10/04/2025
Security Brutality, Government Silence in Bawku.
Good day to the media, civil society groups present, fellow Ghanaians, and everyone listening and watching us. We speak to you today not from a place of peace but from the ruins of broken promises, fresh graves, and smoldering injustice. We speak as the youth of Kusaug, witnesses and victims of a system that has declared war and unrest on our very existence.
This press conference comes in the wake of yet another bloody and shameful event resulting from a violent clash between unarmed youth seeking justice and armed-to-the-teeth police in Bawku. For some time now, the Kusaug kingdom has been plagued with tribal conflict tracing back to an already legally solved chieftaincy tussle between the Kusasis (landowners) and a few Mamprusi settlers in Bawku.
The town center used to be where all tribes patronized as a marketplace. The Mamprusis capitalized on the situation and confiscated, robbed, r***d, brutalized, and killed many Kusasi market women in the wake of any conflict, especially on Bawku market days.
For peace to prevail, we, the Kusasi people, decided to isolate and open a separate market for our businesses. All peace-loving minority tribes, except the bloodthirsty, war-loving Mamprusi, patronized it.
Despite this separation, the Mamprusi planned to attack us using our new market. We stopped and strongly prohibited them from entering our market to prevent their planned attack from being executed. They connived with the military, police, and some leading political figures to enable them get into our market so that their plan would be accomplished at peril of kusasis, perhaps to the joy of the security.
On April 9, 2025, truckloads of police officers were brought in from nowhere to facilitate the forceful entry of Mamprusi bandits, including women, into our market. Realizing this timely, we mobilized and peacefully marched unarmed to the police positioned for that purpose to inquire why they are protecting and aiding a potential massacre on us by the Mamprusis. Lo and behold, without an iota of provocation, they opened fire on us, killing one and maiming many.
Ladies and gentlemen of the media, does this attitude of police officers not confirming our suspicions? Opening fire on unarmed Ghanaian citizens in broad daylight in the name of peacekeeping. Are we in a banana republic? This is where Ghana has gotten to. We believe that it is as a result of many years of silence, hypocrisy, betrayal, and state-sanctioned brutality on the Kusasi people.
Any government will always shelve the truth that will bring peace to Bawku because our own brothers and sisters who craftily deceived us for votes are now facilitating wrongdoing and are in bed with warmongers. The president of the state would not give us a solution because our own members of parliament are clearly not supporting him. They have used the conflict to win their seats and would love it to continue, perhaps, to use it as a political message for further winnings.
The Kusaasi people cannot be fooled twice. We have endured enough. From our toils and sweat, you are MPs now, you can decide to rest on your couches and declare your favorite paternal and maternal lines. We, the youth, refuse to be silent any longer. Instead of advocating to protect our lives, and faithfully representing us in parliament, you are behind the screens and pushing the state to pour soldiers and police into our communities to kill, extort, and terrorize us with impunity. The security officers are not here for peace; they are here for a purpose not known to us.
We now live under an apartheid system in our own country, not by foreign invaders but by our own government’s security forces. The Kusaug kingdom weeps uncontrollably because:
1. Police and Military Brutality: The police and military mandated to keep peace in Bawku have rather become instruments of terror, brutalization, killing, and maiming of women, youth, the elderly, and children. Evidence of security forces killing Kusaas is higher than the killings from the tribal war.
2. Escorting Mamprusi: Escorting Mamprusi to and fro Bawku without weapon search. The Mamprusi use this opportunity to import sophisticated weapons into Bawku. By this, how can the war cease?
3. Security Officers' Integrity: Military and police officers now become errant boys for the Mamprusis. They overtly buy them (Mamprusi) vegetables, salt, pure water, kebab, etc., from our isolated market. No integrity is left with our trained officers to be able to enforce law and order.
In this conflict, the blood of the innocent is the currency of the powerful.
The true Kusasi question is; under the leadership of his Excellency, President John Dramani Mahama, what has changed? In fact, it has worsened. The brutality has intensified. Perhaps the greatest insult to our pain is the government’s blatant refusal to enforce the law against Seidu Abagre, the imposter parading himself as a chief. In the Kusaug kingdom, the presence of Abagre Seidu was a campaign weapon for NDC. Yes, his presence was a nuisance then, so do now. We don’t need any favours from government, we demand you to enforce the laws as you promised when you came to the Bawku Naba Palace. Mr. President, find out from the previous government. Kusaas cannot be deceived by only words. We really meant business. Double standard is not governance, it is oppression.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the media, we are by this statement notifying all the six (6) members of parliament and other government functionaries from the Kusaug kingdom to stay where you are and enjoy your luxuries. We will not entertain your visit into the kingdom until your deception for votes becomes a reality. We are grieving. You violate our warning at your own risk. Note, power is transient!
We strongly demand that;
1. Immediate cessation of all military and police escorts to and fro Bawku.
2. For peace to return to Bawku, Seidu Abagre, the imposter chief, be arrested and prosecuted in accordance with Ghanaian laws.
3. An independent international investigation should be formed to probe into the killings, human rights abuse, and extortions by security personnel in Bawku.
4. The interior minister should immediately investigate the shooting incidence, arrest and prosecute the callous officer(s) who did that.
5. The Interior and Defence ministers, should as a matter of urgency, transfer all the heads of security and take away all security personnel in Bawku who supervise this unprofessional acts.
We, the youth of Kusaug are not calling for war. We are calling for justice. We are calling for dignity. We are calling for life. If the Ghanaian government fails us this time, we will seek justice elsewhere in the world.
Let no one mistake our call for peace as a surrender to injustice. We are peace-loving but we are not cowards. We are resilient but we will not be silent as our mothers weep and our land burns. The real threat in Bawku is not the youth, it is a security forces.
The real betrayal is not from the people it is from leaders who have chosen silence over service.
The real crisis is not chieftaincy, it is state violence, ethnic bias, and political cowardice.
Kusaug will not die in silence.
Justice Now!
