Buipe (SR), July 6, GNA – The National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) with support from the European Union has held a forum in Buipe in the Central Gonja District of the Savanna region to sensitise and educate the youth on violent extremism.
The 50 participants who were drawn from youth clubs, artisanship and other trades between the ages of 18 and 35 were educated on how to concentrate on their education and be vigilant in identifying people with questionable characters.
Welcoming them, the District Director of the NCCE, Mr Mahama Abdul-Fatau, said violent extremism was spreading like wildfire in West Africa, and therefore, expressed the need to prevent it.
Mr Abdul-Fatau said the youth were vulnerable people as they were susceptible to being recruited by terrorist groups, by using large sums of foreign currencies to entice young people to become their clients for violent acts, adding that “everyone is at risk of recruitment as we are all poor.”
He bemoaned the sordid state of the country’s borders which were too open and therefore, exhorted the youth to be patriotic enough to resist their temptation and report any suspicious person or persons found in their individual communities to the security.
The District Crime Officer of the Ghana Police Service, ASP Edmund Amoaku, revealed that armed terrorists had taken 40 per cent of the geographical landscape of neighbouring Burkina Faso.
He said the situation was alarming and called for concern, as the terrorists could take advantage of the Bawku crisis to infiltrate into the country and entreated the youth to form community watchdog groups to put surveillance on their individual areas since security was a shared responsibility.
The District Registrar of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ). Mr. Abukari Baba, also told the youth that accepting terrorists in their midst would deny them their rights to economic life and their right to life.
Mr. Abdulai Ahmed Soale, the Regional Programme Officer of NCCE advised them against engaging the terrorists’ activities.
The participants were later zoned into four groups to brainstorm four topical issues; namely, to identify five signs which a young man was radicalised, facts that endanger national cohesion, and five neighbourhood watchdog and crime prevention methods.
At the end of the forum, the participants adopted a communique in which they resolved to be watchdogs in their individual communities while agreeing to take the education to others knowing that this approach will be engendering not only the unity of Buipe but the unity of Central Gonja, Savannah Region and the whole of Ghana.
GNA