‘Rawlings’ dogs were biting our kids and wives’

Mr Kwesi Banahene, who has been accused of murdering a dog owned by former President Jerry John Rawlings, has vehemently denied killing the said dog, but denounced its carnivorous stance against women and children in the vicinity.

Mr Banahene told Joy News he was arrested on Wednesday morning and charged with being “cruel” to Rawlings dog, and “I don’t allow neighbours' fowl to come and feed on my land”.

He has since been granted bail.

The dog at the centre of his arrest was found dead several weeks ago with cutlass wounds all over in Vume, a town in the Volta Region.

Mr Banahene who is an New Patriotic Party council of elder in the South Tongu Constituency, was subsequently charged with the offences.

The allegations are “never, never true”, he stressed.

He recounted how Rawlings’ dogs have been terrorising children and women in the area, adding that the dogs were too fearsome to the extent that he a man, would dare not go near where they play.

But these frightening presidential dogs are left to trot on the path which leads to a river side where the community fetches water for household chores.

“Unfortunately when our wives and children go to fetch water from the river he lets loose his dogs on us as if we are in South Africa. The dogs will chase you, pounce on you and they will not bite you [but] cut, cut you. I have pictures to show... dogs are biting children, biting our wives. My own child nearly became a victim.”

Mr Banahene recalled telling a caretaker close to the Rawlingses about the behaviour of that particular dog. “I was just trying to create awareness that his dog was biting people so they should take care of it,” he claimed.