Peace Council raises awareness of possible terrorist attack in Ghana

The National Peace Council (NPC) has cautioned Ghanaians of a possible terrorist attack in the country.

The NPC gave the warning at a two-day workshop organised in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on cross-border terrorist attacks in the Upper East.

This comes on the back of a recent terrorist attack on neighbouring Burkina Faso.

NPC’s Executive Secretary in the region, Ali Anankpieng, said it is an “avowed aim” of terrorists to reach and strike the seaside cities of countries within West Africa.

He said: “That is their plan”.

“The terrorists have voiced it? their intention to reach coastal West Africa”, he noted.

According to him, “It is one of their avowed aims”.

“We’ve heard they want to be in cities like Accra, Cotonou, Lagos, Abidjan, et cetera”, he observed, adding: “That is their aim because these are the economic centres in the coastal countries within West Africa”.

“Lagos is the economic centre of Nigeria. Accra is the economic centre of Ghana. I think Cotonou is the same for Benin”.

“If they are coming to Ghana from Burkina Faso, they can do that through our borders here in the Upper East Region as one of their routes”.

“The essence of this training programme is to raise awareness for people to look out for things that they can do to prevent violence including violent extremism”.

“So, we are looking at how they can handle the existing conflicts, how they can prevent the emerging ones, how they can promote peace generally across the communities by raising awareness on the effects of violence and how violence starts in the first place”.

“In Ghana, people are fighting over land, over water resources. This is just to raise awareness that whatever they see in other places that is causing conflict, the same exists here. We are not different from those places that are already in conflict”.

He said the Peace Council is encouraging Ghanaians to promote the use of dialogue as the use of dialogue can do so many things.

“It can be used to resolve conflict. It can be used to create awareness. It can be used to even improve knowledge on the issue in focus. We’ve brought these groups to build a kind of synergy between the community members and the security agencies so that they can collaborate and share information on security issues to prevent violent extremism,” he added.

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