A Deputy General Secretary of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mustapha Foyo Gbande, has said the Akwatia by-election will be peaceful, “by hook or crook.”
Gbande, who is also the Deputy in Charge of Operations at the Presidency, has said peace will not be a commodity for negotiation on Tuesday, September 2, 2025, when the election takes place.
“This is not an election to negotiate peace. It would be peaceful anyway, by force by hook or crook,” he told TV3’s Mawuena Egbeta in Akwatia Monday, September 1, 2025.
He was responding to allegations by the NPP that, according to their intelligence, some persons are planning to impersonate police officers and wear face masks during the election.
Gbande accused the NPP of resorting to “politics of excuses and accusations.” He alleged that the NPP hasn’t been on the ground and can’t fathom how they arrived at such a conclusion.
“They have not been here. They only came to this constituency three days ago. We have been here the last three weeks. So, if you only came few days ago, tomorrow is election, you’re now making complaints? Any case, who are the masked police officers they are talking about?
“For any violence that happens anywhere, we have always known who the people are. So for them to be talking about masked police officers”, he added, amounts to “speaking to what doesn’t exist.”
He concluded that the NPP “just want to scare people in Accra as if there is something wrong here, there is nothing wrong here.”
Background
The National Youth Organiser of the NPP, Salam Mustapha, warned of possible infiltration in Tuesday’s Akwatia by-election, alleging that unidentified individuals may attempt to impersonate police officers.
Speaking on Channel One TV on Sunday, August 31, 2025, he said the party had received intelligence that some persons, allegedly from the Greater Accra and Ashanti regions, plan to wear police uniforms and engage in unlawful activities on election day.
“Security goes beyond just men in uniform and all that. I have had cause to put out today some of the things we are picking up that we think the police should be on top of their brief — that some hoodlums from Greater Accra, Ashanti Region are preparing to adorn police uniforms and embark on nefarious operations. That has come to our attention. We are putting that to the police,” he said.
He further urged the Ghana Police Service to ensure that officers deployed for the polls wear identifiable name tags and avoid covering their faces.
“In our meeting with the police, we did indicate to them that we want to see the normal police operating standards where police uniforms have the name tags of the officers, and they should not be masked. So on Tuesday, any masked officer we see, we will count the person as not professional or a proper police person,” he added.
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