The recent developments in Bawku, if care is not taken, according to a security analyst, will become worse in the future.
The long-standing conflict which has exacerbated into killings being likened to terrorism, per Dr. Adam Bonaa’s assertion, could become unbearable if authorities do not act fast and well.
He says he anticipated the current state of the unrest about a year ago when the matter became over politicised and government failed to find solutions to it, indicating that it would get worse over time if things are left as they are.
“…So, mine is that, you can put all your military and police officers in Bawku. If the people in Bawku decide to kill themselves and we are not engaging them trying to let them silence the guns, we’ll just be pushing in human resource and not putting our best foot forward and as far as I’m concerned, what we are seeing today, some of us predicted it, maybe about a year ago and it’s going to get worse, unfortunately,” he said.
Speaking with Alfred Ocansey on Ghana Tonight on TV3 Monday, January 22, 2023, Dr. Bonaa said government needs to adopt a multifaceted approach in dealing with the issue.
“Anyone who understands conflict or the art of war will tell you that, that’s usually temporary so at the moment you can decide to send all our police officers or military officers to the Upper East and they will still be stretched because if you know the vast nature of the Upper East, you can imagine that this conflict, some way some how has found its way into areas in Walewale, portions of it in Bolgatanga, Binduri, all over the Upper East so mine is that we need to use the multifaceted approach in dealing with this conflict,” he counseled.
He spoke ill of the relegation of the matter by government without making budgetary allocation for experts to engage the feuding factions, an approach he said hitherto worked, when applied.
“[In] 2022, a dialogue team left Accra I was part of it, the CDS, IGP, the Defence minister, Interior minister and all of them. Subsequent to that they told us we won’t see any gunshot, no one would die, they won’t kill, they’ll stop it. For three months they stayed put to that. But subsequently the delegation promised it was going to come back in three months. It’s been more than a year no one has gone back and when I checked, it’s because no allocation for funds to be able to go and engage has been made.
“If you check the 2024 budget, there is no budgetary allocation again, to continue any form of dialogue in the Bawku conflict. So, we are running around in circles and people are dying needlessly,” he lamented, adding that
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