BY: Lambert Atsivor | Voltaonlinegh.com |
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has said his government has no ethnic or political agenda against the Volta Region, as being claimed by some critics of the new patriotic Party administration.
According to him, the region remains an integral part of the country, for which the government he leads would never discriminate against.
The president’s comment comes on the back of a recent uproar which greeted a security deployment along country’s eastern frontier, which critics claimed was meant to intimidate residents of the border communities in the Volta region during the just ended voters registration exercise.
Addressing a durbar of chiefs and people of Anloga on Thursday as part of his one day working visit to the area, President Akufo-Addo explained, the region was not singled out for any special military operation ahead of the conduct of the voter registration exercise, but rather the security deployment was done along all the country’s borders and has no political or ethnic underpinnings.
He noted that, despite detailed explanations on the operation by the Defence Minister and other Ministers, the explanations did not appear to have satisfied some people, “because of the mischief that is so easily generated by some elements of social media, and also because of the season we are in, and the determination of some people to stir up ethnic sentiments in the hope of reaping some political advantage”.
Currently 1,000 military personnel deployed along the country’s borders, of which 163 are deployed along the Volta Region border, the president stated, adding that, “Volta Region is an integral part of the Republic of Ghana, and military deployments in a Region cannot be described as an invasion.”
He therefore sees it as an unfortunate development, how the issues has been escalated into accusations of ethnic cleansing agenda against the government, and urged residents of the Region not to feed into such propaganda tactics, which only ‘stir up needless ethnic animosity amongst citizens who are, otherwise, living peacefully with one another’.
The President further explained that, the easiest way to tell if people are being discriminated against by a government would be to look out for how the national cake is shared, adding that, on that score, his Government has been exceptional, as his Government has spread development projects equitably in all parts of the country with the Volta Region its fair share.
