A group calling itself Volta Youth Alliance (VOYA) has backed assertions by former Transport Minister Dzifa Attivor that a future government under the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) will target only Ewes for prosecution.
At a recent NDC rally in the Volta Region, the party’s stronghold, Mrs Attivor, who resigned a couple of months ago in connection with an overpriced bus branding scandal, told party members to ensure the NPP does not return to power, otherwise, an Akufo-Addo government will embark on a jailing spree of Ewes just as former President John Kufuor did during his tenure, citing the imprisonment of former government officials Victor Selormey and Dan Abodapki to buttress her point.
Condemning the “tribalistic” comment on Accra100.5fm in an interview with Chief Jerry Forson, host of the station’s morning show, Ghana Yensom, on Wednesday April 27, Chairman of the National Peace Council, Rev Prof Emmanuel Asante said: “It’s an indictment on the judiciary because the people she mentioned were tried.
They went through the normal court processes and so her comment indicts the judiciary as not being independent and being manipulated by the government.”
The NPP has also condemned the statement saying it risks plunging the country into mayhem.
However, VOYA said in a statement signed by Convener Shadrack Fofo Ahiable that, indeed, the existing facts support the former Minister’s comment to the effect that persons from the Volta region, who served in the administration of former President Jerry John Rawlings, were witch-hunted by President John Agyekum Kufuor and his “NPP apparatchiks”.
“Mention can be made of Tsatsu Tsikata, Victor Selormey, Dan Abodakpi etc., who fell prey to the NPP cabals and the powers that be. Not only that but also, we are reminded of the infamous and condemnable 'Y3n Akanfuo' comments from Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, who sought to lead Ghana [and] the 'kill Ewes and beat Ga's' comment from Mr. Kennedy Agyapong.
“We, therefore, dare the NPP and their media commentators to deny the reality that Voltarians were not on the hit list for imprisonment by former President J A Kuffour and his cohorts in the NPP.
We at VOYA wish to state it categorically that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the former Minister's comments”.