GHANA ARMED FORCES DENIES RETALIATION ALLEGATIONS ON ASHAIMAN OPERATION 8TH MARCH, 2023

The High Command of the Ghana Armed Forces [GAF] has refuted wide allegations held by residents of Ashaiman in the Greater Accra Region and many other members of the public that the army's swoop on this Tuesday dawn of March 7, 2023 was a direct retaliation of brutality on people in the enclave following the murder of a military officer on the wee hours of 4th March, 2023.

  Late Trooper Imoro

In a one-page press release dated 7th March, 2023 authored and signed by the Director General of Public Relations Brigadier General E. Aggrey-Quarshie, stated categorically that the operation was sanctioned by the GAF to "fish out the perpetrators of the heinous crime" and that "following the operations at Asahaiman-Taifa and Tulaku, the military personnel picked up about 184 suspects aged between 21 and 47 years old and have handed them over to the Military Police and subsequently to be sent to the Ghana Police Service for screening and for further action".

This official press release from the Army High Command now puts to rest the earlier speculations in the public space as whether or not the military's swoop was an illegal exercise by the slain soldier's colleagues to avenge his killing. But the question still lingers on as to if the action of the military was not a usurpation of the mandate of the Ghana Police Service whose duty it is to handle such internal security issues. However, some analysts and social commentators who have followed such unfortunate killings of military personnel over some time and with particular reference to that one involving late Capt./Major Mahama's killing in 2017 in Denkyira Obuasi in the country’s Central region, the Ashaiman "invasion" was something bound to happen, only that the date was not known.

According to the press release, the murdered soldier named as Trooper Imoro Sherrif was stationed in Sunyani and was in Accra for a course during which he took permission to see his mother in Ashaiman on the back of his ill health. His killing was initially reported in both traditional and on social media as a robbery but within few hours, close associates of the deceased and others armed with some privileged information in the area [where the soldier grew up] began alleging that, the late soldier was probably murdered resulting  from a love triangle that he was involved in.

As it stands now, all these shall remain rumours until the Police conducts its thorough investigations and makes public, its findings on the matter.

Though security analysts have variously called out the military for such "invasions", it has unfortunately become a convention that, the military will always most lkiely conduct an onslaught on any community or locality within which a soldier is killed, if past happenings are anything to go by. Meanwhile, caution is sent out to members of the public to desist from taking the law into their hands especially regarding whatever issues they may be having with the military for it is often said that if you touch one soldier, you touch the rest of them.

Below is the full the full press release.