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A Security Expert and International Public Relations Officer, Mr Irbard Ibrahim, has urged the media to exercise circumspection in drawing ethnicity into the Agbogbloshie clashes.

Mr Ibrahim, the Executive Director of Irbard Security Consult, said clashes at the Agbogbloshie Yam Market on Tuesday, April 11, had economic undertones instead of ethnicity.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency on Wednesday on the Agbogbolshie clashes, Mr Ibrahim noted that due to expensive rent charges in the capital, Accra, northern youth seeking greener pastures lived and worked under poor conditions which often fueled violent clashes.

He said Agbogbloshie comprised mixed backgrounds of people from various ethnic extractions without proper arrangements to cushion them economically, therefore, any little provocation often resulted in violence.

Mr Ibrahim said since 1994 successive governments had done a great job with post-conflict management, reconciliation and rehabilitation.

He, however, urged the Government to continue engaging the various groups in the area to resolve their differences, while the security operatives should constantly be on the ground to pick security intelligence so as to act promptly to halt future occurrence.

Mr Ibrahim cautioned the public against drawing the conclusion that it was a Konkomba-Dagomba conflict which could only evoke agonizing feelings of the past with unintended consequences for the peace process in the north.
The Agbogbloshie clashes resulted in the death of two persons while scores of people got injured. Police and military personnel had since been deployed to the area to maintain law and order.