Government interference in Student Activities

PRESS RELEASE: Government interference in Student Activities

The arrest and detention of one Stephen Forson by BNI operatives, is one that has caused Concerned Ghanaians great concern.

That, based on spurious charges, an organ of the state can harass a citizen and his family in the middle of the night and solicit for his arrest, harks back to dark days in our history when such abuses by the state were conducted with a sickening relentlessness. It is such abuses that one would have thought were consigned to the dustbin of history labelled "military pre-democratic era". Alas, it appears not.

We have reason to believe that the arrest and detention of Stephen Forson, a brilliant IT specialist, is nothing but politically motivated and linked to the outcome of the recent SRC elections at the University of Ghana (UG) Legon Campus.

It is no secret that the defeated candidate in the aforementioned elections, one Mohamed Mikdad, was sponsored by the NDC. The fact that Stephen Forson developed the software used in counting the votes in the SRC elections appears to have raised the ire of the governing party, and thus, said party has machinated the organs of the state to arrest and detain Mr Forson on trumped-up charges.

That a party of government is sponsoring a candidate in a Student Representative Council election is, in itself, an affront to ethical norms. It is a shameless, flagrant attempt by the NDC to garner undue political influence in our universities. This government meddling in student political affairs compromises the positions of our universities as bastions of independent political thought. No government should have any business intertwining itself in the tapestry of student politics. It must therefore cease.

The underhand tactics of the BNI in the arrest of Stephen Forson also raises questions concerning the integrity and rectitude of said organisation. According to Mr Forson's wife, Gloria, the BNI operatives who entered their abode, in search for her husband, did not even have his correct name on the search warrant - a blatant violation of the law.

That a party of government is using the BNI, an organ of the state, to harass a citizen that it has deemed, in its view, as an obstacle to its political ambitions, is an affront to our democracy and the human and political rights of Ghanaians. Political detention is now anathema to Ghana and its citizens. We no longer tolerate it. Hence, we therefore unequivocally call for an unconditional release of Stephen Forson without charge and an unqualified apology to the university community and Ghanaians as a whole or we will advice ourselves on the next line of action to take. This barbaric practice should have no place in a civil society.

Place: Accra

Date: 17th April 2015

Signed

Ofei Dei Goodfellow +233242887777

Atick Yakubu +233244635764