Chairman of the Ghana National Peace Council (NPC), Rev Dr Ernest Adu-Gyamfi, has expressed the need for government and relevant stakeholders to engage on resolving conflicts in some violence-riddled areas in the country.
According to him, although the Council is doing its best to address such problems, it sometimes gets overwhelming dealing with a high number of such occurrences. Owing to this, he deemed it a “very urgent situation” which all and sundry must be involved in tackling.
Rev Adu-Gyamfi further noted that the Council is already handling pockets of issues in the country and while it is dealing with some of these things and trying to negotiate through them, other issues come up, hence the need to extend the means of redress.
“So, it takes attention off the ones we’re working on, we focus on these things to bring stability then we have to go back and deal with some of these issues. What we need is the collective efforts of the whole country. We need the media to support us, we need the chieftaincy institutions to support us and the minister of religious affairs.
“We need everybody to come on board to help us because most of these issues are tribal conflicts, the interpretation of ancestral laws have not been done the way they ought to be done. So, people are coming in, re-writing history, creating new boundaries and these are critical issues confronting the country and we have to collectively find a way in dealing with them.”
Rev Dr Ernest Adu-Gyamfi
Dealing with conflicts in the country
Commenting on the clash recorded between the Mo and Wangara tribes in the Kintampo North municipality, shootings in Nkwanta leading to the deaths of 8 persons and conflict in Wenchiki in the North East region, Rev Adu-Gyamfi stated that the Council is not oblivious of such happenings as the public may perceive.
He stated that the Council is currently dealing with about 300 chieftaincy, tribal and land litigation issues across the country. However, he explained that because they sometimes act “quietly”, the public consistently accuses it of being unconcerned.
“Now, we think that the need is to change our approach a little bit and sometime be a little proactive in terms of some of the things that we’re doing. All the cases that have been highlighted now, either at Kintampo in the Bono region, Nkwanta in the Oti region and Wenchiki in the North East, the regional peace councils have been active in those areas, working constructively to help mitigate some of these things. But we must admit that sometimes the issue is above.
“So, when you get to some of those areas, people react violently and there’s the need for us to keep drumming this home that fanning ethnicity, tribal and religious conflicts will not help us as a people, and we need to do everything we can to stop these things as much as possible.””
Rev Dr Ernest Adu-Gyamfi
As part of effort to address the violence recorded in these areas, the Chairman of the National Peace Council indicated that he has petitioned the IGP and the security services to intervene.
With this, he highlighted that the Council is aware that there’s been some intervention in some of those places, calm has been restored in other places, although there’s a need to look at means to deal with the issues that are on hand.
” In the Kintampo issue – the Mo conflict, we’ve been there for the last three years, talking with people, trying to find a way out. The National Peace Council is actively working there but issues of religion, tribe and ethnicity are critical issues when it comes to peace building, once you touch any of those areas, people react violently. That is why we keep telling the country don’t get into religious, tribal and ethnic conflicts – these are things that touch the soul and lives of people…”
Rev Dr Ernest Adu-Gyamfi
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