NPP must take full responsibility for attack on court - Asiedu Nketia

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has condemned the attack on the Circuit Court in Kumasi by a group known as the Delta Force.

The party has, therefore, called on the Interior Minister, the Minister of National Security, the Inspector General of Police and the National Security Coordinator, who the party said had shown complete failure in dealing with this matter, to resign their positions with immediate effect. 

The party is also demanding from the President Akufo-Addo government a swift action to continue with the trial of those members of the Delta Force for an attack on the Regional Security Coordinator at the Kumasi Regional Administration Offices last week. 

It is also calling for the immediate arrest and trial of all those involved in the attack on the circuit court, as well as the President taking full responsibility for these actions.

7-day ultimatum 

A statement  signed by the General Secretary, Mr Johnson Asiedu Nketia, and released last Friday stated that: “The NDC is by this statement giving the President a seven-day ultimatum for these actions to be taken.” 

“If these actions are not taken by the end of the seven days, we shall embark on a series of mass actions via all peaceful and lawful means to press home our demands further to ensure that this "Black Thursday" never occurs again in the annals of Ghana’s history,’’ Mr Nketia stressed.

He emphasised that: “Ghana is the land of freedom and justice; the NDC demands justice for all citizens.” 

“Never shall the National Democratic Congress sit idly by and watch Nana Akufo-Addo and the NPP destroy this dear nation of ours!  God forbid!” he stressed

According to him, the Delta Force owes unalloyed allegiance to President Akufo-Addo and the NPP.

Mr Nketia said the shameful and barbaric conduct by the so-called Delta Force of the NPP was repugnant, bizarre and reprehensible. 

Acts of banditry

He stated that these wanton acts of banditry since January 7, 2017 when Nana Akufo-Addo took over the reins of government could not be tolerated any longer.

According to him, the judiciary is the last bastion for “our fundamental human rights as a people, as well as the maintenance of the rule of law in a free and democratic country like the one that we have worked tirelessly for decades to establish for ourselves”. 

The general secretary said it was extremely shameful that less than 100 days after handing over a peaceful Ghana, the government of President Akufo-Addo had shown unprecedented levels of weakness, gross incompetence, and an inability to maintain the basic tenets of law and order and protect life and property.

 He observed that the loud silence and unresponsiveness of the President to calls by well-meaning Ghanaians to bring these party militants to order had led to unleashing of uncontrolled terror and mayhem on innocent citizens, public servants and the worst of it all, its extension to both the security apparatus and the judiciary. 

Black Thursday

Mr Nketia said the NDC considers last Thursday, April 6, 2017, as a day of shame.  

“Indeed, we have labelled the day as the ‘Black Thursday’ in Ghana’s Fourth Republican Dispensation, and shall forever remember it as a sordid black spot on the democracy of Mother Ghana,’’ he stressed.

The NDC, Mr Nketia said, was calling on President Akufo-Addo whose NPP was directly responsible for this attack on the institutions of state, to act swiftly and bring his fellow party members perpetrating those acts to book in order to redeem the enviable image of Ghana as a peaceful exemplary democratic country which was bequeathed to him less than 100 days ago. 

He said the NDC would also like to assure all state institutions that the democratic culture nurtured among Ghanaians in ‘’almost a quarter of a century of our recent political dispensation will not be allowed to be bastardised by Nana Akufo-Addo and his roguish groups of lawless gangsters’’.  

Mr Nketia recalled that in the build-up to the 2016 general election, the NPP was culpable in the importation of South African mercenaries into the country to train hoodlums in Agona Dwakua, and it was not surprising, therefore, that after using all kinds of subterfuge tactics to walk its way into power, Nana Akufo-Addo had let loose his thugs on innocent Ghanaians as well as institutions of state.