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Politics of Sunday, 5 July 2020

Source: peacefmonline.com

Military Deployment: It wasn't standard practice for Defence Minister to give out details – Kweku Baako

Editor-In-Chief of the New Crusading Guide Newspaper, Abdul Malik Kweku Baako play videoEditor-In-Chief of the New Crusading Guide Newspaper, Abdul Malik Kweku Baako

It was a breach of protocol for the Defence Minister, Dominic Nitiwul to put out the number of soldiers on deployment, according to Kweku Baako

The opposition NDC had alleged that security deployment along the country’s borders was to intimidate and prevent persons living in the Volta Region from partaking in the ongoing voter registrations exercise.

The Defence Minister, in response to the NDC, had said the deployments were made as far back as March 30, to help the immigration service ensure compliance to the border restrictions.

“We are concerned about people coming into this country. It is our duty to protect Ghana. What we are doing is to make the people of Ghana safe by blocking all the unapproved routes and as long as our borders are closed, it is our duty as a government to ensure that Ghanaians are safe,” he said.

Giving a breakdown of the deployment, the minister said 102 are in North East, 110 in Northern, Upper East has 207 and Savannah 21.

The rest are Upper West, 69; Oti 72 and Volta Region 72.

However, Kweku Baako believes but for the need to respond to the allegations from the NDC, it was not standard practice to put out the figures.

"There was an unusual thing that the Defence Minister was compelled to come public with figures and locations; unfortunately . . . it's not always advisable for the government to disclose what it is doing (security-wise); it's not standard practice," he said.

Listen to him in the video below.