President John Mahama has blamed the police for not taking proactive steps to prevent Sunday’s clash between his supporters and those of Nana Akufo-Addo, the presidential candidate of the opposition New Patriotic Party.
According to reports, some National Democratic Congress (NDC) supporters who were on a health walk in the vicinity of Akufo-Addo’s house at Nima in Accra threw stones into his house, prompting his body guards to respond with warning shots.
NDC supporters have, however, disputed this account of events, alleging that it was NPP supporters who provoked them first and threatened them with guns.
The development has not gone down well with President Mahama who blames the episode on the failure of the police to anticipate that a clash could occur between NDC supporters who were on a health walk in Akufo-Addo’s neighbourhood and the supporters of the NPP leader.
He told representatives of some labour unions in Accra that the Nima police failed to perform its duty, adding that lives could have been lost in the clash.
“… if any of those firearms had been fired and someone had dropped dead it would have been a completely different story. I think we should be preventive enough in our actions to prevent such things.
" I think that the police at Nima should have been better briefed knowing that this group was passing through and then we should have taken appropriate safeguards to ensure that such a thing doesn’t happen,†he said.