Government Is Off to a Good Start on Western Togoland

Announcement by Information Minister Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah that the sources of funding of the Western Togoland Terrorist Organization (WTTO), also known as the Homeland Study Group Foundation (HSGF), have been located, for the most part, must give us some limited cause for a modest celebration because now, at least, progressive-thinking and peace-loving Ghanaian citizens can rest assured that the venomous head of the proverbial snake has been marked out for certain condign destruction. It is a limited cause for modest celebration because the country’s judicial operatives and our judicial system have yet to fully earn the trust of the average Ghanaian citizenry.

Thus far, the general performance of the members of the judiciary and the judicial system leaves much to be desired (See “Govt Has Identified Sources of Funding to Western Togoland Secessionists – Oppong-Nkrumah” Ghana News Agency (GNA) 9/28/20). The arrested members of the Western Togoland Secessionists must be tried by a military tribunal and sentenced as national security threats because they are reported to have targeted state-owned properties and national security installations like the Akosombo and Akuse dams, as well as the Adomi Bridge and the Ho Central Market. Their trial must also be swift and decisive, with the necessary monitoring involvement of military tribunal specialists from the ECOWAS Zone and the international community, such as the African Human Rights Court, the United Nations and representatives from the Commonwealth Area Countries, in order to ensure that the integrity of Ghana’s judicial process, especially our military tribunal, will be safeguarded.

We need to do justice in this context and do so above board. Which means that the process must be transparent and indelibly deterrent. Too much that was wrong and regressive of the country’s socioeconomic, political, cultural and industrial development has transpired within the past 40 years that needs to be promptly put paid to. Already, some grossly misguided and light-headed so-called security experts have attributed a level of significance to the dastardly and cowardly activities of the Homeland Study Group Foundation, the parent group and sponsor of the Western Togoland Group, that ought to make all critically-thinking Ghanaian citizens of all walks of life cringe. Some such questionable National Security Experts, so-called, have even called for a serious dialogue with these common criminals who have absolutely no genuine and legitimate agenda besides the savage promotion of Ethnic Supremacy, at the cost of the radical destabilization and the total destruction of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana.

The reported condemnation by the members of the National House of Chiefs (NHC) comes rather late in the event. But, of course, it is better late than never. We also learn about the mordant condemnation of the criminal activities of the operatives of the Western Togoland Terrorist Organization by the distinguished membership of the National Council of State (NCS), which is also all well and good. But even as Information Minister Oppong-Nkrumah rightly observed, what is needed here more than ever before is the cross-cultural and cross-ethnic rallying of all progressive and well-meaning Ghanaians behind the salutary promotion of the lofty ideals of “One Nation, One People with One Common Destiny,” as widely and broadly championed by Ghana’s first postcolonial leader, to wit, President Kwame Nkrumah.

There exists absolutely no Western Togoland Territory any more than there exists Western Akanaland in the Ivory Coast or Côte d’Ivoire or, for that matter, Southern Burkina Faso or any territory inside the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana. We are One Ghana, legally established with the consent, recognition and the approval of the global community and must be respected as such, until the entire citizenry of our beloved nation decides otherwise. The patent psychopathic bandits of the so-called Western Togoland Secessionist Group have absolutely no such global recognition and approval.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

September 27, 2020

E-mail: [email protected]