NPP members who invaded UTV are not thugs – Presidential staffer

Presidential staffer Dennis Miracles Aboagye has denied assertions that members of his party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), who besieged a studio of Accra-based UTV, are thugs.

According to him, the NPP supporters are not thugs because they committed no acts of violence, adding that they did not attack any UTV staff or destroy the station's properties.

Speaking in an interview on Citi TV, on October 14, 2023, Miracles Aboagye compared the NPP supporters to #OccupyJulorbiHouse demonstrators; adding that the only wrong they did was not notifying the Ghana Police Service of their intended action.

“They are not hoodlums. They are identified individuals in the party leading their various constituencies… The only difference between them and the 37 occupiers (#OccupyJulorbiHouse demonstrators) is that they didn’t notify the police. That is the only difference.

“Those who did the #OccupyJulorbiHouse were they thugs. I think sometimes we shouldn’t cloud the substance with some of these descriptions. They were wrong; they were not supposed to have done it… But come on, we can’t superimpose descriptions and identities based on how we feel,” he said.

Dennis Miracles Aboagye, the Executive Secretary of the Inter-Ministerial Coordination Committee on Decentralisation, added, “They didn’t break any door, they didn’t destroy any property. They didn’t do anything”.

He said that he had spoken to the party members who stormed UTV, and they regretted their action and would not repeat it in the future.

Background:

Two technical staff of the United Showbiz programme on UTV were roughed up by some aggrieved New Patriotic Party (NPP) sympathisers who stormed the station on October 7, 2023.

The group forced their way into the building and entered the studios just as the programme had started, disrupting it for about an hour.

UTV, on October 14, released CCTV footage that showed how one Isaac, a producer of the show, and another staff member, the head of camera, were manhandled by the hooligans.

In the footage, Isaac walks up to the group in a corridor and is seen engaging them on an issue; in less than 30 seconds, he is violently shoved by the group of 16 men who walk past him ostensibly on their way to the studios.

The Head of Camera also suffered a similar fate when he met them in the same corridor.

The NPP has been in the news for bad reasons since October 7, when a group of supporters stormed UTV, demanding fair representation of the government and a halt to unfair attacks on the president and other top government officials.

Their action drew widespread condemnation from the party, the NDC, the media, human rights groups, and other civil society organizations.

Sixteen people have been arrested by the police in connection with the invasion and have since been released on bail.

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