Man Forced To Drink Water And Cement

A Bolgatanga based Building Contractor, Bukari Bawa Ayamga told the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) at its inaugural sitting in Tamale that soldiers forced his father to drink water and cement resulting in his death.

Mr Ayamga who was testifying before the Commission, said on July 5, 1979, a group of soldiers led by one Lieutenant Patrick Donkor came to the house of the late Bawa Ayamga, his father and accused him of hoarding goods.

The soldiers broke into his father's rooms and found some lorry tyres, cement and paddy rice, which they carted into a tipper truck. Mr Ayamga said the soldiers inflated a tyre, hung it on Bawa Ayamga's neck and forced him to march through the principal streets of Bolgatanga, with some people following and calling him ''Kalabukle man.''

The Petitioner said his father was taken to the then Upper Regional Administration Office for interrogation and later sent to the Bawah Barracks in Tamale and kept in military custody.

Mr Ayamga said he followed up to Tamale to see his father but he saw him sitting under the sun with several wounds on his head and cheeks apparently indicating that he had been molested. He said his father told him that one Lt. Donkor gave him cement and water to drink and also used a hammer to hit his head several times causing injuries on his head and face.

On September 3 the same year, he was brought back to Bolgatanga to face the "Peoples Court" then sitting at the Regional House of Chiefs and was sentenced to three years imprisonment in hard labour and sent to the Navrongo Prisons.

Mr Ayamga said on January 17, 1980, when he visited his father who was sick, he saw some Prisons officers putting him into a vehicle. He said instead of sending him to the hospital he was sent to the Tamale Prisons where he died before being rushed to the Tamale Hospital.

Mr Ayamga, however, told the commission that the paddy rice that was seized from his father was sent to the Bolgatanga Rice Mills, sold for 72,000 cedis, and the amount later given to the family.