The politics of evacuating Ghanaians
By Ben Mensah
Why does the military regime in Ghana persist in evacuating Ghanaians when the Ivory Coast government, far from expelling Ghanaians as it was done recently to them in Nigeria, is taking every possible step to ensure the safety of Ghanaians in that country?The African Football Confederation (AFC) has imposed an indefinite ban on the Kumasi Sports Stadium following crowd violence that characterised African Nations Cup match between Ghana and the Ivory Coast at the Stadium.
The match ended in a goalless draw. But the Ivory Coast, having won the leg 2-0, qualified for next year's finaI in Egypt. Ghanaian fans who were dissatisfied with the trend of the match then started throwing various objects at the match officials. A linesman was injured and the players and other officials had to take refuge in the middle of the pitch to avoid being hit.
Both the AFC decision and the Kumasi incident would have passed off simply as part of the growing scenario hooliganism which has characterised e game of football in many parts of the world but for the weird reaction of the Ghanaian military authorities to the AFC decision, the serious repercussions of the Kumasi incident in the Ivory Coast and finally the cavalier method in which the Ghana government is handling relations with the Ivory Coast.
First the arrival back home of the Ivorian players and supporters with the distorted news of the Kumasi incident mediately incensed their compatriots to retaliatory acts against Ghanaians resident in that country. Four Ghanaian women, one of whom was pregnant, were reported missing after an angry crowd threw them into a lagoon in Abidjan and Ghanaian-owned shops were looted.
Another strange decision of Ghanaian military authorities in connection with the incident of the hooliganism and its repercussions lies in the frantic appeal to Ghanaians resident in the Ivory Coast to return home.
These attacks prompted the Ghana government not only to issue a statement advising all Ghanaian residents in the Ivory Coast to return home but also provided an opportunity for the Ghanaian military authorities to put the banned Kumasi Sports Stadium to another use. For instead of shutting the stadium to international matches as ordered by the AFC, the Ashanti Regional Administrative Officer, Mr Sam Darkwa, declared the Kumasi Stadium a disembarkation point for Ghanaians who would be returning home from the Ivory Coast in response to the government's appeal. A sub-committee appointed to supervise arrangements for the returnees announced that the returnees would be driven straight to the Kumasi Stadium where Dr U.A. Sogbotia will screen them so that those found to be carriers of diseases might be hospitalised. The Stadium was to be used for this purpose until the repatriation exercise was completed. By this decision the Ghanaian military authorities have rendered the AFC ban on the Kumasi Sports Stadium irrelevant and demonstrated that a sports stadium could be put to other uses in times of 'revolution'.
Another strange decision of Ghanaian military authorities in connection with the incident of the hooliganism and its repercussions lies in the frantic appeal to Ghanaians resident in the Ivory Coast to return home. Under normal circumstances it is a wise decision for any government to advise its citizens who face harassment in a foreign land to return home and when the nature of harassment is serious, it arranges to evacuate them home. The level of molestation of Ghanaians in the Ivory Coast was serious enough to warrant an intervention by the Ghana government but after the Ivorian government had effectively taken steps to stop the harassment, arrested and jailed some of the perpetrators one would have thought that the Ghana government would no longer persist in its advice to Ghanaians to leave the Ivory Coast.
Such a mature review of the situation by the Ghana government becomes even more imperative in view of the message from the President of the Ivory Coast to Ghanaian authorities emphasising the fact that the incident of harassment should not be used to mar the cordial relations between the two countries.
The Ivorian Ambassador in Ghana, Mr Konan Nda who delivered the special message, said President Houphouet-Boigny was shocked about the evacuation of Ghanaians from the Ivory Coast because he feels that Ghanaians there are at home'. Mr Nda said the President felt that what has happened was like a family quarrel which should not be allowed to be misused by the enemies of Africa to sow seeds of disunity between the two countries. It may also be remembered that in 1980 the more gruesome inci- dent of the Ghanaian fishermen who were massacred in the Ivory Coast without the slightest provocation was not seized upon by Ghana to evacuate her citizens from the Ivory Coast.
The question that arises then is why does the military regime in Ghana persist in evacuating Ghanaians when the Ivory Coast government, far from expelling Ghanaians like it was done recently to Ghanaians in Nigeria, is taking every possible step to ensure the safety of Ghanaians in that country?
One of the answers to this question is that it seems the Ghanaian authorities were looking for an opportunity to ridicule the AFC decision to place a ban on the Kumasi Sports Stadium. This they have done by putting the Stadium to other uses than football.
The evacuation exercise for which the PNDC has established a permanent secretariat has become a useful weapon of the military regime with which it woos international support, not for the people but for the regime's survival.
But it seems also that the more plausible reason was that the Ghanaian authorities were looking for an opportunity to trump up to the inter- national community that Ghana was again in distress and has had to undertake an evacuation of its citizens from a hostile foreign country and through that hope to win not only sympathy and support but more importantly material assistance to boost the military regime.
The evacuation exercise for which the PNDC has established a permanent secretariat with Commodore Obimpeh as its national coordinator has become a useful weapon of the military regime with which it woos international support, not for the people but for the regime's survival.
This weapon was discovered in 1983 when at the height of the mass expulsion of Ghanaians from Nigeria, the Ghanaian authorities closed the country's borders and prevented Ghanaians from returning home. This created the horrid scenes where hundreds of thousands of Ghanaia were stranded along their own country's borders which aroused much concern in the international community and led to the massive flow aid to rehabilitate the affected Ghanaians.
This was during a very difficult period for the country's military rule when the entire nation was on the verge of starvation and the survival of the regime had become precarious. No doubt the massive inflow of international food aid was a big source of consolidation for the military regime- In 1985 the PNDC is keen on staging another evacuation exercise and hopes to reap all the possible advantages therefrom.
