Security consultant, Prof. Kwesi Aning is urging stakeholders working to restore peace in Bawku to ensure that the proposed solutions are free from any political inclination.
According to him, these inclinations make it difficult to arrive at a holistic approach to resolving the violence.
This comes as five persons were shot dead last week in the perennial conflict.
Many have raised concerns over the inability of successive governments to eliminate the root cause of the problem completely.
However, speaking on JoyNews’ AM Show, Prof. Kwesi Aning believes that the lack of a dispassionate approach makes it difficult for that to happen.
“I think the unfortunate part of this Bawku crisis has been extreme politicisation of the resolution interventions. If it is Party A that is in power, their approach to resolving the conflict is different from Part B. But the root of the conflict is the same,” he said on JoyNews.
This, Prof Aning explained, snowballs into a bigger issue of creating room for the crisis to persist.
“And therein lies my argument earlier, that when the root of a conflict becomes overlooked, it festers, becomes intractable then others begin to exploit it for their pecuniary ends. That is what we are seeing,” he explained on Monday, January 22, 2024.
“So we need to take the politics out of understanding what the problem is, what the intervention options must be, and when there is consensus about the intervention, [there must be] consensus to pursue to its legitimate end.”
As of January 18, three more people were killed, bringing the death toll to 5 within 48 hours.
They were shot by some soldiers who claimed they found firearms on them.
Source: graphic.com.gh