BAWKU NEEDS PEACE NOW!

THE good people of Ghana woke up on New Year’s Day, 2008, to the rather unpalatable news that violence had erupted in Bawku in the Upper East Region between the two dominant ethnic groups in the area, the Kusasis and the Mamprusis.
At that time, it was given out in news reports that the conflict was over which of the two ethnic groups had the right to celebrate the Samanpiib Festival and that the whole issue bordered on one group claiming superiority over the other.
Since the eruption of communal violence late last year, the government has put in various measures to bring the situation under control, including the imposition of curfew on Bawku and its environs, including Pusiga, Binduri and Zoosi.
But, sad to say, in spite of these measures and the amount of money which is being spent on maintaining security, law and order in the area, there have been sporadic skirmishes at the least provocation, with the latest being the clash which resulted in the death of two young men on Tuesday, March 11, 2008.
In the course of the violence, many lives have been lost, property, including houses and stores, burnt down, many people injured, not to talk about the general insecurity that has been engendered.
To think that all this is taking place in an area which is part of what is doubtlessly considered one of the most deprived areas of the country puts the whole affair in some bad light.
The DAILY GRAPHIC believes that yesterday’s meeting between President J. A. Kufuor and some chiefs, opinion leaders and politicians from the Bawku area at the Castle, Osu, had been necessitated by the desperate need to find a lasting solution to the conflict which, to many, is becoming intractable.
The President’s appeal to the people to partner the government in its efforts to secure durable and lasting peace in the area so that development could go on there must be heeded.
This is because, as we have said in these columns before, only the people of Bawku can bring peace to the area by their actions, comments and attitudes.
Like the President, we concede that there are traditional differences in Bawku, just as it is elsewhere in the country, but we also feel that it lies within the power of the people and their leaders to subsume themselves under those differences and live together as one people with a common destiny.
If they fail to do this, then it means they are sacrificing their own prosperity and development and those of their children and their children’s children on the alter of ethnic conflict which, in our opinion, will not do them no good except bringing them pain, dejection, squalor and deprivation.
Now that all the stakeholders in the Bawku conflict have come together to determine the way forward, the DAILY GRAPHIC expects them to be candid enough to bring out both the immediate and remote causes of the conflict so that, collectively, they can bid farewell to violence and live in peace.
The farming season is just around the corner and so it is in the interest of the people of Bawku themselves and the entire country for peace to prevail so that the farmers among them could go about their farming activities without let or hindrance.
Let us give peace a chance in Bawku, for the benefits to be derived from it are enormous.