PEACE ARCHITECTURE KEY — BOMBANDE (P.3)

Story: Kofi Yeboah

THE Executive Director of the West African Network for Peace-building (WANEP), Mr Emmanuel Bombande, has advocated a “peace architecture”, such as a National Peace Council, to resolve all chieftaincy disputes through dialogue and mediation.
Such a paradigm shift, he said, would ensure a pro-active approach to resolving the conflicts instead of the present re-active approach in which the conflicts were allowed to escalate only for the government to send in security reinforcement at huge cost to the life of the security personnel and the national kitty.
According to Mr Bombande, failure to adopt pro-active measures to deal with chieftaincy disputes would undermine the social harmony, peace, stability and economic growth that the nation was enjoying, as well as its positive international image.
“We cannot claim to be the gateway to West Africa if we have conflicts”, he told the Daily Graphic yesterday as he shared his thoughts on the security implications of the Anlo chieftaincy dispute.
Six persons, including a police constable, lost their lives, while many others sustained various degrees of injury following the escalation of the chieftaincy dispute last Thursday.
In a move to restore peace and order, a reinforcement of police and military personnel is currently stationed in Anloga, and a dusk-to-dawn curfew imposed on the town since last Friday.
Furthermore, a high-powered government delegation has undertaken a fact-finding mission to Anloga to assess the situation on the ground.
Mr Bombande said although all the interventions by the government were good to help restore calm to the town and ensure a proper analysis of what went wrong, he pointed out that those interventions did not provide a solution to the problem.
What was needed to address the situation was a mutual engagement that would meet the satisfaction of all the parties in the conflict.
At the moment, there are about 300 chieftaincy disputes scattered across the country, many of which have resulted in the loss of lives and property, while others have ended up in the law courts.
Mr Bombande said it was also not appropriate to use the law courts for resolving chieftaincy disputes because in the court process, there ought to be a winner and a loser, which ruling sometimes worsened the conflicts.
He said under the auspices of WANEP, a National Peace Council had been established with Peter Cardinal Appiah Turkson, the Archbishop of Cape Coast, as the chairman. The members of the council are made up of prominent Ghanaians, including the Chief Imam, Sheikh Osmanu Nuhu Sharabutu and the General Overseer of the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC), Pastor Mensa Otabil.
Mr Bombande said the council needed a legal mandate to enable it to function effectively. Unfortunately, a bill to that effect had not been passed.
He said with a legal backing, the peace council could move into potential conflict areas to engage litigants in dialogue and mediation to resolve their differences instead of waiting until they escalated.
Giving an overview of conflicts in West African countries arising out of chieftaincy disputes, Mr Bombande said although chieftaincy institutions were established in Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Liberia, disputes mostly occurred in Ghana and Nigeria in view of their strong chieftaincy institutions.
He said between Ghana and Nigeria, the former experienced more volatility as far as chieftaincy was concerned because the institution in Ghana went beyond tradition to the recognition given to it even by the presidency.
Contributing to the subject, the President of the National House of Chiefs, Odeneho Gyapong Ababio, said it was unfortunate that people did not follow the Chieftaincy Code, which clearly spelt out the processes of enstoolment and enskinment of chiefs.