Secessionist attacks: So-called security capos spreading false rumours, propaganda - Oppong Nkrumah

Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah has expressed disappointment over what he describes as false rumours and propaganda being propagated by persons who label themselves as security experts.

He observed recent reports about such persons postulating their analysis about the activities of the Western Togoland secessionists and how they can be resolved as examples.

Mr. Oppong Nkrumah indicated that such persons were confidently making assertions based on false rumours and were guilty of fuelling inaccuracies which were being consumed as truths by the public.

“There are also a good number of persons claiming to have expertise in security and postulating on everything. And sometimes repeating rumours, to the extent that the rumours now appear to be truths that we have to now chase after…” he told GhanaWeb in an exclusive interview on a yet to be aired Election Desk show.

He cited a report where a security analyst alleged on live air, that a foreign country’s embassy in Ghana supported the efforts of the secessionist groups in 2017 as an example of such misconceptions.

“…there is a lot of A, false propaganda, B, there also a lot of persons who purport to be security capos who repeat some of these rumours… I’ll tell you another one that was said, that their petition was edited by an embassy in West Africa. And this was actually said by a so-called security person live on national television unchallenged.

It then becomes part of the national conversation… and now we have to start chasing all of those. That’s why we are suggesting that let us stick to the facts that we know them to be; the facts as have been proven. And let us not give too much oxygen and fuel to the false propaganda and the misrepresentations,” the Information Minister cautioned.

Security analyst Paul Boateng told Kasapa FM’s Akwasi Nsiah in an interview on Wednesday, September 30, that the said Embassy in 2017 coached and aided the secessionist group to write officially to the United Nations to recognize their ‘country’, ‘Western Togoland’ as an independent state.

“I’m saying so because I know that in 2017, a foreign country’s Embassy in Ghana guided this secessionist group to write to the UN. This group has been agitating since 2006 and it is important that we deal with them expeditiously,” he noted.

A group of persons believed to be part of Western Togoland separatists on Monday dawn attacked the State Transport Corporation (STC) in the Volta regional capital of Ho.

Their actions was a second wave of an earlier attack which they carried out in the North Tongu constituency and surrounding areas on Friday, September 25.