Ghanaians last week could not but wonder whether another Konkonba/Dagomba war was looming. News about the brief but incendiary ‘pig skirmish’ was broken and the internal security headquarters and related establishments were awash with a continuous strings of situation reports or sitreps; to borrow the regimental parlance.
This is not the kind of story the BNI could have foreseen and therefore alerted the coordinator because a stray swine belonging to a Konkonba man had unwittingly destroyed a Dagomba man’s farm the response from which was swift.
With a pig at the centre of the ado, the guinea fowl strife of an earlier time easily came to mind providing a worrying background for mischievous elements to point at an ethnocentric clash. If the traditional media entertained some finesse in the matter, social media did not: the assortment of interpretations alluded to by faceless persons not doing any good to the subject.
Thankfully, the situation has been contained especially against the background of the fact that what happened was a misunderstanding between two individuals and not a tribal issue.
For those who sought to benefit from a re-enacted tribal strife let them bow their heads in shame; it is not.
The negative role of the social media, especially, was in full flight when the news was broken. The stereotyping provided an unwanted fuel to the very dangerous issue.
We counsel that circumspection be allowed to rule in such matters.
We have been spared such internal security challenges for a while now although the flashpoints still exist. Thankfully, our security agencies and political establishment have been able to manage these.
Never again should we countenance an ethnocentric war in our country: they are dangerous and do not inure to the interest of development.
A life lost, houses torched and relationships threatened if not already severed, should prick our conscious to strive for peaceful ways of resolving our differences. The cost of maintaining troops for the internal security operations currently ongoing is beyond acceptable digits.
We cannot afford to commit valuable resources to the management of needless skirmishes when such funds are needed to fix our bad roads, stock our hospitals with essential pharmaceutical products and nourish the free SHS project.
We appreciate the role of the regional Security Council in pouring cold water on the fire stoked by the pig, the man who responded and the others who joined in the melee.
Even when the troops are withdrawn, intelligence gathering should be on high footing in the Nakpache area for the next six months or even beyond. The loss of life could trigger a quest for revenge and that should not be encouraged. Flashpoints are areas which should be under constant surveillance.