Counting the Cost of the Dagbon Crisis

TAMALE, NORTHERN GHANA, 11 March (IRIN) - A year-long crisis in the Dagbon kingdom of northern Ghana has adversely affected the socio-economic development of the area and its people, in addition to its security implications, a senior Ghanaian official said.

Kwame Addo Kufuor, minister of defense and acting minister of the interior, told students of the University for Development Studies at Nyankpala, northern Ghana, on Saturday, that attempts to reconcile the people of Dagbon had been very slow.

The crisis broke out in March 2002. It resuilted from nearly 40 years of conflict between the Andani and Abudu clans over the position of Dagbon king. The clashes climaxed on March 27, when three days of violence at Yendi, seat of the kingdom, resulted in the murder of the king and about 29 other people. Several houses including the palace were burnt.

The government declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew on the Dagbon traditional area. The curfew is still in force with armed security men patrolling the area, while the king's remains are still lying at the Yendi hospital mortuary under 24-hour guard.

"The facts and circumstances which gave rise to the declaration of the state of emergency have not abated and still persist," Kufuor said. "There is still tension and fear among the people who live in and around the Dagbon traditional area."

The minister said the government spent over seven billion cedis (US $9 million) in 2002 to maintain the fragile peace in Dagbon. The money was used to feed security forces deployed to the area and the provision of logistics to the troops.

The two clans remain suspicious of each other and do not attend each other's social functions. There have also been allegations that both have been arming themselves for a possible showdown. Tension is heightened by the prolonged postponement of the reconstruction of the palace, which -according to tradition - has to be done before the king can be buried.

A report last year by the Wuako Commission of Inquiry into the conflict was rejected by both clans. The Andanis described the Commission's findings as a complete distortion of the facts, while the Abudus rejected it saying that it did not indict some key figures of the Andani clan.

The Andani family, who consider themselves the aggrieved party, said the commission and a Government White paper on the upheavals had made no attempt to unmask the perpetrators of the crisis that resulted in the murder of the Ya-Na (Dagbon king), Yakubu Andani II.