Erect monument for victims of December 7 violence – Government urged

Security analyst Dr Ishmael Norman has admonished government to consider erecting monuments for the persons who lost their lives during and after last Monday’s elections.

The Ghana Police Service on Wednesday, December 9 said there were officially a total of 61 electoral and post-electoral incidents recorded nationwide during and after the elections.

Twenty-one of the incidents were said to be true cases of electoral violence, six of which involved gunshots.

Five deaths were recorded, the National Election Security Taskforce (NESTF) said.

“The NESTF deems the incidents recorded to be incidents that could have been avoided and therefore condemns their occurrence and promises to investigate each one of them,” the police said in a statement.

But Dr Norman, who is the President of the Institute for Security, Disaster and Emergency Studies, said those who died wanted to merely express their democratic rights.

“Just as we erected a statue for Captain [Maxwell Adams] Mahama, we should erect statues for these people because they are the true patriots,” he said on The Key Points on TV3/3FM on Saturday, December 12.

He said the monuments will serve as a “reminder to everybody that ‘Never Again’”.

Also on the programme was the former Director-General of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Service, COP (rtd) Bright Oduro.

He commended the police for generally ensuring peace at the polling stations across the country.

He, however, expressed worry that the cases of violence were recorded at collation centres.

“Going forward, those [collation] centres where we had these problems should be marked as flashpoints.”