Security Analyst condemns public outcry against Fulanis

A Security Analyst, Dr Kwesi Aning, has condemned the public outcry against Fulanis in Agogo, a farming community in the Asante Akyem North municipality of the Ashanti Region.

There have been calls for the Fulanis in Agogo to be evicted for allegedly killing some residents and destroying farmlands in the area.

The youth of the area had threatened to defend themselves against the Fulanis, prompting the government to deploy security personnel there to avert any outbreak of violence. 

Commenting on the development on Accra-based Citi FM on Thursday, Dr Kwesi Aning of the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, said Ghana had failed woefully over the years to find a lasting solution to the problem of Fulanis herdsmen clashing with locals every now and then.

Dr Aning said: “Individuals who ought to have acted much earlier by using their logic approaches are now hiding behind their failure and now use xenophobic language against the Fulanis who were either invited to the area or found the place as fertile grounds for grazing.”

“Where we have gotten to in the last couple of days also reflect a much larger set of institutional failures. We’ve gotten here because we can’t face the truth. We’ve gotten here because lies have triumphed over reality. We have allowed a simple solvable problem to become an intractable problem and an intractable potentially violent conflict. Where we have gotten to in the last couple of days also reflect a much larger set of institutional failures.”

Dr Aning added that evicting the Fulanis from Ghana would have implications for Ghana’s relations with neighbouring countries because the political leaders in some of those countries were Fulanis.