The Ghanaian Minaret

Accra – The dream of making the Zongo and Muslim communities a place unsafe for the recruitment of goons for election violence seems to be a mirage.

On the back of admonitions and a series of dialogues by stakeholder groups to disengage the youth from any acts of violence during the election period, some Zongo youth have still been fingered in some of the 21 cases of electoral violence recorded by the Ghana Police Service.

As a result of this violence, six gunshots were fired, five death recorded, and 19 persons were injured.

Among the persons who sustained gunshot wounds during the election was Sarki Latif who was reported to have been one of two persons shot in the Awutu Senya East Constituency on the day of voting.

Mr Latif, who is a known resident of Kasoa Newtown, Nyayano has since been receiving treatment at the 37 Military Hospital.

A watershed moment as far as the involvement of Zongo persons in electoral violence was concerned was when the Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Mahama mentioned names of men who had been killed by security men during a scuffle in the Techiman South constituency.

These included Abdallah Ayarik,18; Tajudeen Alhassan, 38, and a third person whose name was not captured during the press briefing.

In November this year, a faith-based organisation, the Coalition of Muslim Institutions (COMI) embarked on a reach-out programme to stamp out political vigilantism in Zongo communities.