SAY NO TO VIOLENCE (MARCH 4)

THE government has deployed additional human and material resources to the conflict zone in Bawku to restore law and order, following renewed fighting in some parts of the Bawku municipality last Monday.
Regrettably, five persons lost their lives, while two others, including a police constable, were seriously injured in the clash.
Bawku, one of the major administrative and commercial towns in northern Ghana has become a ghost town, as most residents have fled for fear of any reprisals.
For some time now Bawku has always been in the news and on many of these occasions it has been for negative reasons. Since the imposition of the state of emergency after the outbreak of the conflict, anytime Bawku is mentioned it is either in connection with the renewal of the curfew or renewed fighting in the area.
Meanwhile, while the town has gained notoriety for bad news, including avoidable loss of lives and property, majority of the people there wallow in poverty, disease and squalor.
In most of the deprived communities, the greatest enemy of the people is poverty. But, strangely enough, the people spend time fighting among themselves. Thus, instead of forging a united front to confront their common enemies, they focus on unproductive activities such as communal violence.
Although the DAILY GRAPHIC agrees to some extent with the Interior Minister’s description of the violent clashes in Bawku as an economic war, there are other factors contributing to the conflict, with chieftaincy and ethic differences also playing major roles in the unending conflict.
The Ghana Peace Council, made up of some eminent citizens such as His Eminence Peter Cardinal Appiah Turkson, and government officials have mediated in the Bawku conflict but these efforts have yielded very little result.
President J. E. A. Mills has directed his vice, Mr John Mahama, to visit Bawku to meet the parties in the dispute, with the view to resolving the problem. The time has come for the people in the area to pledge to work for peace so that social and economic activities can be resumed in the area.
The tendency among some of our brothers and sisters in northern Ghana to take the law into their own hands at the least provocation is not helping to reverse under-development in those areas.
We cannot win the battle against poverty and disease if we continue to reject the path of dialogue and the justice system to seek redress. The DAILY GRAPHIC reminds the people that it is difficult to reconstruct from the ashes of war or conflict, and that is why we must all guard the peace and stability of our communities, however fragile they may be, so that we can have a peaceful environment to carry out our daily endeavours.
The DAILY GRAPHIC, therefore, appeals to residents of Bawku and other conflict areas to expose those who incite them to violence. Let us reject the path of violence and live together as brothers and sisters to hit the ground running to build a better Ghana for ourselves and generations to come.