Mole Park Animals on Killing Spree

The Gonja Youth Association on behalf of the people of Laribanga, a small community in the West Gonja District of the Northern Region, has noted with grave concern the rate at which inhabitants were being killed by wild animals from the Mole National Park, a nearby game reserve.
“Over the past 20 years, the people of Laribanga and the surrounding communities have been suffering in the hands of the Mole National Park guards and the animals in the reserve.
Farming is the major economic activity and the main source of income to the people but wild animals including elephants in the reserve have over the years caused enormous destruction to the farms of the people, native and non-native alike,” a Legal Officer from the Legal Resource Centre, Abraham Amaliba, who is also a human right advocate, disclosed this during a press conference held in Accra.
What is more, he revealed that the animals often times go on a killing spree and kill any farmer or inhabitant they find on their way to their farms.
Legal officer said the killing situation has reached an alarming point in the town and its environs as more death cases have been reported as a result of the ridiculous actions by the guards of the Mole National Park and the Game Reserve.
He continued that for the past 20 years the animals, especially the elephants always invade the farms, pulling down trees and destroying the farm produce that the farmers have toiled for.
“This problem has compelled the farmers to go back and watch over their farms at midnight after a hard day’s work and according to him, that was the only way the farmers could adopt as a strategy to guard their farms against the wild animals,” he maintained.
He decried the development, wondering whether that was the prize the people of Laribanga will have to pay after willingly giving out their lands freely for the establishment of the game reserve.
Mr. Amaliba recounted similar a case where on the 12th September 2010, one Seidu Soale who is a farmer went to watch over his farm at around 12 midnight where he saw an elephant busily destroying his farm and therefore decided to pull the animal back into the game reserve.
He said the guards upon seeing what Seidu was doing immediately started to fire bullets at him.
He indicated that Seidu in his attempt to flee from the guards got shot in the process and received several shots at his back which later led to his untimely death.
The legal officer revealed in grief that anytime these guards kill a farmer they carry the dead body and deposit it at a morgue in the town without first reporting to the police, adding that, they sometimes throw the dead bodies into the bush after they have killed them.
Mr. Amaliba went to say that what baffled Laribanga inhabitants is the lacklustre attitude on the part of the police to investigate these strange killings.
This, he noted, had given the guards power to do anything they want in the forest.
“What is of great concern to the people of Laribanga and the surrounding communities is the heartless manner in which the people are gunned down by the guards of the game reserve in the name of preserving the animals. In all these killings, nobody has ever been convicted for such heinous crimes. Where some of the cases have found their way to the court, the culprits have been left off the hook owing to sloppy investigations conducted by the police. This has emboldened the killers who have chosen to continue the abuse of rights of the people. The guards always claim that their victims die in a cross fire which the police will always corroborate but never true” the human right activist decried.
It is against this background that the Gonja Youth Association made a passionate appeal to the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Paul Tawiah Quaye, to send other officials from Accra to the region to thoroughly investigate the numerous killing cases.
The association also called on government to compensate the family of the late Soale since he happened to be the bread winner of his family.