The Upper East Regional Minister, Mr Mark Wayongo says the stripping of some suspects naked publicly in Bawku is more acceptable than killing innocent citizens which those suspects were believed to be bent on doing. “The people who were alleged to have been put through that treatment were going to shoot at people who had gone to harvest their potatoes and I think that that treatment was better than if they had killed those people,” he said. Video footage from the volatile town depicts soldiers drilling two young men suspected to have engaged in unprovoked shooting in the Natinga area in Bawku, exacerbating the tension there. They were paraded naked in the streets and in some scenes the muzzle of a gun can be seen being pushed into the mouth of one of them. The video together with earlier reports of the incident – denied by the military high command in Bawku – has caused some public outrage. But Mr Wayongo, while regretting the conduct of the soldiers, believes the complaints are unjustified, given that the people of Bawku live under abnormal circumstances and conditions.