The Minister for Defence, Dominic Nitiwul has slammed the Minority side in Parliament for asking the government to withdraw military personnel deployed to help protect the country’s borders and other entry points.
The Volta Caucus on the Minority side at a press briefing on Monday gave the government a 24-hour ultimatum to withdraw the security personnel.
According to the Caucus, the deployment is an attempt to intimidate residents of the border towns especially, those in the Volta Region in the upcoming voters’ registration exercise.
But in response, Mr. Nitiwul at a counter-press conference organised by the Information Ministry insisted that the Minority were only spewing “propaganda.”
According to him, the deployment was done to beef up protection at the borders in the wake of the increasing COVID-19 figures.
“I believe that if they are watching this press conference, they will revise their notes and they should be bowing their heads in shame because they lied to the people of Ghana. As we have all been told now, the numbers in the Volta Region are some of the lowest of the deployment. So when you are giving the ultimatum, are you giving the ultimatum for those in the North-East Region to also be withdrawn, those in the Northern Region to also be withdrawn?”
“Are you speaking for those people as well? What about Upper West? They should also withdraw as well when Tumu people are happy that the soldiers are there and they have been there for a year and a half? It’s not like yesterday that security personnel have been deployed. Other people have been with them for a year and a half.”
The Minister clarified that the current deployment of security personnel across the country is not meant to intimidate potential registrants in the upcoming voter registration exercise.
According to him, the deployment is aimed at strengthening security at Ghana’s borders as part of the measure towards the COVID-19 fight.
He further disclosed that about a thousand security personnel drawn from the Ghana Armed Forces, Ghana Police Service, Ghana Immigration Service, and the Ghana Revenue Authority have been deployed across all of Ghana’s entry points.
