Military intervention in secessionism not the best antidote – Small Arms Commission boss

Deploying military officers to deal with the secessionist’s movement in the Volta region is not the best cure for the problem, Executive Secretary of the National Commission on Small Arms and Light Weapons, Jones Borteye Applerh, has said.

He explained in an interview with TV3’s Johnnie Hughes on the New Day programme on Thursday, October 15 that the situation has arisen as a result of ignorance on the part of the youth who got involved in the action.

The best solution, he proposed, is to re-orient the youth and also to counter the narrative being propagated by the proponents of the action.

“Solving of the secessionists issue is not entirely a military matter,” he told Johnnie.

He added “I have heard a lot of people asking that we should crush them. When people are being deceived you don’t only fight them through militancy.

“The narrative in the media is that there was a plebiscite and after certain years they went to elections to vote again and decided whether they want to belong to Ghana. That is wrong.

“They think that this is an agenda that can succeed and they have lured young men who they have promised to be the nucleus of the army and the police when that agenda succeeds.

“So to solve that problem is not a militancy as an I see it. I see it as a mixture of a number of things. You have to find a way of getting a very good information system . Do what they call the counter-narrative and tell them what the truth is , re-orient them .

You can crack down on them because it is criminality, it is subversion to rise up against the state. The Constitution says you should be arrested but militancy is not the best solution now.



At least a total of 60 persons have been arrested in connection with recent disturbances.

The disturbances were caused by suspected members of the Western Togoland secessionist group.

Fifty-four of these suspects have been remanded in custody as government intensifies security operations in the Region to bring the insurgency under control.