I have no agenda against Voltarians - Akufo-Addo

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo says the Volta Region was not singled out for any special military operation in the run-up to the conduct of the voter registration exercise, and there was certainly no political or ethnic agenda. According to President Akufo-Addo, despite the fact that deployment of the military personnel along the country’s borders was a nationwide exercise, and was done across all our borders and not in the Volta Region alone, for which the Minister for Defence and other Ministers gave detailed and clear explanations about the situation, the explanations did not appear to have satisfied some people.

This, the President said, was “because of the mischief that is so easily generated by some elements of social media, and also because of the season we are in, and the determination of some people to stir up ethnic sentiments in the hope of reaping some political advantage”.

Speaking at Keta, on Thursday, August 27, 2020, at a durbar held in his honour by the Awoamefia of the Anlo State, Togbui Sri III, he stated that there are currently 1,000 military personnel deployed along the country’s borders, of which 163 are deployed along the Volta Region border.

“This has been labelled a ‘military invasion of the Volta Region’. Togbewo, Mamawo, Volta Region is an integral part of the Republic of Ghana, and military deployments in a Region cannot be described as an invasion. Some elements of social media went into a frenzy, mostly with old videos taken in Accra and other parts of the world being passed off as residents of the Volta Region being brutalized by soldiers,” President Akufo-Addo said.

He continued, “This has been escalated into accusations of ethnic cleansing, and the Government that I lead has been labelled as tribalist. Whilst social media is a useful tool for information sharing, it can also be, and has been, used to magnify small incidents, place pictures, videos and voices out of context, or simply generate outright fabrications, in order to stir up needless ethnic animosity amongst citizens who are, otherwise, living peacefully with one another.”

The President noted that the easiest way to tell if people are being discriminated against by a government would be to look out for how the national cake is shared, adding that, on that score, his Government has been exceptional, as his Government has spread development projects equitably in all parts of the country.