Former President John Mahama has confirmed reports published two weeks ago by Whatsup News that the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) was training a batch of party militia at the military training camp in Asutuare.
According ex-President Mahama, the National Democratic Congress ( NDC) has evidence that some individuals have been trained at Asutuare for the purpose of causing mayhem for the NPP during the 2020 general elections.
“I remember at the time of Ayawaso West Wuogon, there was a letter that came out asking party executives to bring able-bodied people to be trained as security. Since then, we have evidence that those people have been to Asutuare and trained in batches over and over again in all kinds of combat techniques and other things,” Mahama told executives of the Ghana Journalists Association who had gone to pay a courtesy call on him on Thursday, October 10, 2019.
Late September 2019, Whatsup News picked up information from reliable army sources that some suspicious militant groups were being given tactical military combat readiness at the Asutuare Military training camp of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF).
Pictures sourced to Whatsup News from insiders show several groups of men dressed in blue overalls being trained by a number of military officers. The trainees could be seen undertaking drills involving the use of AK 47 assault rifles and target training.
Some of the faces seen in the pictures have been linked to the ruling party’s notorious militia groups including the Delta Forces and Invisible Force. Unconfirmed reports has it that many of these men being trained were recruited from cells in Maamobi, Nima and Sabon Zongo areas in Accra.
Army sources have told Whatsup News that the men in the pictures could not be real military recruits, given their composure and appearance. Some of them looked overweight, while several are spotted with beards and moustaches-a fundamental breach of army officers’ appearance. Some of the men in the pictures also appeared too old to be new recruits into any of the security services.
This revelation betrays a possible lip-service of the ruling NPP towards demilitarising its party vigilante groups.
The Akufo Addo administration is sponsoring an anti-militia bill in Parliament to outlaw the proliferation of armed party vigilantes, however, the commitment of the administration has come under serious questions following its rejection of many of the recommendations prescribed in the Emile Short Commission that probed the brazen use of state security apparatus to target political opponents in the infamous Ayawaso West Wuogon by-elections.
The violence unleashed at Ayawaso by a heavily armed and masked paramilitary group allegedly attached to the National Security agency were men reportedly belonging to the NPP’s Invisible Forces. The report of the Short Commission made a number of recommendations, including strict punishment to those responsible for the violence in Ayawaso. However, the Akufo Addo administration issued a White Paper that rubbished about 53% of these recommendations.