The Murder Of Yaa Naa Was A Monumental Crime

Says Andani Youth

.

BY Alhassan M. Murtala- TAMALE

The Andani Youth Association as on the occasion of

the tenth anniversary memorial press Conference described the murder of the

late Yaa Naa Yakubu Andani as a monumental crime to be swept under the

carpet.

In a press conference organized in memory of the

late king of Dagbon, the group descended heavily on the Northern MP’S who used

the unfortunate death of the Yaa Naa to campaign to parliament with the promise

of using their parliamentary positions to defend and fight for justice for the

Andani family.

According to the group, though the ultimate

responsibility for the apparent reluctance to fulfill the promise to deliver

justice to the Andani family lies with the NDC, it is the MP’S who should

shoulder the bulk of the blame.

‘’If they had taken the Andani cry for justice

seriously, if they had asked the relevant questions at the appropriate time,

the state prosecutors would dare not have adopted such a half-hearted and

lackadaisical approach to the investigations and subsequent prosecution of the

case’’ Mr. Abubakar Alhassan, the spokes person said.

Below is the full Press Statement by the Andani

Youth Association.

PRESS CONFERENCE BY THE

ANDANI YOUTH ASSOCIATION ON THE OCCASION OF THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE MURDER

OF YAA-NAA YAKUBU ANDANI II AND FORTY MEMBERS OF HIS RETINUE: MARCH 27, 2012

Ladies and Gentlemen of the

media; first of all we would like to thank you for responding to our invitation

to attend this press conference.

It has

been ten long years since the murder of Yaa-Naa Yakubu Andani II and scores of

members of his retinue. It is possible therefore that this time lapse may have

made the facts surrounding these crimes to recede into the passive memory of

the public. We of the Andani Youth Association, therefore, deem it necessary to

take advantage of the opportunity offered by this tenth anniversary to refresh

the memory of the public on the events of March 27, 2002.

The murder of Yaa-Naa Yakubu

Andani II was the climax of a three-day armed assault on the Gbewaa Palace –

the official residence of the Yaa-Naa and focal point of over six hundred years

of Dagbon history, tradition and culture. About forty other innocent people

perished with the Yaa-Naa. Not satisfied that they had killed him, the

assailants dragged his body to the palace square, chopped off his right arm,

decapitated him and set fire to what was left of the body. The palace was

reduced to ruins and several other houses were burnt and valuable items

including royal regalia were looted.

Evidence

abounds to support the claim that the murder of the Yaa-Naa was politically

motivated. It was the consequence of a plot to fulfill an electoral promise the

NPP had made to some extremist elements of the Abudu gate. That promise

bordered on the performance of the outstanding funeral of Mahamadu Abdulai who

had been improperly enskinned as Yaa-Naa by the Progress Party government in 1969,

and who died out of office in 1986. This confession

albeit inadvertent, was made by Ms Elizabeth Ohene, then Minister of State in

the Office of the President, on the Front Page programme of Joy FM on

Friday 29 March, 2002. In this particular programme she made comments to the

effect that the NPP had previously promised to assist the extremist elements in

the Abudu family to perform the funeral of the said Mahamadu Abdulai. She went

on to say that in order to have performed that funeral, Yaa-Naa Yakubu Andani

II would have had to vacate the Gbewaa Palace. Apparently the attack on the

Palace from March 25th to 27th was to forcibly evict

Yaa-Naa Yakubu Andani II since the latter would not have vacated the palace as

this was contrary to Dagbon custom and tradition.

In a

radio and television broadcast to the nation in the aftermath of that murderous

operation, then President Kufuor made a solemn promise to ensure that the

perpetrators of what he himself described as a “heinous crime” would be

apprehended and brought to justice. Ladies and gentlemen! As you all know, up

to the time of leaving office, President Kufuor did not fulfill that promise.

This was

in spite of the fact that on taking the presidential oath at his inauguration

in January 2001, he swore, among other things, to dedicate himself “to

the service and well-being of the people of the Republic of Ghana and to do

right to all manner of persons.” Yet then President Kufuor did not only

fail to invoke the powers invested in him as President to protect life and

property, but actually sat by and watched as state security institutions were

used by the political leadership of the Abudu gate to perpetrate the largest

single massacre of innocent civilians in peace time in Ghana under a democratic

regime.

The

response of the NPP administration was the unscrupulous whitewashing of this

monumental crime through the largely discredited Wuaku Commission and the

subsequent phony trial which was deliberately skewed in order to avoid a

conviction.

In the

same vein we of the Andani Youth Association also feel highly betrayed by the

way and manner the NDC exploited the murder of the Yaa-Naa in order to bolster

its electoral fortunes by promising in its manifesto to deliver justice to the

Andani family when voted into power. Because of this promise, friends and

sympathizers of the Andani family, who constitute the overwhelming majority of

the people of Dagbon, trooped to the NDC and voted for it en masse and thus

contributed significantly to the Party’s electoral victory at the 2008 elections.

Ladies

and Gentlemen, as you may be aware, when the NDC came to power it took a lot of

prompting and pressure from a section of the Andani family to remind the Party

of its electoral promise to the family and the people of Dagbon. Thereafter

when the Office of the Attorney General eventually commenced the process of

investigations, it was clear that the state prosecutors were not interested in

getting to the bottom of the matter in order to establish the actual levels of

culpability of all those who were directly or indirectly involved in this

heinous crime. And we would demonstrate with evidence that the state

prosecution had no interest in securing any convictions in this matter. Indeed

the entire process of prosecution was set up to ensure that it would fail. And

it did.

The prosecutions reluctance to gather the full

complement of evidence

It is very strange that the evidence and

information that the state prosecutors gathered for the case came almost

entirely from the surviving members of the late Yaa-Naa’s retinue most of who

were massacred during the armed attack on the Gbewaa Palace. The case was being

heard more than eight years after those traumatic events, and the victims who

were fleeing the scene of the armed attack in panic and barely escaping with

their lives were being asked by the state prosecutors to recollect and

reconstruct the traumatic events in sufficient detail as they witnessed them.

Incredibly this was the only information that the state prosecutors relied in

their lackadaisical attempt to secure conviction in a murder case. This is

unbelievable!

Suppression of vital sources of evidence:

The murder of the Yaa-Naa and

dozens of others took place in broad day light, and in the full glare of the

public including all the security agencies in Yendi, namely the Police, BNI

officials, Prison Warders, Fire Service personnel and CEPS officers. And

according to the Tamale Municipal Chief Executive and Acting Chairman of the

REGSEC at the time Mr. Iddrisu Adam, on March 26, 2002, not less than 90

policemen and 62 soldiers comprising 60 men and two officers were dispatched to

Yendi ostensibly to give protection to the Yaa-Naa and to save life and

property. We were then asked to believe that despite this meticulous response,

the Yaa-Naa was murdered the following morning Wednesday March 27, 2002.

The question we would like to

reiterate on this tenth anniversary of that monumental crime is: Why did the

state prosecutors not invite even one police personnel, a soldier, a prisons

officer, a CEPS official or the BNI officer who was in charge of the area to

give evidence? We ask this question because obviously the security agencies

such as the Police, BNI, and the military at the district, regional and

national levels would have prepared or received written reports of the events

in question. We ask again: why did the state prosecutors not ask for such

reports?

A Chief Superintendent of

Police, now an Assistant Commissioner of Police was put in charge of the

investigation into the murders and arson. It is indeed very strange that the

state prosecutors did not deem it necessary to invite him or the several police

officers who assisted him to give evidence concerning their investigation and

their findings. The question again is - WHY?

It is also on record that it

was from the home of one self-styled Bolin Lana, Abdulai Mahamadu, that the

murderers launched the assault on the Gbewaa Palace. This particular individual

claimed at the Wuaku Commission that it was he who gave orders for the attack

on the Gbewaa Palace to commence. For the three days that the attack was in

progress, this Abdulai Mahamadu was the hub around which the murders were

organized. It was also disclosed at the Wuaku Commission that the murderers

mounted the severed head of the Yaa-Naa on a spear, and took it to the house of

this Abdulai Mahamadu where he sat in state and received it. In spite of all

these facts, the state prosecutors chose not to question this Abdulai Mahamadu

who is clearly a suspect. We ask again –WHY?

Ignoring

the possible roles of former NPP government officials by the state prosecutors

In all societies governed by

law, it is the responsibility of the government to protect all its citizens.

Specific officers are assigned this responsibility, and those in charge are

held accountable for any dereliction of duty.

It is a matter of public

record, both nationally and internationally, that while the unprovoked attack

on the Yaa-Naa’ palace was going on, and the armed security personnel refused

to protect lives and property, Mr. Malik Alhassan Yakubu, who was at the time

Minister of Interior and Member of Parliament for Yendi was heard on national

and international radio saying that Yendi was calm, and that government was in

firm control of the situation. He branded those who presented evidence to the

contrary as mischief makers. This was even after a telephone call from the

secretary to the Yaa-Naa was broadcast live on an Accra FM station on Monday,

25 March 2002 confirming that the Yaa-Naa was under attack, and listeners could

even hear the sound of gunfire in the background. As then Minister of Interior

and Member of Parliament for Yendi – the scene of the attack – he had the real

facts of the situation. Why therefore was he lying? Yet the state prosecutors

did not deem it fit to invite Mr. Malik Alhassan Yakubu for questioning. Once

again the question is WHY? Also, why was Ms Elizabeth Ohene who made that

confession on radio about the NPP’s electoral promise to the Abudus not invited

to give evidence?

Severance

of telephone links to Yendi

Military experts will confirm

that in the process of any military assault, communication systems are among

the first targets of attack. This was exactly what happened during the

three-day armed assault on the Gbewaa Palace leading to the murder of the

Yaa-Naa. The then Ghana Telecom telephone lines to and from Yendi were

completely cut effectively isolating the target area from the rest of the

country and the world. It is important to note that this development came soon

after the secretary to the Yaa-Naa had granted the telephone interview to the

Accra FM station alluded to earlier. We would like to remind the audience that

as at the year 2002 Yendi did not have mobile telephony. Later investigations

revealed that there were no technical faults with the Yendi lines during that

period in question. And since the authorities of the then Ghana Telecom could

not by themselves have taken such a sensitive decision without reference to ah

higher authority, we had expected the state prosecutors to be interested in

unraveling this very strange occurrence, and also to find out why telephone

communication to Yendi was restored immediately after the Yaa-Naa had been

murdered. The question once again is: Why did the state prosecutors ignore this

very vital piece of evidence?

What the

NPP government new about the attack and when

At the

Wuaku Commission Major (Rtd) Abubakar Sulemana testified that when he learnt

about the shootings in Yendi in the morning of 25 March, 2002 he went to inform

Lt. General (Rtd) Joshua Hamidu, then National Security Advisor, who confirmed

to him that government (and I repeat -

government), was aware of what was going on. This was further evidence that

the carnage in Yendi was facilitated by the NPP government.

Also

according to the evidence given by the then Tamale Municipal Chief Executive at

the Wuaku Commission, the Regional Security Council (REGSEC) was not even aware

that the Yaa-Naa had been killed as at 4.00 PM on Wednesday 27 March, 2002. But

Major (Rtd) Sulemana testified that he saw a security report in the office of

the then National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. (Rtd) Joshua Hamidu in the morning

of Wednesday 27 March, 2002 detailing that the Yaa-Naa had been killed.

If the

topmost security body in the Region did not know of the death of the Yaa-Naa

even in the afternoon of that fateful Wednesday at a time it was already dead

news in the office of the National Security Advisor in Accra, could it have

been that the then National Security Advisor was dealing directly with Yendi and

was monitoring the progress of the assault from his office? Yet the authorities

claimed that they had adhered rigorously to the chain of command involving the

district, regional, and national outfits in that order. Once again we pose the

question: why did the state prosecutors not invite the then National Security

Advisor Lt. Gen. (Rtd) Joshua Hamidu for questioning?

The unpardonable silence of the so-called

Andani Members of Parliament

In all

these developments, much of the buck stops at the doorstep of our elected

Members of Parliament. Their silence inside and outside parliament over the

question for justice for the Andani family has been most exasperating. Ladies

and gentlemen! I would like to emphasize the point that except for one or two

Members of Parliament from the Dagbon area, all the others rode on the back of

the popular anger arising from the murder Yaa-Naa Yakubu Andani II to get

elected into parliament with the promise that they would use their

parliamentary positions to fight for justice for the Andani family. We of the

Andani family did not ask them further questions. We simply went out and voted

massively for them, even if the loyalty of some of them to the Andani cause

was, and still is questionable. We just voted blindly to the extent that our

MPs have now taken us so much for granted that one of them had the effrontery

to declare on national television that he did not need to come home and

campaign in order to retain his seat. He is sure he would always win the

election.

We still

remember how the NDC leadership in Dagbon used to boast that even if they put

up a piece of stalk for election in Dagbon, that piece of stalk would win. It

is true that things have changed and they dare not exploit the murder of the

Yaa-Naa as they did in the past, but they have a new strategy. They have grown

so filthy rich from the wealth they have accumulated from their official

positions that they believe they can come and sprinkle money at us like one

would throw grains at hungry fowls.

Though

the ultimate responsibility for the apparent reluctance to fulfill the promise

to deliver justice to the Andani family lies with the NDC, it is our MPs who

should shoulder the bulk of the blame. If they had taken the Andani cry for justice

seriously, if they had asked

the relevant questions at the appropriate time, the state prosecutors would

dare not have adopted such a half-hearted and lackadaisical approach to the

investigations and subsequent prosecution of the case.

Conclusion

In the

light of all these developments we of the Andani Youth Association call on

government to live up to its promise to ensure that those who murdered Yaa-Naa

Yakubu Andani II and the other members of his retinue on 27 March, 2002 are

apprehended and made to answer for their crimes. We have taken note of the

renewed promise in this direction that His Excellency President John Evans Atta

Mills made during his last visit to Tamale. We would wish that he would back

his words with action. We on our part are always willing to assist in whatever

way possible to ensure that justice is achieved for the Andani family. The

murder of Yaa-Naa Yakubu Andani II is too monumental a crime to be swept under

the carpet. And on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of that tragedy, we of

the Andani Youth Association reiterate our commitments to peace, but we wish to

add that enduring peace can only be anchored on justice.