Ghanaians woke up on Friday morning to the disturbing news that the Western Togoland Restoration Front (WTRF),a so-called insurgence group based in the Volta Region, had blocked all the entry points from Accra into the region.
According to the various media reports, the group, in what looks like a well-coordinated action, blocked the Tema-Ho road at Juapong. It also blocked the Tema-Aflao road at Vume, a suburb of Sogakope, and the Sege-Avayime-Battor-Mepe road.
The criminals then proceeded to the AveyimePolice Station, took the personnel on duty hostage, and then broke into the armoury, where they reportedly made away with ten assault rifles.
As if these were not enough, the group, again, attempted to move to the Akosombo and Kpong Hydro dams to hoist its flags, but was thwarted by security forces deployed to the area.
When the fugitive 86 year old Papavi Hogbedetor and his Western Togoland Study Group started this nonsense of fighting for the independence of the former British Togoland from Ghana, as a sovereign state, many underrated their activities.
Papavi, as he is popularly known, had made a video, which was circulating among the Ewe communities, purporting to be explaining the history behind the union of the Volta Region with the then Gold Coast.
Obviously, this man was brainwashing the Ewes to support the dangerous path he had chosen to ‘liberate’ his people. Though it was clear that Papavi was leading his tribesmen and women to the slaughterhouse in future, the security of the state was treating him with kid gloves, apparently because of his advanced age.
He has now gone into hiding, but the bad seeds he had sown are beginning to germinate and causing problems for the state.
Emerging information indicates the Western Togoland Restoration Front (WTRF), which blocked the roads last Friday, had nothing to do with Papavi’s Home Study Group. The new group, reportedly led by one TogbeYesu I, is drawing lessons from Papavi’s cooked up stories about the Volta Region, and using that as a springboard to launch an insurgency in that part of the country.
Unfortunately, ourintelligence agencies seem to have failed us, resulting in the action the new group embarked upon last week Friday. As I had earlier indicated, it was a coordinated attack on the state of Ghana, yet our intelligence agencies failed to pick up the early warning signals, and allowed this group of miscreants to perpetrate the crime, which has caused us international embarrassment.
Ghana is acknowledged worldwide as one of the most peaceful countries on Planet Earth. Therefore, for the international media to start reporting that there is insurgency in the country is a worrying development, which can also affect the attraction of direct foreign investment.
Interestingly, the Volta Regional Minister, Archibald Letsa, claimed to have intelligence on the activities of this splinter group, and that his outfit had, for the past two years, been monitoring their movements.
Whilst this claim is heart-warming, it is, at the same time, incredulous that a rebel group you claim to be monitoring could mount more than three road blocks andterrorise people for hours before the security agencies could respond to the distress calls from those who were under attack.
According to the residents of Aveyime who spoke to Joy News, members of the secessionist movement entered the town and fired gunshots for several hours after ransacking the police station, shot some of the personnel and later took them hostage. As I put this piece together, some the police personnel are still on admission at the Police Hospital.
Obviously, if these people were terrorists and their intention was to kill and maim people, they would have succeeded in executing their mission. This is where I have a problem with the so-called intelligence MrLetsa claimed to have. Having intelligence means you are prepared and ready to counter this group, but in this case, it took several hours for you to react.
Obviously, the Volta Regional Security Council was caught off guard, but instead of admitting its shortcomings and calling for public support to fight the secessionists, itis rather telling stories that do not make sense.
Though the National House of Chiefs, headed by TogbeAfede, has come out to condemn the action of the secessionists after an emergency meeting in Kumasi, in my view, their long and loud silence over the years did not also help matters.
According to TogbeAfede, who said he had spoken to the National Security Minster, Mr Kan Dapaah, he was in touch with his colleagues in the Volta Region to come out and condemn the action of the group.
This is a sensible step our respected chiefs have taken, but, in my view, if they (chiefs) and the National Security Minister had made some of these moves when Papavi started brainwashing the people, maybe we may not have got to this stage.
I am not, and will not try to, belittle the status of any chief in the Volta Region, but honestly speaking, if one talks about chiefs who wield much influence in the region – it is the Awomefia, who, until recent years, controls almost half of the region, the Asogli Paramountcy and GbiTraditional Council (Hohoe).
In my humble view, if chiefs from these three prominent traditional areas were strong with their condemnation of the history of the region that was being twisted by Papavi to suit his agenda of making the Volta Region an independent state, he would not have developed the tap root and, therefore, gained the strength to cause the harm being perpetrated on the people of the Volta Region, and Ghana at large.
Yesterday, I read comments attributed to TogbeKumassah, Spokesman for the Awomefia, Togbi Sri, on ghanaweb, which is very revealing and ought to have been made a long time ago, when the Octogenarian leader of the Home Study Group started claiming that the entire Volta Region was part of the German Togoland that was divided by the United Nations into two, with the British ruling the western part and the French controlling the eastern part.
These are the words attributed to TogbeKumassah in the said interview: “Togoland was a mandated territory. The French and British Togoland were one, under the Germans. When Africa was partitioned in Berlin in 1884, Togoland was given to the Germans, but during the First World War – 1914 to 1918 – Germany was defeated and the colony was taken from them.
“The boundary does not include Anlo. Anlo became part of the Gold Coast in 1874. But the First World War came in 1914, so we were already part of the Gold Coast. Just Kpetoe area, to Kpedze, they were the former German colony now called British Togoland. So PapaviHogbedetor, including Anlo as part of Western Togoland, is not correct.
“We were never part of German colony; the Germans never ruled us. The only thing is that they brought education and church; the E.P. is a German church, and the church also opened schools. That was how far they went. The boundary is in Lome-Aflao, so we were never part.
“They were mixing Western Togoland with ‘Eweto’, which is an organisationcomprising all the Ewes from Ghana, Togo, Benin and Badagre; they are all Ewe-speaking people. Our elders, Sylvanus Olympio; the first President of Togo, who was assassinated, they were the brains behind the ‘Eweto,’ but we are not part of the Western Togoland.
“When they did the plebiscite on May 9, 1956, it was the Ho, Kpando and Kete Krachie people from the Volta Region. Anlos were not part. If we were part, there should be another plebiscite here.
“Sometimes, they justify it by saying that if you add our number to Kpando and Ho, they would have won because the decision was based on majority, the reason being that we, the Anlos, Ewes, majority of us are in the Togo territory, and the North; Dagomba and others, majority of them were in the Gold Coast.
“When they voted, either to join their brothers in the Gold Coast or to remain, naturally, they will like to join their brothers. We have our brothers in Togo, so if you asked, they would like to join their brothers in Togo, so that is why you find the Ho people, majority of them saying, they didn’t want to go to the Gold Coast.Kpando people also.
But Kete Krachie people, because most of them were at the Western side of the Volta Region and majority of them were Akans, they decided to go by the Gold Coast.”
It is instructive to note that Anlo in those days covered the present day Keta, Dzelukope, Tegbi, Anloga, whuti, Afife,Akatsi, and the entire Tongu people – South, North and Central – which includesJuapong where the social miscreants mounted a barricade, claiming it to be part of the so-called British Togoland.
If these are the bare facts, as narrated by TogbeKumassah, then where lies the agitation and claim that the entire Volta Region was part of British Togoland, and that they are now fighting for their independence?
Since this is how civil strife starts all over the world, these agitators must be crushed before they plunge the entire country into chaos.
Today, they have started in the Volta and Otiregions, the next time they may move to the Northern, North East and Upper East regions, polluting the minds of the people that they have to divorce their marriages with Ghana.
Should they succeed in doing this in future, which they are capable of doing if they are not stopped in their tracks, that would be the Armageddon of this nice country of ours?
This is the reason why Papavi and his splinter groups must no longer be treated with kid gloves. But, this position notwithstanding, I also believe in the stance of Col. Festus Aboagye (Rtd), a security analyst, that the state must engage the people, especially the youth, about the true history of the region and the need to reject the poisonous doses being injected into their system by Papavi and his group.
The minds of the youth can easily be swayed, and that is why all over the world those who want to foment trouble use the youth to achieve their aim.
This history narrated by the Awomefia’sSpokesman might not have come to the notice or attention of these youth, who are blindly following or supporting the secessionist movement. This is the reason why the state must educate them to understand the real history.
The same education must be extended to those who were actually part of the then British Togoland to also understand that there was no UN Memorandum of Understanding which states that fifty years after joining the union of Ghana, they have to go back to Togo or become an independent state.
If this is really the true situation on the ground, the UN itself would have come out long ago to support the separation of the then British Togoland from Ghana.
Papavi himself admitted some time ago that they wrote letters to the UN about their intention to seek separation from Ghana, but were not successful.
This alone tells a story that what these people are seeking to do has no foundation in law, and must, therefore, not be entertained.
As the great William Shakespeare puts it: “Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time.” The strange behaviour of the secessionist groups defies logic, otherwise, they would not have mounted a barrier right in front of the private residence of Mr Jerry John Rawlings, a native of the region, who ruled this country for 19 solid years, at Tefle-Vume and purport that the area belongs to Western Togoland.
What has even driven me bonkers is the attempt to rope in both the Akosombo and Kpongdams, the backbone of Ghana’s economy, as the property of the so-called new state which they are clamouring for.
It is only those who have strange minds and also trouble happy people that would be making this demand. It is completely absurd, but because of ignorance, the youth are also following such people.
This is unfortunate!
The post Western Togoland madness: Security lapses, silence of Volta Chiefs worrying appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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