[ad_1]
The Director of the Faculty of Academic Affairs and Research at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Center (KAIPTC) says the government should deal amicably with the secessionists from West Togo.
Professor Kwesi Aning said that brutal military action against the group is not the best way to resolve the matter, as it may trigger more negative reactions from the group.
“[The state] must find ways to come talk [with the group], identify critical issues and discover how we negotiate around them.
“If the narratives that we are hearing from them, that is, if we do a discourse analysis of what their problems are, this will allow the state to recover by using its negotiators to move towards each other,” he said in Newsfile. .
This comes after the arrest of some 30 people who are believed to belong to a secessionist group fighting for the independence of the Volta region.
The group wants the Volta region to be an autonomous country known as Western Togo.
The arrest was made possible thanks to the efforts of a joint Army-Police team deployed to ensure the protection of lives and property in Juapong following the blocking of the Juapong and Kpong roads.
The works of the secessionist group
Before their arrest, members of the group in the early hours of Friday blocked the main entrances to the Volta region. As a result, travelers on the route were stranded.
The group also attacked the police stations in Aveyime and Mepe, leaving one officer injured.
One person was shot and killed in connection with the affair.
However, the move has been highly condemned by Ghanaians who have asked security agencies and the government to act immediately and deal with the people involved to prevent things from getting worse.
But speaking in Newsfile on Saturday, Professor Aning said there is a need for peaceful resolutions on the matter.
According to him, the way the matter is handled now can scale things down or scale things down.
He said concerns raised by the group that said region has been neglected [in terms of development]Therefore, the move may be genuine, and if so, the government should take steps to address these concerns rather than fight back.
Meanwhile, representatives from the two main political parties who also participated in the Newsfile panel on Saturday disagreed with the professor.
Both Sammy Gyamfi, who represented the NDC, and OB Amoah, who represented the PNP, agreed that if underdevelopment was indeed the reason for their action, there were better means the group could turn to to get the government’s attention for negotiations to take place.
The NDC Communications Officer added that, there are people in other parts of the country who are equally entitled to, as well as good reason to accuse the government of neglecting them in terms of development, however, those people have not resorted to creating secessionist groups.
