NDC to activate plan B as gov't ignores ultimatum to withdraw military

The Minority Volta caucus in parliament says it will resort to what it terms as plan B after the government ignored their ultimatum to withdraw the military from Volta Region.

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

That ultimatum, however, expired with the government taking no action to withdraw the troops.

Speaking on News Night on Joy FM, Chairman of the Volta Regional Minority caucus and MP for Ho West Emmanuel Kwasi Bedzrah says they will proceed with what they call plan B.

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

"The Minister for Defence Dominic Nitiwul came out clearly to indicate that government will not withdraw troops that they sent to the various border towns. We have our plan B and we still stand by it. So we will activate that soon".

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

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.

The issue got overboard when K.T. Hammond, a Member of Parliament for Adansi-Asokwa said the men were actually there to stop foreigners from entering Ghana to participate in the voters registration exercise.

“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”.

There have been several calls for him to apologize but he has stated emphatically that he will not do so and he only stated facts.