Konkomba-Dagomba clash big shame - Bugri Naabu

Tuesday’s bloody clashes between Konkombas and Dagombas at the Agbogbloshie Yam Market is “very shameful”, Daniel Bugri Naabu, Northern Regional Chairman of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) has said.

An accusation of theft by one side against the other sparked mayhem leading to the death of two people in bloody clashes. Several others also sustained machete wounds.

Mr Naabu, a major opinion leader of northern extraction has appealed to his kinsmen to channel their anger against poverty rather than hacking each other away.

“It is already bad but I will appeal to all of them to exercise patience. … Please we shouldn’t fight among ourselves. Our enemy is poverty: No money to eat, no food to eat, we should start thinking about that than ways to resort to killing each other.

“I am appealing to them to put a stop to it. If anything at all, we have elders, we have politicians, complain to someone. Someone will take it up and resolve it instead of taking dangerous weapons like iron to kill each other,” Mr Naabu told Moro Awudu on Class91.3FM’s Executive Breakfast Show on Wednesday, 12 April.

Meanwhile, Odododiodioo MP Nii Lantey Vanderpuye has attributed the recurrent clashes at the Yam Market to deprivation among the people involved.

According to him, most of the people who resort to violence in the area feel neglected by the middle class and harbour resentments which they give vent to through clashes.

He has, therefore, asked that the socio-economic problems of the people be addressed in order to effectively deal with the perennial clashes between the two ethnic groups.

Speaking on the matter in an interview with Chief Jerry Forson, host of Ghana Yensom, on Accra100.5FM on Wednesday, 12 April, Mr Vanderpuye said: “The people living at the area are engaged in menial jobs, mostly involving hard labour. There are some of them who believe that they have been neglected by the ruling class and the middle class in Ghanaian society and so they harbour resentment towards them.”

“For this reason, the slightest provocation leads to something else, and, so, I think we have to look at the socio-economic situation at the place and seek to reduce poverty and the hardships they face.

“Again, politicians from all the political parties who come from the North, where the Dagombas and the Konkombas come from, should come together and go to the area and speak to them and advise them that violence is not the solution to their problems.”