[ 2017-04-26 ]

The men turned furniture upside down and smashed up desktop computers.

Soldiers deployed as NPP men vandalise Zebilla MP’s residence
Some aggrieved men said to be members of the
ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) have vandalised
state properties at the Bawku West District
Assembly over speculations that a candidate they
dislike has been nominated as District Chief
Executive.

The group, alleged to be loyalists of one of the
three candidates vying for the DCE position in the
area, appeared without warning on the premises of
the assembly around 6:30pm Tuesday, wielding
sticks, machetes and rocks. They marched upstairs,
turned furniture upside down inside the 4-storey
building and smashed up desktop computers,
louvered windows and doors among other things
found in their way.

Reports also indicate that the rioting men, most
of whom were in NPP-branded white shirts, later
stormed the NPP’s office at Zebilla, the
district capital, and visited another havoc on the
structure there. Minutes after the group had left
their first port of attack, officials of the
assembly raced to the military base in Bawku for
intervention.

The private residence of the Member of Parliament
for Zebilla, Frank Fuseini, who is also the Deputy
Upper East Regional Minister, was not spared in
the string of attacks. Party executives confirmed
that the gates to his house were vandalised.

It is not clear yet how the MP is linked to the
anger the men vented on their targets Tuesday.
Police in the troubled district confirmed the
development to Starr News after dispersing the
angry men from the roads where they had also set
tyres on fire to underscore their rage about the
said nomination.

Military reinforcement as things got worse

The rampage, according to eyewitnesses,
degenerated to a level where military
reinforcement was called for from the Bazua
Garrisons. More military men and police officers
were also deployed from Bawku to quell the
disturbances.

“I received a phone call this evening around
5:30 that some youths were mobilising to vandalise
the party office because they have overheard that
they are going to nominate somebody in which they
are not in agreement. So, I was trying to take
more information. Not quite long, I was told they
were in the party office. I quickly went to the
police station to inform the commander. The
commander was not there.

“I went to the commander’s house. When I got
there, the coordinating director was already
there. He said they (the men) just left the
assembly, throwing things. I was told they moved
from the party office to the MP’s house. I got
to the MP’s house and his gates were broken. I
couldn’t get to the party office because I was
told they were burning tyres. So, I went straight
to the house. As I speak now, I’m still in the
house,” the Zebilla Constituency Organiser,
Daniel Anania, told Starr News in a telephone
interview."

A zonal research officer of the party, who did not
want his name mentioned, narrated: “The
constituency chairman himself was not even in
town. The men scattered the town because they made
a nomination they are not happy about. They have
destroyed a lot of things. I went with the
constituency organiser to the BNI man’s house
and the District Police Commander’s house. They
went to the MP’s house, poured petrol at the
entrance and set fire there.”

Swelling agitations

Zebilla is not the only constituency in the Upper
East region with outbursts over rumoured
nominations of some MDCE candidates against the
preferred choices of some groups within the ruling
party.

There have been open protests also in Bongo, Bawku
and some areas among the region’s 3
municipalities and 10 districts. In the instances
seen before now, agitated groups within the party
had resorted to a news conference to route their
grievances to appropriate quarters.

Zebilla’s ‘cutlass conference’ is the first
violent outpouring of frustrations the entire
region has recorded so far on rumoured MDCE
nominations. Whilst the disturbing latest
development may suggest that what angered the
rampaging men at Zebilla may have sounded more
unbearable than what provoked the earlier peaceful
protests in the other constituencies, development
watchers have their opinions that the Tuesday’
disturbances in the Bawku West District, which
came only hours after the Upper East Regional
Minister, Rockson Bukari, reportedly had met with
all MDCE candidates to strengthen the ties that
bind the party together in the region, could be
pointing at probably worse future reactions ahead,
after the President’s nominees finally have been
publicly announced.

Source - Starrfmonline.com

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