Devastated Ejura MP condemns deadly military deployment on Tuesday

Member of Parliament for the Ejura Sekyedumase Constituency in the Ashanti Region Alhaji Bawa Braimah has condemned the unfortunate murder of three of his constituents including social media activist and a member of the Economic Fighters League, Ibrahim Anyass.

Speaking to Dzifa Bampoh on 3FM’s 'First Take', the legislator condemned the security apparatus for deploying the military instead of the police to the area.

According to him, the police are trained and mandated to handle situations such as what occurred on Tuesday, June 29.

He, however, called for calm to be restored to the town.

The social media activist, who used his Facebook page to expose the ills of Ejura, was attacked at dawn over the weekend while returning home on his motorbike.

Macho Kaaka, as he was known on Facebook, was said to have been quickly rushed to the Ejura Sekyeredumase Government Hospital after the attack but there was little the hospital staff could do considering the level of his injuries and fearing for his life, he was immediately transferred into an ambulance for the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi for further treatment.

But he eventually died.

He was pronounced dead Monday, June 28 at midday after all efforts were made to save him failed.

Protests broke out in Ejura after his burial on Tuesday, resulting in the death of two persons.

“I am highly devastated and disappointed in the security services and how they have handled this matter because in cases like this, it demands that the security operatives bring their professionalism to bear because if you are handling such a situation and you end up exacerbating the situation by killing some two people with some several injured, then it means that if they had not even come, it would have been better because I know any community in losing somebody like Kaaka to some activities of some assailants will be agitated like we have in Ejura,” Alhaji Braimah said on Tuesday.

He said the situation at hand would not have occurred if whoever deployed the military to the town had not done so.

“It is better you call in the police because they have been trained on crowd control and they know how to handle the situation so that they wouldn’t go about firing into the crowd.

“It was not the right thing to call in the military, I still don’t get why a police job was given to the military to execute. It is unfortunate and I am completely devastated because their crime is that they have lost a loved one and they go about demonstrating and you go and kill them the more?

“The way and manner the military went about the situation has really exacerbated the situation but I have spoken to a number of opinion leaders, the Muslim Umma and some youth leaders and with my knees on the ground, I am pleading with them that where we have gotten to, we should allow calm to return to the area,” he concluded.