Minister for National Security Albert Kan-Dapaah
The Minister for National Security Albert Kan-Dapaah has cautioned against hasty conclusions following the killing of two persons in Ejura when an armed military officer was seen aiming into a crowd that was protesting and demanding justice for the slain community advocate, Ibrahim Mohammed also known as Macho Kaaka.
Speaking on Wednesday, June 30, 2021, at the opening ceremony of a 3-day national stakeholders’ dialogue on the theme, “Countering post-2020 election violence and building consensus for greater political tolerance”, Mr. Kan Dapaah said investigations into the incident will provide details on what truly happened on June 29, 2021.
“So what really happened in Ejura? The truth with Ejura is that people are drawing conclusions when nobody knows what exactly happened. As the head of the security apparatus, I really don’t know what happened and yet people are drawing their own conclusions and I think that is the danger we have in this country.”
He continued “We are being told that he was a prominent member of the fix the country movement, is that true? We are being told that he was member of a particular political party. Is that true? Yesterday the story in town was that he was an NDC guy. But the truth is that he is an NPP guy. So we need to wait to see exactly what has happened. And I am hoping that in the next one week or so, all of us will know what went wrong before we start putting blames where they shouldn’t be”, Mr. Kan Dapaah said.
The National Security Minister who was speaking just a day after the incident said it was unthinkable for a trained military officer to kneel and aim directly into protestors, arguing that there may be a good reason for the action albeit wrong.
“Somebody says that a whole military officer, a well-trained soldier went there with the sole purpose of aiming his gun at civilians and killing them. It doesn’t happen. Soldiers don’t behave like that. If that was what happened, there may be a very good reason, even if it wrong for him to have done that, but to assume that soldiers go there and start shooting, ask General Kotia, soldiers don’t behave like that. So we need to wait to see exactly what happened.”
Mr. Kan Dapaah noted that the essence of the investigations being carried out by the Ministry of Interior and not the police was to ensure there were no cover-ups as he reiterated the calls for Ghanaians to wait for the outcome before drawing conclusions.
“This morning (June 30, 2021), the president has said the police should forget about their investigations that we should set up a public committee, we want a public inquiry so that the police do not come and tell us what we want to hear. We want people to come from outside to do independent investigations and tell us exactly what happened……So what I want to say is that let us wait to have a better understanding and better knowledge of exactly what happened before blaming.”