Peasant farmers in Upper East and North East Regions have accused police in the North East Region of refusing them protection at their peaceful march to present a petition to the Regional Minister, Yidana Zakaria.
About 1000 farmers from the two regions on October 27, 2022 embarked on a peaceful march to the North East Regional Coordinating Council to present a petition to Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia and the Northern MPs through the North East Regional Minister Yidana Zakaria.
According to the farmers there was no official from the RCC to receive the petition.
According to the peasant farmers, the petition was to call on the Vice President and the Northern MPs to prioritize the Pwalugu Multipurpose Dam for investment as part of government’s ongoing negotiation with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Reverend John Akaribo, the Bolgatanga Municipal Spokesperson for the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana speaking on Day Break Upper East Show mentioned that the police after going through the petition labeled it political and refused to give them protection.
“The Regional Police Commander, whom we have arranged and contacted, and discussed our peace march, it is not a demonstration, it wasn’t anything that is chaotic, it wasn’t anything that is harmful, it was peaceful. We meant well for our two regions; yet last minute, the regional police commander decided that they will not give us security. They will not be able to guide us to march because the whole thing that we were talking about is politics and they will not like to mingle in politics.
He added that “when they [police] went there they said they want to see a copy of the petition, we took it that we are all Ghanaians after all was nothing to be hidden, so gave a copy of the petition to the police and immediately they read it they said they saw the name of the vice president inside, they would not be part of it. They would not give us any security but we can go ahead and do our march”.
Despite the police’s posture, Reverend John Akaribo said that they went ahead with the march.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Osuman Kaapore Tahiru|Ghana
