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A Deputy Director of Communications for the New Patriotic Party's (NPP’s) 2012 campaign team, Samuel Awuku, has described ex-president Jerry John Rawlings as the most dangerous politician in Ghana’s body politic.
Mr Rawlings threw his weight behind aggrieved Andani youth who torched the National Democratic Congress (NDC’s) party office, destroying property in the wake of the acquittal of 15 suspects standing trial for the murder of Ya Na Yakubu Andani II. He also justified their actions and praise them for controlling their anger.
However, Mr Awuku said such actions and pronouncements by the ex-president - as well as other similar incidents in the past - are enough to convince him that Mr Rawlings has a penchant of fomenting trouble, especially when it relates to tribalism.
Mr Awuku who was speaking on Peace FM’s Kokrokoo programme Tuesday, made reference to a publication in the Daily Graphic newspaper published on February 14, 1994 with the headline: Carnage in the North as refugees flee ethnic strife.
According to the NPP Communications Director, the news story was written at the time when Mr Rawlings was leading the country as President while 5,000 people lost their lives in the Kokumba-Nanumba war.
He quoted the paper in parts: “Over the weekend, the President Flt Lt Rawlings visited the war zone and was shocked by the level of the carnage and destruction resulting from the conflict between the Kokumba’s on one side and the Gonja’s, Dagomba’s, Nanumba’s and the Mampusi’s on the other side.
“Along the Bimbila-Yendi road and the Yendi-Tamale road, where members of the National Security Council who accompanied the president passed, scores of dead bodies could be found littered.
“They included women, children and even infants; there were spectacles of pregnant women whose wombs had been opened and the fetuses thrown out.”
Mr Awuku said there were also reports in a village where the only survivors were an 80-year-old woman and her dog, stressing, “…this happened under former president Rawlings'” rein.
Describing the incident as a clear case of crimes against humanity, Mr Awuku asked whether the commission set up by Mr Rawlings to investigate the deaths were able to administer justice.
Though regrettable, Samuel Awuku said, the deaths recorded in the Dagbon crises were nothing compared to that of the Kokumba-Nanumba conflict, yet Mr Rawlings and the NDC have made a big deal out of it, playing on people's emotions and accusing the NPP administration of overseeing the killing of the Ya Na.
“I have absolutely no pity for President Mills [that Rawlings is inciting people against him] because he was the biggest beneficiary of Rawlings’ politics of division.
“I think it is about time their party calls Rawlings to order,” Mr Awuku insisted, warning he (Rawlings) may plunge this country into destruction.
Story by Dorcas Efe Mensah/myjoyonline.com/Ghana
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