Kofi Boakye Warns MP Over Fulani Comment

Ashanti Regional Police Commander, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP) Kofi Boakye, has registered his displeasure against comments made by the Member of Parliament (MP) for Asante Akim North Constituency in the Ashanti region, Hon. Kojo Baah, against Fulanis in the area.

According to the Ashanti regional police commander, the comment made recently by the MP to the effect that Agogo traders and taxi drivers should not render any service(s) to Fulanis was distasteful.

“…we need the active cooperation of the youth in these areas to work in conjunction with the police and the security apparatus but for the MP to say that no taxi driver should pick them [Fulanis] or nobody should sell anything to them I think he is going too far and the police is not going to countenance any such indiscipline to foment trouble in society,” he warned.

That above comment, DCOP Kofi Boakye stressed, had the potential to foment trouble in the area.

Hon. Baah was reported to have made this observation at a press conference organised by him in Agogo recently.

Showing a list of some Fulanis who had been arrested and arraigned before court since 2014, DCOP Kofi Boakye disclosed that six of them faced various degrees of charges with one of them sentenced to thirty years in prison.

Speaking to journalists in Kumasi, the Ashanti regional police commander insisted that the Regional Security Council was aware of the situation in the Asante Akim area and would therefore not allow anybody or group of people to take the laws of the land into their own hands.

The people of Asante Akim have been under several forms of attack including rape and gun shots from the nomads for several years while they struggle to get greenery and water to feed their cattle.

In spite of several lamentations from the indigenes of the area, their pleas have most of the times fallen on deaf ears, as countless Divisional and Regional Police Commanders have failed to stop the Fulanis from meting out such brutalities on residents in the area.

The last time a district chief executive tried to fight against the Fulanis he was removed from office by President John Dramani Mahama just before he could dare take that action.

Friends and relatives of Hon. Thomas Osei Bonsu, who was the said DCE, alleged that he was sacked from office because he dared to fight the Fulanis and restore peace in the area.

After having exercised patience for several years under the brutality of Fulani herdsmen, the people of Asante Akim have now arisen to defend themselves, but the Ashanti regional police commander said, he will not allow any such thing to happen.

“No amount of mistrust or incapability of the police will warrant anybody taking the law into his hands. Having said this I think the time has come for a decisive action to be taken in all the areas where these Fulanis habitations have created challenges.

DCOP Boakye went on o state that the MP and the youth of the area “used the same brush to cover all Fulanis.”

He however added that there were innocent Fulanis in the area who must not be maltreated due to the anti-social attitudes of their kinsmen.

The police and military, he said, would together take a resolute action to combat the menace posed by the Fulani herdsmen in the area, but stressed he will not countenance any reprisal attacks from the Agogo indigenes.