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The parliamentary candidate of the NDC in the Effutu constituency, James Kofi Annan, has urged the National Peace Council to intervene to avert a potential violent confrontation between the NDC and the NPP.

According to him, the patience of the NDC has been overstretched, and the party will soon be left with no option but to defend itself.

James Kofi Annan stated this when he addressed newsmen in Winneba over the weekend.

According to him, there was widespread violence during the just-ended District Assembly elections in the Effutu constituency, but the Ghana Police Service failed to protect the citizens.

He said the NPP brought military men to attack and brutalize NDC sympathizers, even though the local assembly elections are supposed to be non-partisan.

Mr. Annan stated, for instance, that it was reported that an armed military officer accompanying the Effutu MP slapped a polling agent at Roman School because he resisted an instruction from the MP. Another military man in his company slapped an NDC branch executive at the polling center in Sankor.

“Abena Serwa and Emmanuel Coffie (reporters of Nyce FM and Radio Gold, respectively) were reportedly attacked with a sharp knife by one Adams, a known NPP activist, who collected their money, mobile phones, and other valuables and boasted that he would kill them and nothing could be done to him. It has been two months, and nothing has indeed happened to  him," Mr. Annan stated.

According to him, the NPP, through the Effutu Municipal Assembly, is engaging in such extreme provocations that can result in violent confrontations.

He said that in the last couple of years, the Assembly embarked on the demolition of the billboards that he would have used for his personal and campaign activities, even though he had paid the necessary fees and bills to the same municipal assembly.

“The assembly has provocatively allowed the NPP to erect Afenyo-Markin’s billboards on the same spots where my billboards were demolished, and in some cases, it is my billboard structures that have been re-erected and Afenyo-Markin’s posters pasted on those billboards.

"This is a recipe for violence, and I wonder why, after several protestations, the National Peace Council is still quiet about the situation. Is the National Peace Council waiting for violence to erupt before they issue statements?”, Mr. Annan quizzed.

“We in the NDC have gotten to the boiling point and are serving notice that if the state institutions are not going to act to protect our people, we will find ways to protect ourselves,"  he concluded.