Delta Force attack: Akufo-Addo has failed to act – Young Cadres

NDC Pressure group, Young Cadres has called on President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to with immediate effect call his party’s vigilante group, ‘Delta Force’ to order.

The group in recent times has been tormenting the peaceful atmosphere in the Ashanti Region – the group on Thursday morning stormed a Kumasi Circuit Court to free 13 of their members who were facing charges for causing mayhem at the Ashanti Regional Coordinating Council.

They destroyed court properties and freed the suspects in the process.

The 13 members were detained in connection with attacking the Regional Security Coordinator.

The marauding group also attacked the presiding judge who had earlier ruled that the suspects be remanded to appear before court on April 20, 2017.

This has compelled Young Cadres in a statement to warn President Nana Addo of the uncultured behavior of his party members.

Read below the full statement

Ghana inches closer to a failed state every single day that the President of the Republic, His Excellency Nana Akuffo Addo fails to rein in his so-called ‘Invisible and Delta Forces’. The scourge of violence and unbridled impunity that these two groups have unleashed on the good people of this country in the past three months is unprecedented in the annals of the nation’s history.

The President, to all intents and purposes, has been snoring away his time at the Presidency and turned a blind eye to the atrocities being meted out to the very people he promised to defend and protect. How on earth does a President who is a renowned lawyer and a human rights activist allow such barbarity to continue in a lawful state as Ghana? Where did we, as a country, go wrong?

Yesterday witnessed, undoubtedly, the biggest affront to the nation’s democracy when the unhinged Delta Forces attacked a law court in session in Kumasi and freed 13 of its members who were on trial for vandalism and assault. This happened in a democratic Ghana, not a country being ruled by the military! But we are not surprised because we expected our nation to get to this point. With the sort of training that was given to these vigilante groups by the New Patriotic Party (NPP), we saw this coming. When South African mercenaries were brought into this country to train these Delta and Invisible Forces in arms handling and attack tactics, we knew where our nation was getting to; when people from war-ravaged Serbia were brought into this country to train these forces in “Assaulting the Pillars of the State”, we expected the nation to get here.

As the impunity persists and the President and his government fail to act, we the Young Cadres of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) would want to sound a note of caution to the President that if he fails to call his deranged vigilante groups within his party to order, Ghanaians would have no option than to resort to any means possible to defend themselves.

It is also worth highlighting to the President and his National Security apparatus that, every political party in the country can ride on the back of emotions to mobilize vigilante groups to protect their members and interests. Let it not be lost on anyone that the NDC, of which we belong, can also raise and train vigilante groups to defend the party and its interest. And this would not be a desired outcome for the whole nation

As a group, we have recorded not less than a thousand (1000) acts of unprovoked violence meted out to ordinary Ghanaians whose only fault was that they offered themselves to serve the nation.

In all these, the surprising thing has been that civil society groups who would have shouted to the high heavens, and the clergy, the conscience of the state, have been mute and conspicuously missing from the national discourse. The pastors who claimed they could fix the problems of the state in a matter of three months have been loud in their silence.

We the Young Cadres are, by this, calling on all well-meaning Ghanaians and the international community to speak before this menace of vigilante rule gets out of hand. We say this because we know fully well that the Boko Haram terrorists in neighbouring Nigeria started as a group of disgruntled youth. If care is not taken, with the sophisticated training and arms provided to these Delta Forces and Invisible Forces by the ruling NPP, our nation could go the way of Nigeria.

We also call on the international community to come to our aid by providing security training support to our security services to be able to deal ruthlessly with these marauding groups. It is quite clear that security in our nation is gradually being broken down.

Long Live Ghana
Long Live NDC
Long Live YCA

Signed:
Bright Botchway
General Secretary
Young Cadres Association
(0249-999145)

Mubarak Watara
PRO
Young Cadres Association
(0244-753143)