Executive Director for West Africa Centre for Counter-Extremism (WACCE), Mutaru Mumuni Muqthar has suggested measures that can be taken to address the current violent clashes in Bawku in the Upper East Region.

He believes the recurrence of the conflict in the town is attributable to the fact that much effort is not being made by the government and media to resolve the issue entirely.

Speaking on JoyNews’ AM Show on Friday, he offered three suggestions in response to the host Bernice Abu-Baidoo Lansah’s query about what he saw as the appropriate next crucial move to resolve the problem.

Firstly, he emphasized that the role of the security forces be looked at, questioning if they had the “goodwill and support” of the locals of the town.

Subsequently, he suggested that the current security force deployed in Bawku should be changed.

“We need to pull out the existing… too many allegations against them. Whether two or more, it damages the support they need from the local population,” he emphasised.

The security expert also suggested that the leadership of the peoples of Kusasi and Mamprusi is engaged at a high level with the goal of bringing stability to the region.

He told host Bernice Abu-Baidoo Lansah, “We need to have high-level engagement of the leaderships of both Kusasis and Mamprusis to be able to bring about a platform of engagement in terms of bringing stability to the area.”

The final suggestion he emphasized was the need for the country to have a national-level blueprint that thoroughly and implicitly engages in the Bawku conflict.

With his final suggestion, he bemoaned that the conflict in question has not been given enough attention to find a permanent solution for it, pointing out that it kept recurring due to how the conflict is handled in the country.

 “We haven’t had enough national stoplights on the Bawku. The media and all aspects, national level aspect engages Bawku in a very ad hoc way. When the violence happens, it becomes a topic of discussion at the national level once it goes away, we stop talking about it.

“We need to engage in efforts that sees Baku as a national security situation… so we can have more… support and resources to deal with Bawku. Other than that, we may be going for another 60-year conflict,” he stated.