barely 24 hours after government had relaxed the curfew hours imposed on the town and its environs.

Bawku and its surrounding areas had witnessed violent ethnic clashes in the past few months, compelling government to slap a curfew on the conflict zone.

The immediate cause of yesterday’s wave of violence was not known, but the Officer Commanding a detachment of the Ghana Army Airborne Force, Captain Victor Abbey told newsmen that “as a result, the security agencies imposed an emergency curfew starting from 1500hrs to 0600hrs and have asked people to go into their houses”.

He added that a swift action like asking residents to go indoors had to be taken to forestall further violence.

The Police had reportedly made some arrests in the aftermath of the latest outbreak of violence.

The development rendered a statement intended to review the crisis on the floor of Parliament by Deputy Interior Minister, Kobina Tahir Hammond stillborn as he received fresh intelligence reports on the spur of the moment that the sectarian violence in the town had worsened.

The situation, he said, had changed for the worse and “two or so people have been killed just this morning”.

Hon. Hammond apologized to the House, stressing that the latest incident had prevented him from delivering the statement on the review of the town’s security situation.

He said the security agencies on the ground were doing their best to contain the crisis, and had therefore advised that the statement be suspended until further notice.

“I therefore inform the House that I don’t intend going through the statement.”

The Deputy Minister, also the Member of Parliament (MP) for Adansi-Asokwa, promised the House that his outfit would review the security situation in the Upper Eastern town and inform Parliament as soon as possible.

The MP for Tamale South, Iddrisu Haruna, however, criticized the Interior Ministry for not doing enough to address the Bawku crisis.
“We are disappointed at the handling of the crisis by the Ministry.

The fact that you had to withdraw your statement shows that you are not adequately informed in intelligence.

“We need to take immediate and urgent steps to safeguard lives and property. We are all deeply distressed about the Bawku crisis.

We are distressed, disappointed and concerned. We should restore law and order at Bawku.”

Haruna, whose contribution met with some jeers from the Majority side, called for a revisit of the Damongo Accord, a blueprint for peace in the area initiated by the Catholic Church.

He said it was regrettable that MPs and other policy makers had “to spend our time to talk on how to avoid conflicts in the area instead of talking about how to bring development there”.

According to him, “the Ministry of the Interior should be on the ground, beef up security, its intelligence sources should be right, and look at how to revisit the Damongo Accord”.

The MP for Zebilla in the Upper East, John Ndebugre, did not take kindly to comments by the MP for Dadekotopon in the Greater Accra Region, Nii Amasah Namoale, when the latter suggested that the former stopped speculating about the crisis for the Minister to come out with the official report, as speculations would not help matters in the already volatile situation.

“I am the official spokesman for the Kusasis (a faction in the conflict) and so if you are in Dadekotopon which is far away from the area and you don’t know what is happening, you can’t tell me to stop,” said Ndebugre.

Nii Namoale and his colleague National Democratic Congress (NDC) members had prevailed upon Ndebugre to stop his narration, as he was virtually repeating what the Deputy Interior Minister had said while he (Ndebugre) was not in the chamber.

Ndebugre was narrating the latest developments at Bawku to Parliament as he had been informed on the telephone by some of his constituents.

The Bawku conflict between the Kusasis and the Mamprusis, which started in the latter part of last year, had so far claimed a few lives and destroyed property running into millions of cedis.

The security situation in the area degenerated to the extent that a dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed which was reviewed periodically.

The Interior Ministry was on the verge of reviewing the situation on the floor of Parliament yesterday when the Deputy Minister received news of the outbreak of fresh violence which claimed two lives.