<<Print>>

The Member of Parliament(MP) for Manhyia North constituency, Hon. Collins Owusu Amankwah says it is wrong for the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) to be hasty to declare the country a state of insecurity due to recent criminal activities in the country.

According to him, Ghana is safe and has not reached the state of insecurity which the communicators of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) are propagating and putting fear in the hearts and minds of Ghanaians.

He admitted in an interview on Okay FM’s 'Ade Akye Abia' Morning Show that the few condemnable criminal incidents cannot be used as a yardstick for the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) to conclude that the country is in the state of insecurity.

He posited that the communicators of the NDC seem to be happy to hear armed robbery cases in the country, making him wonder the motive and the gains of the opposition in the criminal activities in the country.

“If you look at the robbery cases going on in the country, we all agree that this is not the first time that a highway robbery has taken place as statistics indicate that the crime rate in 2020 has reduced compared to the crime rate in 2019 even though we don’t wish to see a crime in our country; when you hear the NDC in the media, they seem to be happy about the armed robbery cases,” he claimed.

He stressed that, “if you hear the NDC talk, you ask yourself what they seek to gain from the armed robbery cases. It appears that the armed robbery cases that are going on, the NDC Communicators talk with some sort of excitement”.

He added that the excitement in the voices of the communicators of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) talking about armed robbery cases makes him wonder if the NDC knows the criminals, alluding to the fact that the voting pattern in the prison centres favours the main opposition the most.

“I don’t know if they know the criminals because if you look at the voting pattern, almost all the prison centres in the country, the NDC has been winning all and these are the places the hardened criminals are kept and so I don’t know the connection between them,” he wondered.

Reacting to the assertion of the Manhyia North Member of Parliament on the same platform, the former Member of Parliament for the Akwatia Constituency in the Eastern Region, Baba Jamal bemoaned why his colleague MP is politicizing the criminal activities in the country.

“Who told him that only criminals are in prison centres? As at the last election, the criminals did not take part in the voting but those who voted in the last year’s election are warders and their families working in the Prisons and so are they criminals? So, Collins Amankwah wants to say that all the people in the prisons are criminals; is that what he is telling us?”, he quizzed.

He insisted that all those who registered and voted at the various prison centres in the country are not criminals as the Manhyia North Constituency lawmaker wants to portray, but rather they are workers living with their families in the prison centres who participated in the elections.