Lynching, riots: Akufo-Addo must intervene - Ex-Captain

Captain Joel Sowu (rtd) has condemned the lynching of Capt Maxwell A. Mahama of the 5 Battalion of Infantry who was the Commander to a Special Military Detachment at Denkyira Boase in the Upper Denkyira West district. He has equally condemned rioting by the youth of Somanya in the Eastern Region which resulted in the torching of a police car and the vandalisation of the office of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).

Both the lynching and rioting were believed to have been instigated by assemblymen.

Capt Mahama was lynched on suspicion that he was an armed robber after a group of residents from whom he asked for directions during a Monday dawn jogging session spotted a pistol on him.

Capt. Mahama, who was not in any military attire at the time, was later attacked by residents allegedly organised by the Assemblyman of the area, who pounced on him with crude weapons including cement blocks and clubs, killing him in the process despite desperate attempts to convince his assailants that he was not a criminal.

In the Somanya incident, the arrest of Assemblyman Ebenezer Adamtey, who organised demonstrations against the ECG, caused the youth of the area to attack the police to demand his immediate release.

In the view of Capt Sowu (rtd), President Nana Akufo-Addo must intervene immediately. “What is happening to our assemblymen? Why? They are supposed to be on the side of the law, so, if women call you that they suspect somebody to be an armed robber, do you just call people to lynch him? What authority have you got as an assemblyman to order people to lynch him? Are we in a mob-rule situation? I think the president would have to come hard on these two people [assemblymen] ... he has to come hard on it because the code of conduct of our assemblymen and public officers will have to be higher than the ordinary men because if they are not disciplined and they don’t have that self-discipline and self-control and they can just think that because I’ve been given power, I’ve been appointed by the president, therefore, I’m the president or I’m the law unto myself, their minds have to be disabused of this as quickly as possible before this country degenerates into mob rule.”