NPP Has No Hand In Death Of Mobila

The Northern Regional branch of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has explained that it has no hand in the death of Mr Issah Mobila, the Northern Regional Chairman of the Convention People's Party (CPP), in military custody.

It said it was shocked at reports purported to be coming from Professor J. E. A. Mills, the presidential candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), that the NPP was involved in the arrest of the deceased or anything connected with him.A statement issued in Tamale and signed by Alhaji Salifu Abdul Rahman COP, the NPP Regional Chairman, said the party regretted the death and sympathised with the family of Mr Mobila.

“We want to put on record, however, that Mr Mobila, the deceased, was the Regional Chairman of the CPP in the Northern Region and not an NDC supporter, as Professor Mills wants people to believe. The NPP would want the learned professor to come out and explain the motive behind that fabrication or else we demand an apology from him,”it said.

The statement said it would want to put on record that it was the NDC that was always on the offensive but was always the first to cry when its plans failed and went against it.It recalled events leading to the December 7 polls and alleged that NDC activists,including Mr Haruna Iddrisu, the National Youth Organiser, threatened students in tertiary institutions who had gone to the Northern Region to assist the party to monitor the polls, resulting in some of them returning to Kumasi.

The statement also claimed that an NDC activist who the party identified only as Azoka got onto one of the Metro Mass Transport buses that brought the students with a gallon of petrol and threatened to burn the bus down.

It alleged that on voting day, hundreds of NDC motor riders intimidated NPP voters at all the polling stations in Tamale and its immediate environs, adding that “an NPP supporter, Master Abu Hanifa Basha, and another supporter were killed by the NDC youth in broad daylight at Jakpali in the Tolon/Kumbungu District".

According to the statement, another NPP supporter, Alfa Amadu (alias Iran Iraq), was picked by NDC supporters at Gbandu and sent to the Gbulung chief and killed later at Gbulung, also in the Tolon/Kumbungu District.It claimed also that on voting day, two Metro Mass Transport buses returning from Daboya in the West Gonja District were destroyed and the passengers attacked by NDC youth at Nyohini in Tamale.

The statement alleged that at Worezeli, near Sakasaka, in the night of December 8, 2004, armed NDC supporters attacked the NPP Tamale Central Constituency Chairman, Alhaji Tanko, till the following morning when security personnel were deployed there.

It said again on December 10, 2004, NDC supporters attacked Kusawgu and burnt down the NPP parliamentary candidate's father's house, as well as two other houses. The statement appealed to the party's teeming supporters in the region to be calm and focused as the security agencies investigated those cases.

“We want to assure them that we shall pursue all the cases till the culprits are brought to book,” the statement said and appealed to the NDC to also immediately publicly denounce violence