'Culture of silence’ stems out of Akufo-Addo’ disregard for fighting impunity – Sulemana Braimah

The Executive Director of the Media for West Africa Foundation (MFWA), Sulemana Braimah has faulted Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for his slow commitment to bringing perpetrators of violence to book.

This, the MFWA boss believes is responsible for the ‘culture of silence' in the country.

His comments come on the back of business magnate, Sam Jonah’s claim that Ghana is witnessing a “culture of silence”.

According to him, the president’s posture in dealing with recent acts of violence on the media is not encouraging.

“What is important is the attitude of the leadership of the country when these things happen. I was really, really surprised and saddened when the President said, I think in 2019 or 2020 at the Bar Conference in Takoradi, that the incident involving Ahmed Suale should not be related to press freedom and making reference to the fact that when the Member of Parliament was murdered, nobody saw it as an attack on the legislature.

"I think that was a very sad thing because many of us were expecting to hear from the President what his personal position is in terms of the impunity that has characterized the murder of Ahmed Suale,” he said.

Mr Suleiman also called out the presidency for failing to take on some people because of their affiliation with the government.

“In any case, in any serious country, based on what Kennedy Agyapong did, antecedent to the murder of Ahmed Suale, and I’m not saying that he sponsored it or he knows about it, but certainly what he did prior to the murder of Ahmed Suale in any serious country, we would have seen serious and thorough investigations, queries.

“Ken would have been arrested, detained and so on and so forth. But because he belongs to the government, because he belongs to Parliament, because he is rich, because he is powerful, not a single thing happened.”

The Executive Director of the MFWA further stated that the lack of commitment to fighting impunity from the state can be blamed for the increasing violence against the press, anti-corruption fighters amongst others.

“In fact, over the last four years we have documented over 56 incidents of attacks on journalists – none – we don’t have any serious evidence of any serious action on the part of the state to demonstrate its commitment to fighting impunity except maybe the case of Ohema Sakyiwaa where Multimedia group decided to pursue the matter and eventually got justice in the court.”