- “Picking something from Facebook and elevating it to the level where it got was just unnecessarily needlessly creating martyrs.”
Professor Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi, the co-founder of the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) has said the arrest of the #FixTheCountry convenor Barker-Vormawor was “unnecessarily needless”.
Professor Gyimah-Boadi said the move was only creating needless martyrs in the country.
In February this year, the police picked up social media activist and convenor of pressure group #FixTheCountry, Oliver Mawuse Barker-Vormawor, for allegedly stating that he would stage a coup in Ghana if Parliament passed the E-Levy bill.
In a statement, the police said on Saturday (12 February) that Barker-Vormawor is being kept at the Tema regional command for further investigations into his social media post.
In a series of Facebook posts ahead of a demonstration against the bill, Barker-Vormawor described the Ghana Army as “useless” for not acting despite the public uproar against the bill aimed at raking in about GHC7 billion annually into the national coffers.
“If this E-Levy passes after this cake bullshit, I will do the coup myself. Useless Army!” Barker-Vormawor said in one of the posts.
In another post, he said: “Okay, let’s try again. If this E-Levy still passes after this cake bullshit, then may God … Help us to resist oppressor’s rule, With all our will and might for evermore. (2x)
Useless Army. Anaa, the value is the same?”
Irresponsible comment
But speaking with Kent Mensah on Sunday Night on Asaase Radio, Professor Gyimah Boadi said, “picking something from Facebook and elevating it to the level where it got was just unnecessarily needlessly creating martyrs.”
“…I like some of the tension that there is, between a citizenry that is clamouring for more, that is desiring more, that is demanding and a government that is struggling. This is the luxury that we have with democracy… there are disturbing developments; when I think of the case of citizen vigilante Mr Vormawor, I just wished it hadn’t reached that point.”
He added, “I just wished we hadn’t picked an irresponsible Facebook comment and elevated it to the level of a national crisis of democracy and constitutionalism.”
“I think government overreacted [with the arrest of Vormawor],” Prof Gyimah-Boadi said.
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