By Yusupha Cham
The Ghanaian Government has recently announced to have secured the services of a specialist doctor to help identify the exhumed skeletons of six Ghanaians murdered in the Gambia in July 2005. Mr Kojo Wadee, Director of Policy Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs who announce the news on Thursday, said the payment of compensation formed part of the agreement reached with the Gambian government since the bodies were brought home a couple of months ago.
The Ghanaian Government says the move is to enable establish which families the compensation should be paid to. Providing details to the Ghanaian newspaper Times, Mr Wadee explained that “as a result of the long interval before the bodies were exhumed, the identity of the skeletons needed to be established”. That, he said, “explained why the payment of compensation to the bereaved families had not yet commenced”. Mr Wadee said “the problem was compounded by the fact that though the eyewitness who brought the issue out claimed many Ghanaians were killed, investigation so far had not established any number beyond the six. Until any other fact is made public to establish that more than the six were killed in the Gambia, we will go ahead to establish the identity of the six persons and pay the compensation to their families,” he said.
The Gambian President at first denied that any Ghanaian had been killed in The Gambia. Ghanaians, he was shown on TV saying, “are well treated in The Gambia and have always enjoyed Gambian hospitality, having been given their own place called Ghana Town.” Why then, President Jammeh had asked, should anyone in the country want to kill any Ghanaian? But despite his firm denial, Jammeh and his administration continued frustrating all attempts for a joint investigation by officials of both governments. However, fierce pressure from ECOWAS, the Ghanaian Government, UN and the US prompted Jammeh to backtrack allowing the investigation to be carried on, not without hurdles to avoid. The investigating team from Ghana composed of police investigators and government lawyers were left waiting in hotel rooms or in waiting rooms of government official in Banjul for days without being able to meet any official ready to admit that he or she was in the know. In April 2006, they were asked to go and return after the post alleged coup attempt trauma had eased. Then in May, they were asked to return after the AU Banjul Summit in August 2006. In Accra the issue had assumed a heated political dimension in the run up to the then approaching Ghanaian presidential election. The then NPP government was accused of being insensitive and inept because it failed to exert the necessary pressures on the Gambian government to seek justice for the innocent Ghanaians who were gruesomely murdered in The Gambia. Many political analysts think the issue might have contributed to NPP defeat in the election in December 2008.
