The radical Nkrumaist movement, the Economic Fighters League, and the #FixTheCountry Movement, in a joint statement, have slammed the recent report released by the three-member ministerial committee that was commissioned in July to conduct a public enquiry into the Ejura unrests following the murder of the social media activist, Ibrahim Muhammed, who was popularly known as Macho Kaaka.
The statement said, having read the Committee’s work and juxtaposing the findings to the views and opinions of the ordinary Ejura residents, it is clear “such that one needs no Jewish prophet to know or be told that the Report is structurally incompetent and bogus”.
The two groups said to begin with, the Committee with impunity veered off its terms of reference “without just cause to deal with matters which are still the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation”.
The statement added, “By so doing, the Committee inexplicably allowed itself to be used as a mouthpiece of needless and insensitive state-sponsored propaganda.”
The statement also expressed disappointment and surprise that the Committee, chaired by a Justice of the Court of Appeal, “failed to exercise appropriate judicial restraint” when it made prejudicial comments in the report “by casting aspersions on the innocent family of Kaaka, without just cause, made a deliberate decision to punch down on a helpless family, and thereby intentionally prejudice the fair trial rights of their son Baba Iddi,” who has been arrested and currently on trial for Kaaka’s murder.
The Committee in the report asserted that the social activist was killed as a result of an unhealthy family feud.
The statement said the commissioning of the Committee was nothing but a calculated attempt to shift the nation’s attention from the substantive issues because the actions of the Committee “appear to have been intentionally done to compromise the investigation into the murder of Kaaka; and to divert attention from the aspects of the Report which found that the Military shot at, killed and maimed citizens of this country, without reasonable justification”.
The signatories to the statement, Nii Ayi Opare and Oliver Barker-Vormawor of the Economic Fighters League and the #FixTheCountry respectively, expressed shock the Committee found “that the use of live ammunition against the people of Ejura achieved its intended purpose of dispersing the crowd” which they described as being “insensitive and lacking maturity.”
The statement further found the Committee’s proposal for “a sports and other recreational facilities be established in Ejura to re-channel the energies of the youth” to be ill-advised and “insufficiently thought-through, unexplained and irresponsible”.
“We are disappointed that the Committee makes no reasoned recommendation, about the legal actions that need to be taken to hold the persons connected with the incidents criminally liable for the murders and maiming of the residents of Ejura,” the statement added.
It ended by charging “the Government and relevant state institutions to take immediate steps to provide justice for the family of Kaaka and the people of Ejura”.
By Kabah Atawoge|3news.com|Ghana