240 chieftaincy time-bombs ticking

The Government of Ghana has over 240 chieftaincy disputes on its hands, each of which could erupt into a massacre similar to the one that broke out at the end of March this year among the Dagbons at Yendi.

And the cost of suppressing the resultant clashes and mitigating their effects on victims is becoming so huge that, if just 10 more battles break out, they could ground the national economy.

Impeccable sources in government and the national security apparatus who briefed the Chronicle on Tuesday concluded that public sympathy and support are crucial to pre-empt further bloodletting and destruction, as the authorities consider disarming and immobilising those ganging up to fight.

Expenditure figures on Yendi, Bawku and Bimbilla alone in less than two months add up to ?3.3 billion. Chronicle’s information is that on 20 March, this year, the government signed a cheque for ?500 million to be expended on Bawku and Bimbilla, while another cheque valued at ?706.5 million was signed on 21 May for emergency assistance to the Yendi conflict victims.

Emergency security operations at Yendi, involving some 200 police and military personnel took ?500 million from the national coffers on 16 April and the three-man Commission of Inquiry into the Yendi Affairs, was granted ?668,790,324 on 16 May. The Yendi security operations again cost the nation ?900 million on 15 May, this year, making the grand total a colossal sum of ?3,325,290,324.

As the Commission of Inquiry headed by retired Justice Isaac N.K. Wuaku is expected to conclude its work in about a month, it is anticipated that its bills will not be recurrent. But the amounts spent on Bawku, Bimbilla and, especially, Yendi will have to be repeated indefinitely. At least for the rest of the year, we have to find about a billion cedis each month to manage the Yendi problem,” a worried security official intimated.

Government sources were even more worried. “The ?3.3 billion is more than what was needed to keep all our universities completing their semesters about two years ago and we could not raise it which led to students riots,” a Minister said. The amount is also comparable to what is required to build over 30 basic schools or 20 clinics for say the Bawku, Bimbilla or the Yendi district. Ironically, all three administrative areas are among the most deprived of the 110 districts in the whole country.

A survey conducted recently by this paper concluded that while school facilities in each of the three districts are less than a third of what is required, health and road infrastructure is even more deplorable. And, apart from retarding the infrastructural development of the district and the nation as a whole, the disputes and clashes disrupt farming the main sustenance of all the people there.

Asked to expatiate on the 240 figure, the sources affirmed that in every region and almost every district, between one and ten cases of chieftaincy dispute rage on. “Some have lingered for decades now but the aggressiveness of opposing factions seems to be hiking of late,” a top police officer explained. Other security officials postulated that the more relaxed security run by the human rights-minded NPP government had engendered the increased ethnic, stool and skin skirmishes.

Inquiring on how the government intends quelling or pre-empting them revealed that a more effective programme to retrieve illegally-acquired firearms had been considered a couple of times and may be adopted eventually. One account of the destruction of parts of the Ya-Na’s palace at Yendi has it that a pile of small arms in the house was actually what exploded during the attacks to destroy the building.

Unsure of reactions from sensitive Ghanaian populace whose perceptions will, no doubt, be influenced by the opposition, which is ever ready to cash in on any situation, the Kufuor administration is reported to be weighing the arms retrieval course carefully. Another option being considered by the authorities is to empower the regional and national houses of chiefs to settle all chieftaincy disputes expeditiously to accord deserving factions justice on time.