Security Expert, Adib Sani, has brought to light the need to take the issue of Western Togoland secessionist movement very seriously as he lists a number of factors why the state cannot take it for a ‘joke’.

Speaking to Samuel Eshun on the Happy Morning Show, he divulged that the history of secessionist groups on the continent shows that these groups were not taken seriously until greater harm was done.

“When Boko Haram started, people were laughing at them. President Goodluck Jonathan did not manage the issue well. That is why now it poses such a big monster and a threat not only to Nigeria but the whole West African sub-region. When the Ambazonia in Cameroon started, they thought it was a joke. It was the same with the Katangese secession in Congo,” he said.

Adib Sani warned, “If we don’t take this seriously and downplay it, worst-case scenario, we would have a warfare situation; a war between the state and a south state or a downtown state. It is the most difficult war to win.

Commenting on the strength of the Western Togoland separatist group, he noted: “They can engage in cross-border activities including the proliferation of more arms, perhaps explosives. They understand the terrain better than we do”.

The Volta Separatist group, Homeland Study Group Foundation (HSGF) has over the past few years sought to gain independence from Ghana.

The HSGF on Friday mounted roadblocks on the Juapong–Accra and Sogakope–Accra main roads. The group, led by 83-year-old Charles Kormi Kudzordzi, has been championing an agenda to declare parts of the Volta and the Oti regions a sovereign state, with the name ‘Western Togoland’.

On November 16, 2019, the leader, with about 100 people in attendance at Moleme in Ho, unlawfully declared the Volta Region as a sovereign state of Western Togoland.