[Photos] &#8216;One Ghana&#8217; demo was for national cohesion &#8211; Ablakwa

Hundreds of people including members of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) on Wednesday joined a peace march organised by pressure group, Coalition for the Defense of Equal Citizenship (CODEC) to protest what they call ethnocentric pronouncements.

Various political parties including the Convention Peoples Party (CPP), People’s National Convention (PNC) also took part in the protest.

The demonstration dubbed “one nation, one people, we are all equal’’ is in reaction to ethnocentric comments allegedly made by a member of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) and former Finance Minister, Yaw Osafo Marfo in a secret tape recording.

Mr Osafo Marfo has been widely criticized over the comment.

Deputy Minister of Education, Samuel Okudjeto Ablakwa who also joined the march told Citi News the demonstration was to promote national unity adding that “it is for national cohesion, for peace, that our diversity should be our strength and not our weakness as the President said.”

He said the protest is also to “show our passion to commit ourselves and to rededicate our efforts to national unity.”

The Deputy Minister further commended the orgnisers as well as those who took part in the protest saying “they did well to rally everyone. Its impressive to see the NPP join us, it shows that even within the NPP not all of them support some of the statements coming from their leadership and they are not happy with Osafo Marfo said.”

Call NPP to order over ethno-tribal comments

Meanwhile, a petition the group sent to the National Peace Council after the protest urged them to call NPP to order over the alleged ethnocentric comments allegedly made by former Finance Minister Osafo Marfo.

“We…hereby call on the National Peace Council to as a matter of urgency rein in the leadership of the NPP over their planned ethno-tribal political campaign in the run-up to the 2016 general elections. We find this strategy very alarming and worrisome which we believe is being engineered by the NPP to intimidate and whip up support for its standard bearer, Nana Akufo Addo,” the petition added.