Government has no agenda against Ewes - Dominic Nitiwul

The Minister for Defence Dominic Nitiwul says the presence of military personnel at the Ghana-Togo border is not an agenda against Ewes.

Ever since the personnel were deployed to Volta Region, there has been a widespread allegation of intimidation and brutalities.

This has seen the people of Ketu accuse the government of having an agenda against them and called for the withdrawal of this personnel.

READ ALSO: NDC gives gov't up to Tuesday to withdraw military deployment from Volta Region

Dominic Nitiwul addressing a press conference on June 29,2020, debunked assertions that the government wants to intimidate Ewes because that is the stronghold of the opposition National Democratic Congress.

"The enhanced calm life across the whole country is three months. We have given them resources as part of it. The primary reason is to ensure that people don’t come in or don’t go out. As we sit today the president has closed the borders to the 31st of July. If the president or the government opens the borders why would the soldiers be there?. Government is only protecting the borders and there is no agenda against a certain tribe as some are making it look".

He also disclosed that the officers have been deployed to different areas in order to avoid the importation of COVID-19 to Ghana.

Over the past week, residents in Ketu South raised concerns about the spontaneous presence of military men in the enclave, some few months to the December polls.

As a way of addressing the issue, two leading members of the ruling NPP government have proffered sharply divergent views on the development which have been labelled by a section of Ghanaians as largely contradictory and not representative of the ongoing issue.

According to K.T. Hammond, a Member of Parliament for Adansi-Asokwa and leading member of the ruling party, the influx of military men in the region is to check against the trend of over-voting and double registration in the upcoming December polls and the EC’s new voters registration exercise.

In the words of the lawmaker, “The military is there to make sure that you vote if you are a Ghanaian, you vote if you have the constitutional right to vote; that’s all there is to it”, he said. They [military personnel] are not electoral officers, but they are a peacekeeping force … So, the soldiers, the police and immigration are just maintaining the peace, making sure there’s no infiltration. I mean, come on, let’s be serious; what’s the point in going through all that we’ve gone through, to the Supreme Court and all that then allow a porous border for people to come through and then infiltrate the register again? We would have been back to where we started”.

These statements which didn’t seem to sit right with some Ghanaians have generated outrage not only among the main opposition party but also a section of the populace who have labelled it as ‘ethnocentric comments against the people of Volta Region’.

On the other hand, Interior Minister Ambrose Dery also gave his reason for the deployment of military men to the region ahead of the voters registration exercise and the December polls.

According to him, the presence of the military men in the enclave is not a new development because their deployment dates as far back as the initial stages of the outbreak of the Novel Coronavirus.

The NDC has however given the government up to Tuesday, June 30 to withdraw the military deployment from the Volta Region.

MP for Ho West Emmanuel Kwasi Bedzrah speaking at the party’s press briefing at Aflao in the Volta Region said they will take action is the military is not withdrawn from the region.