Rejoinder: Shooting at Anloga, not threat to peace

Anlo Youth Council rather sadly could not get any assurance let alone a realistic explanation from the DCE of Keta, Mr. Edward Kofi Ahiabor, on the reported shootings in Anloga on ghostly hours of Wednesday 30th and Thursday 31st, January 2008. We honestly believe that it was our information in this very medium that alerted the DCE’s response albeit a sham. We have rechecked our facts, and could not help a rejoinder, not because it is our right, but to expose the harm people in public offices, even as small as the DCE’s office are doing to the truth, human rights, democracy and the constitution.

This rejoinder is also informed by the lapse or the blatant ignorance exhibited by the DCE and the News Reporter of the GNA, even to the extent that it may further exacerbate the uneasy calm achieved by the peace-loving people of Anloga.

Please permit us to take on the issues one by one and rather rationally.

The DCE is quoted by GNA to have said that the ‘reported shooting at Anloga last Wednesday night has not posed any immediate threat to peace in the area.’

If the shooting was indeed reported, who reported it and to whom? The DCE failed to report that. What became an official report that Anlo Youth Council is aware of came from two formal reports. One, a report with the BNI by no mean a person than the Assemblyman for Lashibi and the 2nd Vice President of the New Patriotic Party in the Volta Region Mr. Makafui Woanya. Two, within ten minutes of the 1st shot a call was placed to the Police Emergency Bureau Hotline, information which we believe was logged, and the informant did provide the duty officer the time the shots were heard and the approximate location.

Anlo Youth Council do not know which report the DCE was referring to, but certainly these two are available, authentic and with his purview. Having established that there are sufficient available reports of the rampant shooting into people’s homes in Anloga, it is only a matter of choice for the Chairman of the District Security Council (DISCEC) and District Chief Executive Mr. Edward Kofi Ahiabor to lie!

Mr. Kofi Ahiabor was also quoted by GNA as saying the said shooting into people’s homes at unholy hours and the criminal arson on a lotto kiosk the same night did not “pose any immediate threat to security in the area.”

Hmmmm!!! But we will ask: how is Mr. Kofi Ahiabor, a fine agricultural expert by profession, able to determine that the several gun shots dangerously into people’s homes, while they were asleep does not pose a security threat?

Anloga for those who might not know is farming and a fishing community and there are absolutely no hunters or hunting going on.

Indeed for the several homes which were criminally burgled into by the police during the dubious curfew after the police killing of November 1, 2007 ostensibly to retrieve weapons; not even one single gun was retrieved for which the public have been made aware off. So if for one evening, several sporadic gun-shots could be heard, replicating the fire power demonstration at Bundanse, and the professional farmer Kofi Ahiabor thinks it is the sweet Anloga okro getting ready for the 4th day market cycle, he has got it very far too wrong. We would pardon the poor DCE on the plea of ignorance but certainly not the heads of the security services in the Keta District who together constitute DISEC and must advise the DCE.

They cannot be absolved of blame or let alone complicity. Retired police and army officers in Anloga have alleged that the gun-shots were certainly from rifles. It beats our imagination why it was lost on the DISEC that the triggers that were pulled in the night of Wednesday, January 30th, 2007, might have indeed started an arm-race in Anloga, even though the Executive Instrument prohibiting the possession and carrying of arms in Anloga and the Keta area is still in force.

Hitherto there was absolutely no need to be armed in Anloga.The natives sleep under the moon light, men go to fishing expedition in the night and women may return very late from distant markets and walk to their homes without any fear. All that is gone or the so-called DISEC does not see it?

Mr. Kofi Ahiabor was also reported by GNA on telephone that ‘investigations were going on to identify those responsible and their intentions.’ This is naivety at its personified crescendo! In a peaceful, quite night of Anlo, on the Atlantic coast, where crickets sing their nightly orchestra, punctuated by an owl’s cry, rivaled only by Dolly Paton’s Tennessee mountain home, a baby’s sigh could be heard echoing down the wind until it meets the ITCZ; several, sporadic gun-shots were heard within the tympanic sensitivity of all the men and women of the Ghana Police Service in the Anloga Station and others on the bit around town. Yet, DCE Kofi Ahiabor now tells us investigations are now going on to identify those responsible, when the culprits have already been identified and names mentioned by several respected people. At least to prove the public wrong, the DCE should have cleared the people seen and named rather than spending state resources on another investigation we all know would yield nothing!

Anlo Youth Council believes these investigations are being orchestrated by the powers that be to undermine the currency of the overwhelming evidence and to obstruct justice which is to be served on known criminals. In which part of the law are we informed that it is required to know the intention of criminals before charging them with the act?

How do you gather evidence on someone’s intention? Much worse a criminal’s intentions to enable you convict him. Umpteenth times horrible crimes have been committed by people who claim very good intentions. A crime is a crime and nowhere in the criminal procedure and jurisprudence do we find the requirement to know the intentions of the suspect, and for that matter known and named criminals. How many seasoned psychologist and psychiatrist haven’t spent a lifetime trying to find out why serial killers and the like do the gory things they do? Have the world’s best civilizations and democracies find any reason for their intentions yet? But in poor Keta District and Anloga to be precise, for all the motivation, facilities and resources that have eluded us, our very DCE have found reason to investigate the intentions of potential murderers with very lethal weapons. Do we not recall that the Ministry of Interior has placed a ban on the transportation, acquisition, and use of firearms in and round Anloga in the aftermath of November 1st 2007? How come that the DCE now propounds that, there may be reasons superior to that of the National Security for known and named criminals to possess and fire arms indiscriminately into people’s homes in Anloga.

Anlo Youth Council can state categorically that the entire DISEC knew the criminals with the arms, but are waiting to be convinced of their intention. The DISEC have forgotten that this entire District is a Ramsar Protected Site where hooting at the little pigeons as they flip by is an offence let alone shooting at them. This environment ensures that turtles come to bash on our warm clean sandy beaches and return to the calm Atlantic unhindered.

This is the pristine or serenity that is at stake and there are absolutely no place for guns and not even as a tool for livelihood.

Again the DCE is reported to have stated that the ‘police were on the trails of two people rumored to be responsible for the shooting incident.’

This is the proof that the DCE is a blatant liar. Rumor, who is peddling rumors in this matter?

Hundreds of residents in Anloga heard the gun-shots. Tens saw or could identify the perpetrators and some few mustered the courage, knowing the dangers they were exposing the public to due to the police complicity, and reported the incident to the police.

Anlo Youth Council cannot be mongering rumor. The DCE knows all too well the caliber of human resource in and available to Anlo Youth Council. What is certain is that the DCE as a person cannot outperform Anlo Youth Council as a group in any aptitude or any discipline.

How can the police be on the trail of suspects whose identities are known and are seen walking the streets of Anloga after the shooting incident? How can the police be on the trail of suspects they know too well and who are not fleeing? Anlo Youth Council has stated time and again that the motivation of all DISEC and the Ghana Police Service in the Keta District is absolutely elsewhere, other than service with integrity they have sworn to provide us.

How come in this case the complainants, suspects, witnesses and the scenes are well known but the DISEC and Police continue to find reason for their selfish complicity. Are these people not responsible to the taxpayer?

And then this is where the guilt of government in the murders of November 1st cannot be placed anywhere other than on the lap of President J. A. Kuffuor.

The Oxford Online Dictionary explains a rumor as ‘as a currently circulating story or report of unverified or doubtful truth.’ God save us! If the DCE and the Police Service in this Division have nothing doing, surely they must not waste our meager resources on rumors and peoples intentions; they just must resign and save us the trouble of looking after them.

Mr. Kofi Ahiabor was also quoted as saying ‘we could not tell which of the two factions in the chieftaincy dispute was responsible for the shooting incident.’

Absurd! Absurdity and ignorance blended in unfathomable proportions. Mr. Ahiabor the DCE knew very well what led to the murder of a policeman and four other persons is not a chieftaincy dispute, let alone factionalism about chieftaincy.

Anlos since 600 years about started democratizing the chieftaincy and its institutions. The process, no matter how cumbersome the customary practice is, has always achieved three things: a popular and credible nomination; a transparent screening and vetting procedure; and a tutelage confinement and a joyous installation.

What happened in Anloga on the fateful November 1, 2007 is a government sponsored hooliganism and banditry against popular civil resentment, resistant and resilience. The signs were on the wall. Many well meaning people have alerted government to it. Even government security agencies knew the storm was gathering, but government chose to ignore their warnings until the inevitable happened. It took priceless civil resources for the relative calm to be returned to Anloga. Anlo Youth Council did not see any government participation yet in returning Anloga to normalcy.

And now they are stoking the fires again!

How can the DCE calling factions and chieftaincy disputes when there are none at all. We challenge the DCE Mr. Kofi Ahiabor to name the factions and tell us, his employers, what he has done about them so far.

As for GNA, the least said about them, the better. This noble institution has sunk so low in the eyes of not only Ghanaians but the whole world. The recent well researched article in this very medium, ref: ‘GNA Goofs!’ Available at www.ghanaweb.com (Friday, January 11, 2008), could not have elucidated our point better. Readers are encouraged to read this article. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that it is GNA that carried the DCE Mr. Edward Kofi Ahiabor’s news. To wit: ‘ne klo yi nugbea, norvia abobo gboe wo dzena’.

Mayor Agbleze (President) P.Y. Tsikata (Secretary)

Email: pytsikata@yahoo.com