JoyNews documentary false – Gov’t

The government of Ghana has described the latest exposé by Manasseh Azure making reference to a militia group operating from the Osu Castle as mischievous and destructive.

The statement comes on the heels of an exposé by investigative journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni on how the Osu Castle, a former seat of government, has become a training ground for a pro-government militia group called De-Eye.

Four ministers of state at the Office of the President, currently have their offices at the castle. They are Minister of state in charge of Inner-city and Zongo Development, Dr Mustapha Abdul-Hamid; Minister of State in charge of Special Development Initiatives, Hawa Koomson; the Minister of State in Charge of Planning, Professor Gyan Baffuor; as well as the Minister of State at the Office of the President, Rockson Bukari.

The Commission of Inquiry into the Ayawaso West Wuogon by-election violence also hold its sittings at the castle.

The same venue is where, according to the exposé, De-Eye militia group has been operating since the NPP won power in the December 2016 elections.

But reacting to the investigative piece Friday at a news conference, Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah dismissed the evidence provided in the video as façade failing to match the accompanying narrative.

According to him, the documentary is nothing but “disingenuous and deliberate attempts to cast President Akufo-Addo in a negative light vis-à-vis the fight against vigilantism.

He said: “In line with the president’s commitment to disband party vigilante groups and their activities, the government will continue to support any effort that’s aimed at ending this worrying phenomenon.

“Unfortunately, however,  the Joy News documentary, the work of Manasseh Azuri Awuni, carried a number of significant misrepresentations and misleading impressions.”

“The promotion of the documentary and the narrative of the documentary stated emphatically that a militia, that’s a military force raised from the civil population to supplement the regular army in an emergency have been uncovered training and operating at a security zone with the complicity of the current administration and identified as belonging to the New Patriotic Party.

“Surprisingly the twenty minutes documentary does not show any evidence of such a militia, or a vigilante group training or operating at a security zone. Rather, it shows a group of young men and women dressed up in white shirts and black suits converging at the Christiansburg Castle in Osu in the belief that jobs will be found for them,” he told the News Conference.