Some 275 Burkinabe nationals have fled their country to the northern
part of Ghana as refugees in the wake of an ongoing chieftaincy-related
clash in the French-speaking West African nation.
Ghana’s National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) is responding
to the needs of the asylum seekers at Widnaba, a community in the Bawku
West District of the Upper East region.
“There is one chieftaincy issue in neighbouring Burkina Faso involving
two royal gates and resulting in the mass exodus of people from Zouga, a
village in [Burkina Faso], into the Bawku West District. As I speak to
you, 275 survivors of that chieftaincy dispute are in Widnaba,” said the
Deputy Upper East Regional NADMO Director in charge of Operations, Paul
Wooma, on Thursday.
Mr. Wooma told a meeting of officials from the United Nations
Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), the Ghana Health Service (GHS) as
well as traditional authorities, sanitation experts, government
officials and representatives of civil society organisations that the
Burkinabe displaced persons included 176 children, 32 men and 67 women.
“NADMO has not sat aloof watching this development. The Deputy Upper
East Regional Minister who is also a Member of Parliament (MP) of the
area, the District Chief Executive (DCE) of the area, the Bureau of
National Investigations (BNI), the police—NADMO District Director worked
with these people to screen them and got these figures for us.
“We have also given relief items, ranging from rice, mosquito nets,
blankets, basins, mattresses and buckets to assuage the pains of these
survivors. We are still counting on the support of other development
partners to come to their aid. We are told the [clash] is not over.
Houses have been burnt. The survivors are afraid to go back to their
country as they could become targets. So, we have to contain these
people for a while,” Mr. Wooma added.
NADMO’s statement on the cross-border flight comes after two policemen
were wounded and one civilian was killed in a renewed
chieftaincy-related clash in the Upper East regional capital,
Bolgatanga, last week.
An episodic gunfire erupted this week again in the capital and
government has, at the rear of the development, imposed a dusk-to-dawn
curfew at Atulbabisi, the commercial core of the municipality where two
disputed chieftains and their factions have remained submerged in a
power struggle since 2013.
Bawku Traditional Council donates food items to refugees
With the battle in Burkina Faso not looking like what will go away now,
more asylum seekers are expected to flood the nearby Bawku West
District in the same manner excess water, spilled perennially from the
Bagre Dam in Burkina Faso, takes refuge in Ghana and floods some parts
of the north.
In fact, reports coming in from NADMO just before filing this report
indicated that eight more persons had taken flight from the fight and
joined the 275 refugees in the district— raising the number to 283.
Meanwhile, the Bawku Traditional Council has donated ten bags of maize,
two bags of rice and a cash of Gh¢1,000 (182 US dollars) to the
displaced noncitizens. A branch of the Assemblies of God at Widnaba also
has made a donation of two bags of rice and a cash of Gh¢100 (18 US
dollars) to alleviate the misery of the survivors.
A UNICEF team, according to NADMO, was expected to visit the refugees
on Friday to assess the situation particularly the wellbeing of the
affected francophone schoolchildren. The immigrants need more than a few
tents to provide some privacy and safety, but NADMO has secured just
one tent so far.
“This seems to be the opium of the moment: chieftaincy conflict here;
chieftaincy conflict there. There is a need for development partners to
have a roundtable on such issues so that we can prevent them from
occurring because we know about the hotspots. And if local authorities
cannot deal with the matter, the international bodies like the United
Nations can help out so that lives are not lost,” Mr. Wooma emphasised
in an interview with Starr News.