Managing conflict zones is an expensive financial endeavor as the Bawku has proven. The aforementioned conflict remains arguably the most bloody one in recent times and it continues to drain the national kitty of resources which could have been used for productive ventures in the municipality.
Development under the circumstances is stalled as attention is riveted on security management to save lives and property.
The politicization of the conflict has not helped matters as it has contributed largely to the near intractable dousing of the fire. Recently a group of NDC supporters in the municipality spotting the party T-Shirts expressed disappointment in the government for not walking its campaign time talk on restoring peace in the Municipality when the party wins the 2024 polls.
Some promises were made by politicians but upon assuming the leadership of the country the reality dawned on them about the impossibility of making good those pledges.
Conflicts in which the players hail from various ethnic groupings and with politicians stepping in with wild promises to please one of the combatants are difficult to address. That is the Bawku story.
The Bawku crisis has been unduly politicized by interest groups and thus making an already challenging situation a conundrum.
In recent times the fallouts from the conflict have been felt outside the Bawku municipality as targets are known to have been murdered in the outskirts of Bolgatanga the Upper East Regional capital in cold blood. One of such victims was a senior officer of the National Health Insurance Authority who was killed in a place not far from Bolgatanga.
On Tuesday the Ashanti Regional Chief of the Kusasi community Abdul Malik Azembe was shot dead in front of his residence in Asawase, Kumasi.
This was followed with further killings for the first time down South in the Ashanti Region and Ashaiman in Accra.
One of the killings points at the sophistication of those behind it. A certain Moshood Abiola, a Mamprusi man who was traveling from Accra to Bawku or so was tracked until he reached a place near Offinso. He was shot and died later in hospital.
Many hours after the heinous crime a Kusasi man was gunned down on the OTEC road in Kumasi.
With the earlier killing in Ashaiman of a Bisa man by a pillion rider and a cyclist it is clear that the Bawku conflict is no longer confined to the Upper East Region municipality.
With many of the members of the warring ethnic groupings relocating to the South, Kumasi and Accra where there are already many Kusasis, Mamprusis and Mossis in the face of the Bawku style killings now being played out in these areas a dangerous chapter has been opened in this seeming intractable conflict.
