Accra — Following an upsurge of pre-election violence that has killed three people and injured many others in northern Ghana, experts fear hostilities will continue in the months leading to December presidential and legislative elections.
Charred remains of houses, walls riddled with bullets, and burnt cars and are talismans of last week's violence in the Northern Region's capital of Tamale. Violence erupted following a shooting incident on 31 August that abruptly ended a political rally organised by the ruling New Patriotic Party.
A 12-hour curfew is currently in force and additional joint military-police patrols have been deployed on the streets.
Fred Degbe, president of the religious non-profit Christian Council, told IRIN, "If Ghana burns because of politics we have nowhere else to go, so it's in our interest to do everything possible to preserve the peace we are known for in the sub-region."
Burnt remains
Affected by the violence was Alhaji Mahama Jeboni, an opposition party chairman for the National Democratic Congress (NDC), who is based in Tamale.
His 30-year-old daughter, Sayakulu Mahama Jeboni told IRIN, "The attackers asked my father to choose between his life and his properties. There were about a hundred people all armed. They were arguing whether to burn the houses first or my father's commercial vehicles. They set fire to all of his eight cars." She said the flames razed their three homes to the ground. "Everything was burnt, all our possessions, possessions dating back to one hundred years. We have nothing left," Jeboni told IRIN.
Violent flashpoint
There have been other conflicts since the beginning of 2008, mostly based on land rights, but none that turned deadly.
In early August 2008, violence erupted during voter registration as supporters of the two main political parties vandalised registration centres and traded gun shots.
December elections
In December 2008 Ghana's President John Kufuor is expected to hand over power as he has served the maximum constitutional eight-year term.
The ruling New Patriotic Party seized power from the National Democratic Congress in 2000 during the first peaceful democratic transition of power since Ghana attained independence in 1957.
Now for the first time in 16 years the NPP, a party that won power while in opposition, must hand over the presidency and with polls predicting a close race with a high possibility of a run-off, that president could equally come from the NPP or the NDC.
But for Degbe, who is helping to launch an anti-violence campaign in the north, "the importance of the elections can never be a justification to destroy the country's peace."
[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations ]
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Ghanaians please stop this nonsense. Some of us who have traveled to this country are inspired by your accomplishments. The entire region is not in the clear yet; it is still tettering on the verge of colapse and puts the entire continent's stability in jeopardy. Ghana is the only positive wind keeping everything together. Ghanaian law enforcement officers need to be vigilant, impartial and proactive in protecting the general public and pursueing those perpetuators and bringing them to justice expeditiously in order to avoid the situation from reaching Zimbabwe or Kenya's proportion. Africans stop this insanity and destroying yourselves.
Thank you, you deserve a credit.
Well said. Ghanaians have the opportunity to protect the peace they have. It is very disturbing to realise that,those who are supposedly regarded as leaders are showing the wrong signs of the true meaning of leadership. I sometimes wonder if these so- called politicians truthfully wants the good of the citizenry. May be, it is a question of what is primary and what falls on the secondary mark. Ghanaians need to be awaked to the reality that the whole world is watching and the earlier we accept the challenge and prove to all observers that Ghana can be the Shining example, the better.
Is there any reason thos story keeps coming up whenever I try to access a story on Zimbabwe? I get this about 8 times out of 10 and having read it I would like to move on. I have reported it before but received no response!!