The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has described report of the three-member committee set up to investigate the disturbance in Ejura as a poor attempt to shield those responsible for the killings.
According to the party, a close examination of the report points to faulty findings, flawed conclusions and deficient recommendations calculated to cover up for the murderers of Ibrahim Muhammed aka Maacho Kaaka and the perpetrators of the killings by the military.
The party noted that this grand agenda to cover up complicates and attempts to normalize an issue of such magnitude and importance only speaks to what has been a consistent trend since President Akufo-Addo assumed the reins of power.
The sad events of the Ayawaso West Wuogon brutalities, the NDC said, are still fresh in the minds of Ghanaians and so are the state-sponsored violence perpetrated by State Security Agencies during the 2020 General Elections that led to the deaths of eight innocent Ghanaians.
National Communications Officer of the NDC, Sammy Gyamfi, who addressed the media on Tuesday, described as scandalous the Justice Koomson Committee’s claim that it is more probable that Kaaka was killed as a result of a “family feud” and not because of his “fix the country” social activism.
“Friends from the media, nothing could be further from the truth than this claim by the committee, and we in the NDC are appalled by the very laboured, albeit unsuccessful attempt by the committee to shield the perpetrators of that heinous crime from liability and punishment.”
“That finding flies in the face of the facts and cannot be accepted by the Ghanaian people who expected nothing short of truth from any impartial inquiry worth its salt into the sad events that unfolded at Ejura,” he said.
No credible or verified evidence, he said, of any feud in Kaaka’s family was adduced by any of the witnesses who appeared before the committee to testify because there is none and questioned how the Committee came to this contrived conclusion.
According to him, checks reveal that Kaaka was at peace with his brother, Iddi, and lived in harmony with him, which was duly corroborated by the wife, mother and family relatives of Kaaka, as well as the people they lived with.
He stressed that the idea that Kaaka was killed as a result of a family feud is a pure invention of the committee, and as such, cannot be allowed to stand.
Sammy Gyamfi argued the report also failed in its recommendations on the killing of two Ejura youth and the maiming of several others by the military on 29th June 2021.
According to him, though the Committee established the unprovoked firing of live ammunition by the Lt. Martin Opoku Adusei-led military detachment into the crowd of protestors was excessive and unwarranted, it failed to recommend the appropriate punishment for the soldiers.
He said, “We think that the Committee should have recommended clear and specific punishment for these errant soldiers whose reckless conduct caused the avoidable deaths of two Ghanaians.”
The NDC also deplored the Committee’s failure to recommend sanctions for the political and top military actors who deployed the soldiers in the first place.
“The Committee affirms our position that soldiers should have been called in to quell the justified and legitimate agitation of the Ejura youth as a last resort. Yet, they were called in by the irresponsible Ashanti Regional Minister, Simon Osei Mensah, the Commanding Officer of the 4th Infantry Battalion, Lt. Colonel Kwasi Ware Peprah and the General Officer Commanding, Central Command, Kumasi, Brigadier General Joseph Aphour as a first resort.”
“Having established that the deployment of soldiers to Ejura was improper, one would have expected the Committee to have recommended sanctions for those responsible for that wrongful deployment, but no such recommendation was made in their report.”
“If this does not speak to a certain grand collusion to cover up the heinous crimes of these actual masterminds of the unjustified Ejura killings, then we don’t know what else does,” he added.
Sammy Gyamfi expressed the party’s chagrin at the phenomenon where otherwise respectable citizens allow themselves to be used by the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government to cover up serious crimes for political expediency.
He stressed that the events that unfolded at Ejura on the 28th and 29th of June, and the subsequent whitewashing of crime, impunity and unprovoked bloodletting by state actors and security officials is yet another slur that has been indelibly and irredeemably cast on the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government.
Source: Mypublisher24.com