Senior Ghanaian Legal Practitioner, Lawyer Kwame Gyan, has charged the state to brutally deal with secessionists who, in recent times, have been launching assault attacks to push their course.

Speaking in an interview with Okay Fm monitored by GhanaWeb, Lawyer Kwame Gyan described the separatists as a bunch of marauding criminals who the state must not tolerate in any form of negotiation.

He suggested that government must rather make them feel the superior force of the state’s security.

“Some people are suggesting that we should dialogue with them. You only dialogue when they are a properly recognised people like the Catalonians, the English-Speaking Cameroonians or an identifiable group of people. But what will we be sitting to negotiate with a bunch of marauding criminals? You have to show them that you have superior military force or police force. You treat them at this stage as criminals,” he stated.

While emphasising his belief in the rule of law, Mr Gyan quoted a book from the bible, Proverbs 22:15, and called for a swift and effective application of force and firepower beyond putting culpable persons up for legal prosecution.

“Whiles we are taking them through the legal process, the police and the military’s presence and reaction on the grounds must be swift and effective. They went to an STC yard and fired gunshots; that means the police and the military must also fire gunshots. We cannot sit and watch them fire guns in the STC yard and turn to treat them with kid gloves. If they shoot guns the republic must also fire guns, that is the essence of the republic,” he said.

The astute legal practitioner bemoaned what he described as the intellectual dishonesty on the part of some learned persons who are distorting the history of the Trans Volta Togoland and the 1956 plebiscite to fuel the separatist agenda.

“Unfortunately, some intellectuals are lending these things intellectual support. It is painful. If any educated person seeks to use his education to support these things their level of intellectual dishonesty becomes very painful.”