Ghana’s Minister of Defence, Dominic Nitiwul has condemned the brutalities meted out to residents of Ashaiman by some military personnel, describing it as regrettable.
According to him, in shaping a nation, it is always difficult to ensure that there is absolute peace due to the inevitability of such unfortunate incidents as happened in Ashaiman.
On Tuesday, a group of soldiers descended on Ashaiman, a town the the capital, Accra, and beat up residents after their colleague named Sheriff Imoro, was allegedly stabbed to death by unknown assailants in the area.
The military has since described their actions as an intelligence-led operation to arrest persons who were allegedly involved in the killing of the military man.
Speaking to the media on Thursday, Mr Nitiwul expressed his sympathy and apologised to the innocent victims who were ill-treated by the military.
“Incidents like this in the life of the country do happen. We are shaping up a country, and we’re going to have some of these regrettable incidents happen. But I will still appeal to the people of Ghana to be very respectful of people in uniform. It will help all of us,” the Defence Minister admonished.
The Defence and Interior Committee has been tasked to probe the cause of the incident which transpired in Ashaiman.
To this end, Mr Ntiwul said that the Committee will refrain from saying anything related to the incident until after they have visited the location where it occurred to ascertain for themselves what happened.
“But I will not say anything until the Committee itself and us have gone on Thursday to the place and visited the place to ascertain for ourselves. One of the reasons why we are not going immediately is that investigation is still ongoing, we don’t want to compromise whatever investigation that will happen”.
“And that is why we tasked our colleague to tone down on the statement, so that we can work together in unison, so that this tricky situation is brought under control. We want a peaceful Ghana, that’s all. So after Thursday, you will hear from us,” Mr Nitiwul said.
Commenting on the same issue, the Chairman of the Defence and Interior Committee of Parliament, Mr. Kennedy Agyapong announced that members of the Committee will visit the community on Thursday, March 16 on a peace mission and expressed his condolences to the family of the bereaved, as well as the residents who were brutalised.
“On behalf of the Committee we want to sympathise with the bereaved— the young soldier’s family— and also sympathise with the affected victims — those who were innocently beaten—. They were not part of it. But unfortunately, they got to a scene where they were not supposed to … I think we all have to admit that there were excesses and therefore we sympathise with the people of Ashaiman.
“At the same time, we also sympathise with Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) for our young men taking the law into their own hands to kill one of them. But, a situation like this, all we can say is that we need peace. We as a Committee cannot inflame passions by going there to make comments that will annoy a faction.
“Our mission is to make sure we have peace in this country. The unfortunate incident happened, we have all condemned it, and Minister has apologised on behalf of the military that they admit that there were excesses,” Mr Agyapong added.
