WANEP records seven deaths, politically motivated

The West African Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP-Ghana) has from January to June this year recorded seven deaths and nine injuries across the country which it said were politically motivated and warned against complacency before the December polls.

It recorded 86 reported cases of violence out of which 20 incidents (23%) were politically motivated and mentioned the Ledzekuku, Gushegu, Odododiodio, Bawku, Bimbilla, Aflao and Buipe as places that experienced the most violent cases within the period.

WANEP also recorded a total of 21 chieftaincy related incidents with one death and four injuries out of an overall total of 86 cases per the period, representing 24% of the recorded incidents and appealed to the security agencies, the National House of Chiefs and the media to be extra careful with the fragile peace in the country.

These were contained in a press release issued in Tamale and signed by Mr. Justin Bayor, National Network Coordinator of the WANEP on Thursday.

The release said the incidents were recorded in the biannual alert of the WANEP, which categories recorded cases into disasters, chieftaincy tensions, politically motivated violence and armed robbery, as the most threatening because they had the potential to easily trigger serious conflicts.

It said this Early Warning Alert, a biannual publication of the WANEP-Ghana, showed an analysis of proximate human security conditions some of which emanated from structural and systemic challenges and produced from WANEP-Ghana’s Early Warning reports.

According to WANEP, since the beginning of 2012, there had been growing political anxiety with communication team members of various political parties at the national, regional and district levels engaged in direct insults, personality attacks, allegations and counter accusations against each other through the media.

It said such comments whip-up ethnic tensions just for the sake of electoral votes, which equally had the tendency for creating violence but some politicians were dangerously stoking it lately, saying “The potential to ignite violence through ethnic pronouncements is high as some media bodies are not monitoring and sanctioning their members who either flout the ethics of the profession or are not conflict sensitive in their reportage”.

The release noted that a total of thirteen (13) armed robbery incidents were recorded and appealed to the National Peace Council, the Regional and District security councils, to adopt peace-building methods and approaches to resolving the numerous conflict situations under their jurisdictions rather than waiting for violence to erupt before they intervene with peacekeeping.

It also entreated international institutions and civil society groups to increase the communication, transport and ammunition detection capacities of the security agencies as well as support the Police with bulletproof uniforms and equipment to enable them respond to violence and crime situations effectively.**