Leave that to the serial callers – Defence Ministry to John Mahama on votes suppression claims

The Ministry of Defense says former President John Dramani Mahama might have been wrongly briefed on the deployment of soldiers to borders towns and other parts of the country.

The NDC flagbearer has accused the government of planning to suppress votes in NDC strongholds by installing high-level security in those places.

Mahama added that while supposed NDC strongholds were flooded with soldiers, the areas that predominantly vote in favour of the NPP were without military officers.

According to Mahama, the ‘discriminatory tactics by the government is ‘dangerous and unacceptable”.

“Executive power must not be used to foment ethnic discrimination and abuse as is happening under Nana Akufo-Addo. These calculated acts of "dehumanisation, disenfranchising Ghanaians and stripping them of their citizenship" must end. They will surely never happen under a new NDC administration because we will foster a spirit of peace and unity in our nation”, Mahama said.

But in an interview with Okay FM, the Deputy Minister of Defense in charge of Interior Derick Oduro suspected that the former president was ill-informed on the deployment exercise.

He clarified that no town or region was targeted by the government.

The deployment, he explains was done in every border town in the country with the aim of preventing people from entering the country with the coronavirus. He accused the NDC of masterminding the chaos in Banda that resulted in the death of one person.

“If a serial caller makes such statement, you ignore him because he is a serial caller but for a former president and former commander-in-chief of the Ghana Armed Forces to say this because of politics then it is really bad. He is spreading falsehood and everyone knows it’s a lie. The duty of soldiers aside protecting the country against external aggression is eternal security so as a former vice president and president he has used soldiers on many occasions”, he said.

“We used soldiers for different assignments. They don’t take part in registration exercises. The only time they went there is when they were issues that required their intervention. We deployed soldiers to almost every part of the country so for the former president to make those statement is unfortunate”, he said.