About 300 Fulani herdsmen and their families living in some parts of the Volta Region say they are eligible to vote in Ghana after staying in the country for over 20 years now.
The Fulanis said this when an operation by a joint security taskforce formed by the Volta Regional Minister, Madam Helen Adjoa Ntoso, to rid the region of Fulani herdsmen raided the immigrant herdsmen’s homes in six districts.
The taskforce stormed Ave-Dakpa in Akatsi North, South Tongu, Central Tongu, North Tongu and Adaklu, and in all the areas, the Fulanis claimed they have been voting for the past 20 years.
The operation, christened ‘Operation Cow Leg,’ was led by Chief Superintendent Ebenezer Kweku Asare, Volta Regional Police Operations Commander.
Though the Fulani immigrants could not produce their voters’ ID cards to Chief Superintendent Asare and his team of military and personnel from the Ghana Fire Service to prove their claim, they insisted they are eligible Ghanaian voters.
Others said they have Ghanaian women as wives and thus regard themselves as Ghanaians. The Fulani herdsmen and their families, therefore, pleaded with the security force and the Regional Minister to allow them to stay.
Chief Superintendent Ebenezer Kweku Asare, however, gave the Fulani herdsmen an ultimatum to pack out of the region.
The taskforce, he said, would return for an intensive mop up to flush them out should they fail to leave the region to their homeland.
For several years now, nomadic Fulani herdsmen have been accused of physically assaulting, in some cases raping women and killing, indigenes of some parts of the Volta Region.
The Fulani herdsmen, according to reports, do not control their herds of cattle when they shepherd them to graze and so the cattle enter people’s farms, thereby destroying the crops, which are the livelihood of the people.
Following such reports and complaints of the gruesome attacks, the Volta Regional Minister, Madam Helen Adjoa Ntoso, directed that a joint security force operation, dubbed ‘Operation Cow Leg,’ should be embarked on to flush out all Fulani herdsmen from the region.
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