Help ease tension ahead of election - Lecturer urges politicians, media

A Peace-building expert with the University of Cape Coast (UCC), Dr Kaderi Noagah Bukari has called on politicians and the media to help ease the tension as the country prepares for the December 7, 2024 polls.

He said the stakes in this year’s election were very high for the two major political parties, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC), hence the need to educate the electorate on remaining peaceful and avoiding all forms of violence.

Dr Bukari made the call at a two-day training workshop organised by the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) for journalists from the Ashanti Region on ‘Countering Hate Speech and Polarising Narrative to Foster Democratic Consolidation and Peace in Ghana.’  

Stakes

He said while one party believed that it was possible to break the eight-year cycle of one party ruling and was prepared to achieve that aim, the other believed that the practice had been for one party to rule for eight years and leave the scene for the other.

That, he explained, made the stakes in this year’s election very high for the two leading political parties. He said the resolve of both parties to win power at all costs could lead to electoral violence in the country if those expectations and ambitions were not well managed.

Dr Bukari said it behoved the media to step up its work on sensitising the public against violence and certain acts that could lead to violence and destabilise the country's peace.

He said there was a need for Ghanaians to be more humane and tolerant towards foreigners and not to discriminate against them to maintain the peace the country was enjoying.

So far, he said Ghana was the only country of her neighbours not to have experienced any terrorist attack and attributed that to the country’s non-involvement in the regional operations to attack foreigners, especially people of Fulani origin.

Aside from that, he said the country had been monitoring the borders and implementing military operations along the border towns. He said all those efforts seemed to be paying off and making the country not attractive to armed groups.