{"id":397285,"date":"2018-02-01T16:50:55","date_gmt":"2018-02-01T16:50:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=397285"},"modified":"2018-02-02T06:55:07","modified_gmt":"2018-02-02T06:55:07","slug":"nana-addo-suspends-uw-regional-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=397285","title":{"rendered":"Nana Addo suspends U\/W Regional Minister"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>President Nana Akufo-Addo has suspended the\u00a0Upper West Regional Minister,\u00a0Sulemana Alhassan.<\/p>\n<p>This is after he is reported to have protected a group of angry youth believed to be members of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), who besieged the Upper West Regional office of the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) on Wednesday evening.<\/p>\n<p>[contextly_sidebar id=&#8221;yqwr0RLCMj04RMqbb1Q7f8NdVMANlWlk&#8221;]The Deputy Upper West Regional Minister, Amidu Ishaq, will act in the stead of the suspended Minister pending the conclusion of an\u00a0investigation into the incident, according to a statement from the Presidency.<\/p>\n<p>The statement added that &#8220;President Akufo-Addo reiterates his commitment to the\u00a0application of the laws of the land, which must occur without fear or favour, affection or ill-will, and without recourse to the political or ethnic affiliations of any citizen of the land.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>At about 5:00 pm on Wednesday, the youth from the Wa East district, numbering about 30, arrived in two pickups and a minibus, and stormed the NADMO offices at the Upper West Regional Coordinating Council.<\/p>\n<p>After the police got to the scene of the disturbances and effected the arrest of three persons, Alhassan Suleiman ordered the release of the suspects.<\/p>\n<p>He reportedly told the police that &#8221;\u00a0This is a party matter, I will have a meeting with them and get back to you&#8221;.\u00a0 After that, the attackers walked home freely.<\/p>\n<p>Following the incident, workers of NADMO declared a strike today [Thursday], and demanded that until the suspects are arrested, they will not return to work.<\/p>\n<p>They\u00a0 <span style=\"color: #666699;\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2018\/02\/01\/striking-nadmo-staff-angry-with-minister-for-shielding-npp-thugs\/\">slammed the Regional Minister<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, whose duty is to protect citizens as the Regional Chairman of the Security Council, for choosing to shield the attackers.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-397148\" src=\"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Upper-West-NADMO-1024x768.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"620\" height=\"465\" srcset=\"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Upper-West-NADMO-1024x768.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Upper-West-NADMO-300x225.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Upper-West-NADMO-768x576.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Upper-West-NADMO.jpeg 1040w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>They said the Minister demonstrated no value of their lives, as the attack on the offices of NADMO led to an aide to the NADMO Regional Director being beaten to pulp.<\/p>\n<p>The Regional NADMO Director, Isaac Seidu, who appeared to be the main target of the attack, however escaped unhurt.<\/p>\n<p>Isaac Seidu told <strong>Citi News<\/strong> that\u00a0\u201cthe police came and met the boys around my office but when they wanted to make the arrest, the Minister [Sulemana Alhassan] came down and prevented them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Find below the full statement from the Presidency<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-397292\" src=\"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/983b29fd-bb8d-42d9-9688-7e22e625c02a.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"711\" height=\"1012\" srcset=\"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/983b29fd-bb8d-42d9-9688-7e22e625c02a.jpg 711w, https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/983b29fd-bb8d-42d9-9688-7e22e625c02a-211x300.jpg 211w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 711px) 100vw, 711px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Political vigilantism in Upper West<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This incident marks the third major disturbance perpetrated by youth aligned to the NPP in Upper West Region in the last few months.<\/p>\n<p>On January 22,\u00a0some NPP youth in the Wa municipality vandalized the residence of the Municipal Chief Executive of the area, Issahaku Moomin Tahiru.<\/p>\n<p>The rampaging youth also vandalized the family house of the MCE and two other houses belonging to his supporters.<\/p>\n<p>In November 2017, NPP youth in Gwollu, the capital of the Sissala West District stormed the precinct of the Assembly and locked up the District Chief Executive, Mohammed\u00a0Bakor in his office.<\/p>\n<p>They had accused the DCE of engaging in \u201cdivide and rule\u201d tactics, and failing to address their concerns.<\/p>\n<p>After the Wa incident, seven\u00a0NPP supporters\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2017\/11\/01\/7-npp-supporters-remanded-over-sissala-west-chaos\/\">were arrested<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0and charged with rioting, including the\u00a0Sissala West Constituency Chairman of the\u00a0NPP.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>By: Delali Adogla-Bessa\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Nana Akufo-Addo has suspended the\u00a0Upper West Regional Minister,\u00a0Sulemana Alhassan. This is after he is reported to have protected a group of angry youth believed to be members of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), who besieged the Upper West Regional office of the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) on Wednesday evening. [contextly_sidebar id=&#8221;yqwr0RLCMj04RMqbb1Q7f8NdVMANlWlk&#8221;]The Deputy Upper [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":397289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,10,11],"tags":[16705,3,56,158],"class_list":["post-397285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-slider-1","category-top-stories","tag-alhassan-suleiman","tag-ghana-news","tag-npp","tag-upper-west-region"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=397285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/397289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=397285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=397285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=397285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}