The Member of Parliament (MP) for Adansi Asokwa Constituency, KT Hammond says he’s too matured to describe people from the Volta Region as Non-Ghanaians.
The seasoned lawmaker in an earlier interview to a group of media personnel who report from Parliament House made certain comments branded to be ethnocentric which have landed him in huge trouble.
The interview which lasted about 20 minutes was related to matters concerning the recent Supreme Court judgment on the new electoral register and the deployment of the military in certain parts of the country including the Volta Region.
During the interview Mr Hammond mentioned that their presence may be due to the ongoing electoral registration exercise and to ensure the holiness of its outcome by stopping non Ghanaians and those not constitutionally qualified to register and vote from infiltrating through the porous border.
The MP stated the historical fact that the people of the Volta region and Togo have the same ethnic background and were related. He also stated that for this historical reason, the two intermingle across the eastern border.
Additionally, the lawmaker added that even though they have the common background which he stated for which reason the Togolese cross the border into Ghana and back regularly, he said they were not Ghanaians and accordingly could not register to vote in Ghanaian elections.
This segment of the interview was only about 4 minutes in which he took pains to explain, after a series of questions from the media present, that all his references to non-Ghanaians referred to people from Togo.
Ghanaian have taken a huge swipe at him after the interview, saying his comments were purely ethnocentric.
But reacting to the backlash in a statement, KT Hammond said Ghanaians have taken his interview out of context, adding that an old man like him won’t make such divisive comments.
“I am educated, old and mature enough to know the history of Ghana and to understand the debilitating effect of ethnocentricity and bigotry in any community. I am not the one to call fellow citizens from the Volta Region, non- Ghanaians.”
He stated that “This is a deliberate, malicious, shameless twist of my responses with the sole purpose of causing me extraordinary political and social disaffection with Ghanaians from the Volta region. It is clear beyond argument that in my responses in the interview, at no point in the 4 minutes’ segment did I suggest let alone state that Ghanaians from the Volta Region were not Ghanaians”.
“I have taken steps to report the media houses associated with this mischief to the National Media Commission for redress. In the meanwhile, I call on the general public to disregard the twist to my responses and also to disregard the suggestions that my responses amount to the facts behind the state’s action”, he concluded.
