The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has called on President Nana Akufo-Addo to ensure the cessation of acts of lawlessness meted out to Ghanaian citizens and media practitioners under his administration by state security agencies.
In a press statement issued Sunday, the major opposition party said, “we call on President Akufo-Addo to sit up and do the work for which he was elected. We would not sit idly for the rights of citizens to be infringed upon by state agencies and agents.
“He must do that work with full respect for our rights and welfare. We shall not sit unconcerned as the President lurches from one scandal to the other. Ghana and Ghanaians deserve far better.”
The statement signed by General Secretary, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, indicated that “happenings such as, the needless invasion by state-sponsored vigilantes of the voting process during the Ayawaso Bye-election, the virtual militarization of the registration of voters process last year and the unprecedented violence that accompanied the election proper last December, culminating in the untimely death of eight innocent Ghanaian citizens, proves that the current administration does not believe in the rule of law nor common human decency.”
Reacting to the alleged attack on Citi FM journalist, the statement described the actions of the National Security operatives as brutish, pointing out that the continued presence of DSP Samuel Kojo Azugu in the National Security is an affront to the fight against lawlessness as purported by the incumbent government.
“With the brutish assault of Mr Caleb Kudah of Citi FM and the harassment of his colleague, Ms. Zoe Abu-Baidoo, the Akufo-Addo government demonstrated clearly that it does not believe in the rule of law nor common human decency, as the continued presence of Deputy Superintendent of Police Samuel Kojo Azugu in the National Security apparatus and the brutish conduct of Lt. Colonel Agyemang, fly totally in the face of the solemn recommendations of the Emile Short Commission of Inquiry,” the statement said.
These actions, they say, “portend a dangerous erosion of the democracy that all our citizens have come to cherish since the inception of the 4th Republic in January, 1993.”
To the NDC, “it is this unprecedented attack on the people of Ghana and the apparent helplessness or connivance of the President and Commander in Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces, His Excellency Nana Akufo-Addo that threatens the foundation of our democracy and the wellbeing of our fellow countrymen and women.”
“Accordingly we condemn in the strongest possible terms this degradation of our democracy by the Akufo-Addo government.
“We have the right to live in safety and security as we go about our daily lives. We have a right to live and breathe under this regime even in the face of the challenging economic situation brought about by the unbelievable incompetence of the Akufo-Addo government,” part of the statement read.
Below is the full statement: