Lieutenant Colonel Appah, the Commanding Officer of the 64 Infantry Regiment of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF), has indicated that efforts are being made by the Armed Forces to find the soldier who punished a resident of Kasoa by instructing him to undertake frog jumps on the streets.
The soldier who was part of the military deployed to enforce law and order during the period of the partial lockdown was seen in a video, instructing the civilian to move onto the main road to do the jumps as punishment for attempting to video the security team.
The culprit soldier who was hooded was heard saying “Go to the road, your girlfriend will see you. You were videoing me so that your girlfriend will say I am wicked”.
But speaking to Accra based Citi FM, Lt. Col. Appah said that the Armed Forces will punish the officer appropriately when he is found.
Whilst claiming that finding the said soldier will be a daunting task, Lt. Col. Appah noted that his outfit will try every means possible to locate the said officer because they [GAF] had about 50 uniformed personnel stationed at the place.
He said he would believe that the person he saw in the video was one of his men because the background looks like the area GAF was stationed.
“The soldier was wearing a hood and it is difficult to identify him in the video. Incidentally, our area is a reserved place where we have our headquarters. We have about 40 to 50 soldiers there. So, it is difficult to identify which soldier did that. But I’m still looking for him to find out why he did that and give appropriate sanctions,” he said.
Assessing the first day of the partial lockdown, Lt. Col. Appah, observed that many people were still attempting to move out when they had no essential activity to undertake.
He said, some petty traders were seen attempting the usual street vendor services, and others too wanted to come and look at the soldiers and armored vehicles.
When we get them, we make them sit down for about 30 minutes and get them to go home,” he said.
Many Ghanaians are divided over the punishment given out to those who break the self-isolation/stay-at-home orders of the president.
However, some analysts have said the Ghana Armed Forces must break away from that poor old evasive PR gimmick.
“It is easy to assemble all the soldiers and their officer assigned to a particular location and bring out the culprit soldier,” observed a concerned media analyst who spoke to TheBBCghana.com correspondent.
“It is early days yet and more of such offenses may occur so the armed forces should be careful their image does not sink further with such evasive answers.”
“Lt. Col. Appah is admitting that people are allowed to walk on the streets which is itself problematic,” the media analyst added.
“It appears both the soldier and civilian are offenders here. I have legitimate work to do in town but I do not have an appropriate ID so I stay at home in obedience to the president’s commands.”
Watch below how the Kasoa resident was punished.
