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Minister-designate for Defence, Dominic Nitiwul, has denied his involvement in the incident that saw soldiers occupy the Chamber of Parliament on the midnight of 7th January 2021.
He stated that no civilian has the capacity to move members of the Armed Forces and indicated that when the incident occurred he was effectively a civilian.
According to him, at that decisive moment, he did not have the capacity to move any personnel of the Ghana Armed Forces.
On 7th January dawn during the election of the Speaker of Parliament, some soldiers stormed the Chamber after chaos broke out due to breaches in the voting process.
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The presence of the soldiers caused a lot of consternation and the public have since demanded the identity of the government official who gave the order that desecrated the Chamber.
Speaking at the televised public sittings of the Appointments Committee on Thursday, the Defence Minister-designate denied his involvement and that of persons mentioned as being behind the invasion.
He stated that at that material moment he was not a minister and none of the people being mentioned were ministers and therefore did not have the capacity to issue orders to the soldiers.
“By the 1992 Constitution my tenure of office ended at 12:00 am midnight and once it crossed one minute into 7th January, the President needed to be sworn in for me to be asked to act in his capacity,” he defended himself.
Mr. Nitiwul defended the Ghana Armed Forces as a very disciplined institution with some of the most professional men and women one can ever find in the world.
He stated that having worked with members of the military for the past four years, he can vouch for their professionalism and that they would not do anything Ghanaians would not like them to do.
He assured the Committee, however, that the Armed Forces has launched a formal investigation into the incident and will punish any soldier found culpable of the event of 7th January dawn.
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According to him, the military will always punish anybody found guilty of doing things that they have not been ordered to do.
He assured the Committee that the government will also apply punitive measures on any official found guilty of the incident.
Mr. Nitiwul described the incident of that dawn as an experience Ghanaians will remember for a very long time.
The invasion, he said, was very dramatic in view of the long hours of real Parliamentary hustle and bustle, a very normal Parliamentary duty but which appeared alarming to others.
“If you are a Member of Parliament you would realize that it is very normal in Parliamentary duties just that some issues went to the extreme,” he said.
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FrontPageGhana.com/Ghana
