180 missing as deserted streets signal Gnassingbe disaffection

At least 180 residents in Togo are reported missing after a government crackdown on an opposition demonstration calling on President Faure Gnassingbe to step down.

Joy News' Favour Nunoo reported that government can only account for 80 persons arrested following the state response to a demonstration last week.

The protests are part of growing calls for an end to the 50-year old dynasty of the Gnassingbe family.

"It is not a family property," opposition figure Robert Olimpio told Joy News lamenting stagnated socio-economic development in Ghana's neighbouring country.

"There is nothing left for him to do. He has to leave power", he said of the President who has won three elections - 2005, 2010 and 2015.

But about two years into his third term, the opposition in Togo no longer want to continue with the current constitutional arrangement.

The opposition wants a return to the provision for a maximum of two five-year presidential terms after the president in 2002 removed term limits from its 1992 Constitution.

The opposition also wants the introduction of a two-round voting system.

The government has reached out with a bill from the President agreeing to a two-term limit. But Parliament is on recess and will return in October.

The bill is also yet to pass the committee stage of consideration and the vote may be several months away, Favour Nunoo explained.

But even with this proposal, a rejuvenated opposition remains unconvinced anything good would come out of this concessions.

Wary of the President's motives, the National Alliance for Change (ANC) party believe the proposal is a delay tactic against a people who are fed up with him.

Story by Ghana|myjoyonline.com