Voter Registration: Minority Want Soldiers Withdrawn From NDC Strongholds

The Minority in Parliament is demanding the withdrawal of military personnel deployed to some eastern border towns.

The military personnel have been sighted in the Volta Region, Oti Region, Northern Region, Upper East Region and Upper West Region.

But the Minority indicated that they were more concerned with happenings in the Volta Region, especially the Ketu North and South districts.

The Minority MPs who are members of the opposition National Democratic Congress fear the deployment of the soldiers is meant to intimate citizens in the affected regions, which are known to be NDC strongholds, ahead of the voter registration exercise next week.

“There is a certain scheme which is designed by the government to intimidate our teeming supporters from coming out in their numbers to register and have their names on the new voter register,” the Minority Spokesperson on Defence and Interior, James Agalga, said to the press.

He maintained that the deployment was uncalled for because “after all, we are all aware that our borders were shut down in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“What is this second wave of employment meant to achieve? Is there a threat of aggression from our neighbouring countries,” he questioned further.

One of the soldier’s tents erected in the border communities

He thus charged President Akufo-Addo to immediately “cause to be withdrawn the massive deployment we are witnessing along our borders.”

On the suggestions that this deployment was to secure Ghana’s borders because of the pandemic, Mr. Agalga said that “COVID-19 did not start today.”

“The hotspots are not in the Volta Region. It is here in Accra,” he added.

Residents along the Ghana-Togo border in the southern part of the Volta Region told Citi News they are living in fear due to the presence of soldiers along the border.

Mr. Agalga also said the Minority has heard “a lot of complaints from the Volta Region.”

“The people are scared. They are intimidated and yet we know of no major security threat along that particular frontier.”

---citinewsroom