Govt rubbishes documentary on Castle militia

The government has described as malicious the contents of an expose making reference to a militia group operating from the Osu Castle.

The investigative piece titled ‘Militia in the heart of the nation’ alleged a state-sponsored training of military persons at the behest of the president, Nana Akufo-Addo.

The pro-governing NPP militia, De-Eye Group, trains and is headquartered at Osu Castle in Accra, a security zone.

Until 2013, the Osu Castle was the seat of government. Currently, it is an Annex to the Seat of Government, the Jubilee House.

The Minority in Parliament has had cause to initiate impeachment process against the president following the airing of the documentary

But reacting to the investigative piece Friday at a news conference, Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah dismissed the evidence provided in the video as façade failing to match the accompanying narrative.

According to him, the documentary is nothing but “disingenuous and deliberate attempts to cast President Akufo-Addo in a negative light vis-à-vis the fight against vigilantism.

He said: “In line with the president’s commitment to disband party vigilante groups and their activities, the government will continue to support any effort that’s aimed at ending this worrying phenomenon.

“Unfortunately, however,  the Joy News documentary, the work of Manasseh Azuri Awuni, carried a number of significant misrepresentations and misleading impressions.”

“The promotion of the documentary and the narrative of the documentary stated emphatically that a militia, that’s a military force raised from the civil population to supplement the regular army in an emergency have been uncovered training and operating at a security zone with the complicity of the current administration and identified as belonging to the New Patriotic Party.

“Surprisingly the twenty minutes documentary does not show any evidence of such a militia, or a vigilante group training or operating at a security zone. Rather, it shows a group of young men and women dressed up in white shirts and black suits converging at the Christiansburg Castle in Osu in the belief that jobs will be found for them,” he told the News Conference.