The Buipewura Abdulai Jinapor II, Paramount Chief of the Buipe Traditional Area, has appealed to the government to speed up investigations into the murder of the chief of Bimbilla, Naa Dasana Andani.
He said it was becoming a norm for persons who are aspiring to be chiefs and their supporters to kill chiefs and go scot free which was not serving the interest of the country and called for the political will to punish those who commit such heinous crimes.
The Buipewura Abdulai Jinapor said this on Thursday after he had been sworn in as a member of the Northern Region House of Chiefs in Tamale.
He said it had become a trend especially in the Northern Region to murder chiefs and the perpetrators went unpunished and this would not augur well for nation building.
The chief said killing of chiefs and other prominent persons would remain a vicious cycle if the perpetrators continued to benefit from their acts of indiscipline and added “The only means of stopping these heinous crimes is to institute stiffer punishment for the culprits to serve as a disincentive to others”.
“The King of Dagbon was murdered and now it is the Chief of Bimbilla. The King of Mamprugu is there and the King of Yagbon is also there and I and my other colleague chiefs are there. We don’t know who is next and that why am appealing to the government not to relent in any effort to find and punish the killers of Na Dasana Andani.”
He said no one would ever be commended for killing a fellow human being. “One thing that we need to know as a people is that one might think he had done something to satisfy some section of mankind but what we should always bear in mind is that we are answerable to God on the judgement day”.
Buipewura Abdulai Jinapor said, “We don’t emulate negativity and once a group had organised to kill a chief it is going to be a vicious cycle where descendants of the murdered chief would want revenge no matter how long it would take and how long should we continue to live under dangerous security”.
He appealed to the government not to shield any one no matter that person’s political, religious or social status found culpable in the murder of the Bimbilla chief to bring sanity into the chieftaincy institution.
He pledged to work with members of the Northern Region House of Chiefs to find solutions to long standing chieftaincy issues and that there were many cases, which had been in court but justice could not be dispensed because those cases had not been well investigated.
Mr Justice Gabriel Ayisi Addo, a Tamale High Court judge who swore in the chief, appealed to the Buipewura to be firm in cases that would come before him since dispensing justice was not an easy matter.
He said, “Be as fair as possible in your judgement, many cases would come before you and you should not be intimidated by persons who might appear before you. It is always where the poor cannot get justice that anarchy sets in”.
