Former President John Dramani Mahama, according to Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, does not grasp the 24-hour economy programme he is proposing.

According to the Vice President, such policy is already in place in the country, since hospitals, petroleum companies, and other businesses function on a 24-hour basis.

Dr. Bawumia consequently asked Ghanaians to vote for the fresh Patriotic Party instead of Mahama in the 2024 elections since he has nothing fresh to offer.

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“John Mahama says he has a new idea. What is the idea? He says he wants a 24-hour economy. He doesn’t even understand that policy. Today in Ghana, our hospitals work 24 hours, our electricity company works 24 hours, our water company works 24 hours, our fuel stations work 24 hours, and many chop bars work 24 hours. Today because of digitalisation, you can transfer money 24 hours, you can receive money 24 hours… So he doesn’t understand his own policy. It doesn’t make sense.”

“So I want you to vote for me in 2024 because I will bring a new vision, I will bring a new policy. Mahama is the past, Dr Bawumia is the future. If John Mahama was there, we would say we have a dumsor economy, you can’t have a 24-hour economy in dumsor. So, you want to vote for Dr Bawumia in 2024, we will take the country to new heights,” Dr Bawumia stated.

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has maintained that it only adhered to its established beliefs and regulations, not banishing any of its members.

This comes after the party declared that Hopeson Adorye, Yaw Buaben Asamoa, Nana Ohene Ntow, and Boniface Abubakar Saddique were no longer party members due to their open support and campaigning for Alan Kyerematen, an independent running for president.

The NPP said in a statement released on Monday that the four had lost their party membership as a result of their egregious violations of Articles 3(5)(A)(4) and 3(9)(1) of the party’s Constitution.

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The NPP in the statement, signed by its General Secretary, Justin Kodua Frimpong, noted that Article 3(9) (I) of their Constitution states that: “A Member of the Party who stands as an independent candidate against the officially elected member of the Party or who joins or declares his or her support for another Political Party, or for an independent candidate when the Party has sponsored a candidate in a general or by-election automatically forfeits his or her membership of the Party.”

Mr. Frimpong, in an interview on Eyewitness News on Citi FM, insisted that “The party has not sacked anybody. It is what the Constitution states that we are following. And the word used in the constitution is forfeiture.”

“We have not sacked them, it is their action that has made them forfeit their membership in the NPP.”

Meanwhile, the four members of the NPP have accepted the party’s stance and pledged commitment to the country’s success through their support for Independent Candidate, Alan Kyerematen.

Mr Asamoa in a statement issued on Monday said, “Though none of the persons mentioned has received a personal copy [of the letter from the party], we accept our resignation from the NPP and pledge our commitment to Ghana’s success through our support for Alan Kyerematen. We also take this opportunity to respond and set the minds of concerned, well-meaning patriots at ease.”

The Commandant of the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC), Major General Richard Addo Gyane, says the spreading footprint of violent extremism from the Sahel Region is “disturbing” requiring immediate attention and concerted efforts.  

He said statistics from the 2023 Global Terrorism Index provided a sobering and disturbing assessment of the current situation in the Sahel region.  

The Commandant, in a speech read on his behalf by Prof. Kwesi Aning, Director, Faculty of Academic Affairs and Research, KAIPTC at the opening of a course on “Preventing Violent Extremism, Radicalization, and Small Arms Proliferation in the Sahel and Adjoining Coastal States in West Africa” at the Centre, said, “It is quite concerning, that in close to two decades, from 2007 to 2023, we have witnessed an alarming surge in terrorist activities in the Sahel.” 

The Project’s overarching goal is to enhance knowledge and foster information-sharing among security personnel and civil society actors in the fight against terrorism, violent extremism, and the proliferation of small arms in seven West African nations: Benin, Togo, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso.  

 In 2007, the Sahel region accounted for just one per cent of the global death toll due to terrorism but in 2023, the figure increased to a staggering 43 per cent.  

 Major General Gyane said the exponential increase was nothing short of a crisis as the Sahel had now become the epicentre of global terrorism, adding that the shift in the epicenter of terrorism was particularly striking considering the historical hotspots.  

 That, he stated, meant that the Sahel region now experienced a higher concentration of terrorist incidents and resulting casualties.  

“One of the most concerning aspects is the spreading footprint of violent extremism. Burkina Faso has seen a significant increase in attacks, with 58 per cent of all  

incidents in the Sahel occurring within its borders. This expansion of violence from its origins in Mali to neighbouring countries paints a grim picture of the challenges we face.” 

 Maj Gen Gyane said the repercussions of the violent activities were not confined to the Sahel alone as the ripple effects had reached littoral countries, including Cote d’Ivoire, Benin, and Togo.  

 According to him, as the violence spreads, there are growing concerns about its potential to further expand into Ghana, underscoring the urgent need for collaborative, regional efforts to address the root causes and consequences of violent extremism and terrorism.  

 The worrying statistics, he said, compelled countries to recognise the gravity of the situation and to mobilise collective efforts, knowledge, and resolve to tackle the complex issues.  

 Mr Hisanobu Mochizuki, the Japanese Ambassador to Ghana, said the security challenges in the sub-region were causing enormous destruction to human lives and eroding socio-economic gains of affected countries.  

To safeguard civilians and further human and economic progress, he said that substantial efforts were necessary to address the fundamental causes of insecurity in the Sahel and adjoining coastal countries. 

Japan, the Ambassador said, was supporting the project with USD 491,940.00 in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC) to prevent and counter terrorism, violent extremism, and small arms proliferation, diversions, and trafficking.  

 Japanese Prime Minister Kishida during his visit to Ghana in May 2023 announced that Japan will provide approximately 500 million US dollars over the next three years to contribute to peace and stability and promote sustainable growth in the Sahel region and the neighbouring coastal countries of the Gulf of Guinea.  

Mr Mochizuki said Japan had provided a cumulative total of about 10 million US dollars to the KAIPTC to date, to support numerous projects including training in small arms control, police capacity building, and border security management. 

 Mr Sukhrob Khoshmukhamedov, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Deputy Resident representative, said the UNDP remained committed to building skills of both security forces and non-state actors to promote peace, sustain social cohesion and prevent the spread of violent extremism.  

 “To ensure a stable West African sub-region, we need more effective collaboration and partnerships across borders to effectively deal with root causes and stamp out the double threats of violent extremism and small arms proliferation,” he said.  

Authors from Africa, Europe and the United States have explored the intricate dynamics of coercion and peacebuilding approaches in Africa at a workshop in Accra, Ghana. 

The workshop was a collaboration between three institutions, the Peace Research Institute in Frankfurt (PRIF), the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC), and the Institute for Peace and Security Studies (IPSS) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 

As part of the workshop, some broad chapters were developed and revised based on themes around coercion and peacebuilding to be put together into a collective volume in the middle of 2024 and published for policy makers, Scholars and the general populace. 

 Held at the KAPITC, the workshop attracted 30 authors, scholars, researchers, and practitioners who discussed their respective roles in coercion and peacebuilding in the West African sub-region and the Horn of Africa.   

Participants engaged in interactive sessions, exploring case studies and real-world scenarios to better understand the complexities of coercion and its impact on peace initiatives. 

The group of researchers studied the role of coercion in peacebuilding, specifically the role of different actors (new and emerging) involved in building Peace, including countries like Brazil, China, India, Brazil who have become important peacebuilders on the African Continent. 

 They discussed among other topics, the “Coercive Approaches in Peacebuilding: ECOWAS Foray into Sub-Regional Interventions”, “Coercive and Regional Peacebuilding in the Horn of Africa/IGAD Region” and “Physical & Structural Violence: Shifting Notions of Coercion in Peacebuilding Across Time and Geopolitical Space”. 

 Dr Antonia Witt, Senior Researcher and Head of Research Group, PRIF, said the Authors had been working on the project for the past two years with a series of workshops, adding that the current workshop was to consolidate their work and come out with a joint publication. 

She said in recent times, there were a plethora of actors in peacebuilding which raised the question of the best approaches in peacebuilding but importantly the role of cohesion. 

 Dr Witt said, hitherto, there was the assumption that peacebuilding went without coercion and was a naturally noncoercion endeavour. 

 She explained that “Now we increasingly realise that maybe that assumption is wrong. On the one hand, we do see peacebuilding that is very close to coercive practices. We see the difference between peacebuilding, and it increasingly blurs. We see military components as part of peacebuilding, but we also recognise that maybe a certain measure of coercion is also necessary so that the peace that is built holds.” 

 That, the PRIF Senior Researcher said, necessitated the questions, “how much cohesion is necessary for peace to hold, how much coercion is good and is there a flip side where coercion turns into something that produces more conflict and violence and does not move away from the initial agenda of building peace.” 

On the potential spread of violent extremism to coastal states like Ghana, Dr Witt, also a Fellow at the University of Ghana, told the Ghana News Agency that there was a lot of attention being paid to the issue currently. 

She said, as a matter of urgency, it was important to study how local conflicts drove vulnerability as a step to address those conflicts sustainably to avoid marginalisation and stigmatisation since those were ingredients that made radicalisation flourish. 

Major General Richard Addo Gyane, Commandant, KAIPTC, whose speech was read on his behalf by Air Commodore David Anetey Akrong, Deputy Commandant, said the thorough examination of the central role coercion assumed in influencing the strategies employed by regional and emerging actors in the context of peacebuilding was key. 

He said the KAIPTC, being one of the Training Centres of Excellence within ECOWAS, consistently served as a pivotal entity in the provision of comprehensive training programmes for military, police, and civilian personnel on a global scale. 

The Commandant said its academic programmes had a primary focus on the intricate dynamics of gender, conflict, and peace and security. 

“Your dedication to furthering the dialogue on peacebuilding is sincerely commendable,” Maj Gen Gyane applauded PRIF and IPSS for the sustained effort at ensuring peace and security on the African continent.