Military Deployment: You’ve been misled as always – Nitiwul to Mahama

The Defence Minister, Dominic Nitiwul has asked the National Democratic Congress’, NDC’s, leader and flagbearer to revise his notes because he has not deployed troops to intimidate people from registering for election 2020.

President John Dramani Mahama in a statement Sunday said “Reports have filtered in of a massive deployment of Military and other security personnel in the Volta, Oti, Upper East and Upper West Regions. The unexplained security deployments to these border regions have clearly been timed to coincide with the commencement of the Voter Registration exercise across the country.

These deployments have begun to create panic and anxiety among residents of the various
regions who have been left in no doubt that it has been done as part of a larger strategy to
intimidate them into abstaining from the registration exercise starting next Tuesday.

I have sufficient reason to believe that there is merit in the concerns raised by the residents of
these Regions. This represents another unprecedented low in the shameless abuse of state
power to attack the very citizens whose safety and security the Akufo-Addo government
should be protecting.

It is becoming evident by the day, that the Akufo-Addo government perceives political power
as an end in itself hence the resort to such crude and high-handed measures to usurp the
the mandate of the people.

To send troops into regions in times of peace for the sole purpose of preventing them from
registration amounts to declaring war on them. Any President sanctioning this sort of activity
stands in breach of his oath to the people of Ghana. Any President doing this commits a grave
sin against the very people he swore to protect”.

But reacting to the statement, the Minister of Defence indicated that the former President is ill-informed about the issues in the country and there is, therefore, the need to revise his notes in order to become abreast of the issues.

According to him, Soldiers have been deployed across the country since 2019 and not just the Volta region as stated by the former President.

“John Mahama was off track. He has been ill-advised again. I will advise him to revise his notes and come again. We’ve not deployed Soldiers to go to the polling stations.”

Dominic Nitiwul indicated that the government saw that after the lockdown, a number of people had entered the country through unapproved routes and there was, therefore, the need to enhance the number of security personnel because of the borders and unapproved borders could not be handled by just the Immigrations.

On whether the deployment was for the voter registration, the Minister said the Police will be assisting the electoral commission because they have not requested for Military men for the registration process.

He indicated that the electoral commission’s only request is for their equipment and materials to be airlifted to the various places for registration.

“Soldiers will not be at the registration centers,It will only be the Police. You will see just the Police at the registration centers. The only request the EC has made from us is to airlift their equipment and that’s the only things Soldiers will be doing in connection with the voters register.”

Source: MyNewsGh.com/Ayeh Offei-Akoto/2020

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