erupted on October 27, 2024... in Gbimbisi (sic) and Walewale towns .... which resulted in the death of at least 8 individuals.” What, the blood of all these 23 individuals spilled needlessly without any preventive action under the watch of the acting President and potential President of Ghana?
The fact that the acting President, Mahamudu Bawumia, stands to be a beneficiary of the Bawku Traditional Area crisis precipitated due to the indolence of the Government only two months to the 2024 elections should the registered voters in the six constituencies in the UER be unable to exercise their franchise freely and fairly, comes into focus with his inaction as acting President during the period.
Did it have to take President Akufo-Addo himself to return from Samoa in the afternoon of 28 October 2024 for the Minister of the Interior to for the first time since 24 October 2024 extend the curfew hours after more than fifteen (15) people had died in the Bawku township and its environs, and another eight (8) people dying between Gbemsi, Sayoo and Walewale in the NER during his absence from Ghana? I have questioned the Chief Justice’s administrative closure of the courts in more than half of the UER, particularly in the regional capital and its environs the very next day, 29 October 2024 immediately the President returned to Ghana, which is also an interesting coincidence, without any answers being forthcoming. Why not also close the courts in those parts of the NER too, where eight (8) citizens died on the road from Gbemsi, Sayoo, and Walewale to Tamale as a result of the same conflict?
The nation has since the return of the President not been addressed on the gravity of the Bawku fratricidal conflict and what steps the government is taking to resolve the situation created just two months to the 2024 elections by its own indolence in managing a purely security matter vis-a-vis the existing law governing the Bawku Chieftaincy Affairs. In the interim, the security situation has escalated to a point that may enable the Government and the Electoral Commission to take the created situation by the government into account in determining whether the 7 December 2024 elections will take place in the whole Bawku Traditional Area or parts of it. The Chief Justice has already shown the way by closing the courts in even the regional capital and its environs which are far away from the conflict area.
The real reasons for, and the consequences of swapping the Regional Ministers for the UER and UWR on 4 April 2024 are gradually dawning on the residents of the UER. On 17 October 2024 when the Court of Appeal rendered its ruling in the appeal filed by Alhaji Seidu Abagre against whom the Government had obtained a warrant of arrest in February 2023, the Upper East Regional Minister was in Accra and returned after the President had left Accra on Saturday 19 October 2024 for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOHM) in Samoa.
Whilst the silence from the REGSEC and Government led to on-going speculations whether it was the government’s intention to assist Alhaji Abagre to relocate to Bawku, the Regional Minister returned home and went to Bawku on Sunday, 20 October 2024 and made a half-hearted attempt with all the security at his disposal to meet the gazetted Bawku-Naba and has since then not returned to any part of the traditional area. He has thereafter been holed up in Bolgatanga and its environs with the blood of twenty-two (22) dead citizens on his hands in the Bawku township alone.
This demonstrates the cynicism of the reshuffle of the two Ministers on 4 April 2024 because it would have been impossible to have used the previous Regional Minister for the purpose of instructions taking whilst his siblings were dying in the conflict. The further cynicism of the reshuffle is that in view of the fact that the current Regional Minister is also a northerner, it becomes more difficult for people from the region to be seen to openly criticise his nonchalant attitude towards the conflict and the potential disenfranchisement of the electorate from the Bawku Traditional Area. One will be hitting the heads of northerners against northerners by speaking against the swapped Regional Minister from the UWR. But the truth is that this is an old fashioned colonial era ploy used to keep the northerner quiet, exploited, and supressed. The use of northerners as cannon fodder for election violence in the Republic of Ghana must stop.
I refuse to be duped that the October 2024 crisis that has engulfed the Bawku Traditional Area is accidental and not orchestrated for the achievement of political electoral objectives. I have written about long games and I must say that I am not naive to think that any incumbent government will just fold its arms in the hope that its political party’s chosen successor will win the replacement elections by his own bootstraps. I was the Vice-Presidential candidate for the NDC in the 2000 elections and I do not underestimate the wishes of every incumbent to assist its candidate(s) to win elections. The history of western democracy is replete with such efforts within the democratic tradition and rules.
What I object to is a purposeful arrangement and plan to covertly subvert the electoral system and votes of the electorate in the farcical name of a free, fair, and transparent elections, democracy, and constitutionalism. I spoke up during the 2016 elections when John Dramani Mahama was President of Ghana contesting the same elections with candidate Nana Akufo-Addo. I am speaking up again when Nana Akufo-Addo is the President of Ghana, and John Mahama is contesting the Vice-President of Nana Akufo-Addo in the 2024 elections. The consequences of covert actions for election interference purposes can de disastrous to the 1992 Constitution no matter who the incumbent President is. Every patriotic Ghanaian must, therefore, always to remember the saying that “ a stitch in time, saves nine” for purposes of defending the 1992 Constitution and the peace of our homeland, Ghana.
Martin A. B. K. Amidu
6 November 2024.