Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa
The Member of Parliament for North Tongu in the Volta Region, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has stated that reports he has so far received indicates the brazen attacks staged by some secessionist groups in the region last Friday were undertaken by persons believed to be Togolese.
The Volta Region on Friday, September 25, 2020, was thrown into a state of chaos as members of a secessionist group, seeking the independence of the area to become the Western Togoland, staged spontaneous attacks in various parts of the region.
The attacks included blocking major entry points to the region as well as attacks on the Aveyime and Mepe police stations all in the North Tongu District.
Speaking in an interview with Kwame Nkrumah Tikese of Okay Fm monitored by GhanaWeb, the MP for the area said intelligence gathered so far raises suspicion that the attackers were not carried out by Ghanaians but Togolese.
“The people who did it were well trained and when you listen to those at the forefront, they say that the large majority of the attackers, the language and kind of war songs they were singing didn’t sound Ghanaian. With the variation in their version of the Ewe language, at this point the suspicion is that they are from Togo. That is what many of the police chiefs I have spoken to have briefed me with,” he indicated.
The MP who is a Member of Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, said the genesis of the Western Togoland secessionism, shows that the majority of the Volta Region including the people of the three Tongu Constituencies have never been a part of the secessionists.
“If you look at the history of this Western Togoland situation all the way to the plebiscite of May 9, 1966, you will realise from the Western Togoland map that whiles people are making this thing a Volta Region thing, a large part of the Volta Region was not part of the Western Togoland struggle. All the three Tongu Constituencies including North Tongu, my area, was not part and the Anlo area was also not part. When you look at the territories, it was just parts of the current Oti Region, Kpando, Hohoe, and Ho. That’s it so for the lager part of the Volta Region we’ve never been a part of this whole Western Togoland matter,” the MP stated
Mr Okudzeto who has condemned the acts of the secessionists on several occasions sounded a caution to government to properly manage the situation saying “it has international dimension; it can destabilize the sub-region.”
He added that “If our leaders don’t take this threat seriously and use superior intelligence gathering to counter and nib this in the bud, this has the potential of destabilizing not only parts of the Volta Region but the whole country.”
