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Press Release
NPP
November 23, 2015
Statement on NPP Party Office
Invasion
Good Afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen.
This meeting is to brief you on the events that have
happened over the last 24 hours.
In the early hours around this morning, a group of about 15
armed men in military uniform in military vehicles and
police escort vehicles, invaded the party office, supervised
the vandalisation of the office and claim to have found guns
and other weapons at the office.
Around 1:00 am this morning, two party security officers and
two live-in cleaners heard banging on the gates. Upon
enquiry, a voice told them it was the police. One security
man peeped through the gate and indeed saw a police vehicle
parked in front of the gate.
The security man opened the gate partially, only to be
pushed inside and about 15 armed men in military uniform
entered the compound.
Upon entry, one of the four party officials identified one
of the 15 uniformed men and called him by name. Apparently
they were neighbors. That familiarity gave the party
security man some lee way and he managed to sneak outside
the compound.
There were two or three vehicles parked on the street
outside. As he crossed the street a voice from one of the
parked vehicles, somebody whom he claims he recognized
shouted he should be arrested .He however managed to escape.
Back inside the compound, the three remaining party
officials were made to surrender their phones and herded
into the security post and locked up. Couple of minutes
later, the military uniform men ordered them out. They
produced a sack and proceeded to pour the contents out on
the floor.
The contents included 4 AK47 and 4 machetes which the
military uniformed men claimed to have found on the
compound. The 3 party officials were then asked to pick the
8 weapons and put them back into the sack. Shortly after the
gate was opened and another group which was waiting outside
was allowed into the compound. This group numbering over 50
was wearing red t-shirts with the inscriptions “Peace and
Unity”. They told the three security men that they have
taken over the head office security and the party belonged
to those who voted in Tamale and nobody else.
The two groups- the men in military uniform and the red t
shirted men proceeded to break into various offices and
vandalized/ ransacked them. At the various offices,
particularly at the office of the Director for elections,
computer hard drives were taken together with several files
and other documentation. Shortly after, a detachment from
the Nima police station arrived on the compound. They
managed to arrest 9 of the red t-shirted boys whiles the
others fled.
Whiles these events were happening at the head office a
similar operation of siege and vandalisation was going on at
the Greater Accra regional office at the party at Kokomlemle.
At the moment the head office is calm, the police are
helping to maintain security and the party is actively
cooperating with the police to investigate and get to the
bottom of these bizarre events.
The questions that come to mind are:
1) Who authorized this operation by military uniformed men?
2) How did they get access to police and military vehicles?
3) How did they proceed to search the party office without a
search warrant?
4) How did they proceed to conduct searches without notice
to any official of the party or involving the party security
men who were ransacked
5) Why have the police detained a bonafied party security
man?
6) Is this an attack on Ghana’s democracy?
From NPP Party Headquarters
Accra
November 23, 2015
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