General Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress Johnson Asiedu Nketia has charged residents of Banda, a community in the Bono region to take videos and photos of military officers who harass them when they step out to register in the ongoing voter registration exercise.
The NDC has raised concerns over some purported military actions in the Banda community aimed at preventing Ewe settlers from getting registered to vote in the upcoming elections.
Addressing a section of Ewe settlers on Sunday in Banda, Johnson Asiedu Nketia assured the cheering crowd of the support of the party and urged them to continue to step out to register.
“We will be here until the end of the registration exercise. Make sure you go out and register and if any soldier intimates you, take a photo of that soldier and let us all see them by their faces. If it is the Immigration officers who are doing it too, let us see their faces,” he told the gathering.
Mr. Asiedu Nketia further claimed members of party vigilante groups have been clothed in military uniform and assigned to the community to harass residents.
The presence of military officers in several parts of the country have generated widespread concerns and suspected by a section of the Ghanaian public to be an attempt by government to cause voter suppression in strongholds of the opposition party.
Following the circulation of a video on social media which captured some military officers enforcing preventive measures at a polling station, former President and flagbearer of the NDC John Dramani Mahama described the development as “evidence, like the one in this post, of the President’s deployment and discriminatory use of soldiers to target our brothers and sisters in the Volta Region and wherever there are settlements of Voltarians and non-Akans.”
