MAKING ABAGRE A MARTYR WITH OBNOXIOUS PREVENTIVE DETENTION UNDERMINES RESOLUTION OF BAWKU CONFLICT
MAKING ALHAJI SEIDU ABAGRE A MARTYR WITH AN OBNOXIOUS PREVENTIVE DETENTION UNDERMINES THE RESOLUTION OF THE BAWKU CONFLICT.
BY MARTIN A. B. K. AMIDU
As long as governments under the 1992 Constitution place electoral politics above enforcing the law on the recognition and status of chiefs under Article 270 of the Constitution and the Chieftaincy Act, 2008 (Act 759) chieftaincy conflicts will continue to be intractable, endemic, and pervasive to the extend that they may eventually undermine the stability of the nation.
The chieftaincy component of the Bawku conflict was resolved conclusively long before the coming into force of the 1992 Constitution on 7 January 1993 with Bawku-Naba Asigiri Abugrago Azoka II being the recognized and gazetted as the Overlord of the Bawku Traditional Area until the Nana Akufo-Addo government covertly interfered with the status quo by facilitating the enskinment of a rival chief by the Nayiri in Nalerigu on Wednesday , 15 February 2023 with traditional ceremonies and increased security provided by the government.
The Akufo-Addo government contrary to all the conventions of courthouse governance facilitated through the indolence of the Chief Justice, the Court of Appeal decision of 17 October 2024 and the subsequent implanting of Alhaji Seidu Abagre in Bawku by the then National Security Ministry on 24 October 2024. The violence and bloodletting that followed the Akufo-Addo regime’s violation of the existing law was palpable on the inhabitants of the Bawku Traditional Area. The Nana Akufo-Addo regime’s attitude was informed more by electoral politics at a time he thought he could dispense with his friendship with the Bawku-Naba.
Despite the promise made by then candidate John Dramani Mahama to the Bawku-Naba and the people of the Bawku Traditional Area at the Bawku-Naba’s Palace to enforce the Constitution and existing law in support of the only lawfully recognized Bawku-Naba under the 1992 Constitution and Act 759, more people from that area appear to have lost their lives between 7 January 2025 when John Mahama assumed office as President and the Government Statement of 17 December 2025 than in the previous eight years of the Akufo-Addo regime before the Mahama government purported to execute the existing law by using the unlawful Asantehene mediation process as cover for the exercise of the executive authority conferred on him.
On 24 December 2025 upon the orders of President Mahama the GAF without any warrant from a court of law unconstitutionally and unlawfully abducted Alhaji Seidu Abagre, a citizen of Ghana born, bred, and educated in Bawku from his residence in Bawku. The Graphic Online reported the event by quoting the Minister of the Interior as follows:
"This afternoon, personnel of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) removed Alhaji Seidu Abagre from Bawku, pursuant to the recommendations of the Otumfuo Asantehene Osei Tutu II mediation report regarding the Bawku affair. Alhaji Seidu Abagre is safe in the care of the security agencies."
President Mahana has chosen to exercise the executive authority of Ghana vested in him to enforce the existing law in respect of the conclusively decided matter of who is the Bawku-Naba in an unconstitutional and unlawful manner that is creating a martyr out of Alhaji Seidu Abagre for the Mamprusi cause and offering him a de facto recognition as a Chief of Bawku in violation of the 1992 Constitution and the Chieftaincy Act, 2008 (Act 759). I attempted in two articles published on 15 and 19 December 2025 respectively to warn President Mahama of the dangers on the path he had chosen to thread in ceding his executive authority under the Constitution to the Asantehene and to act upon the Asantehene’s directives.
I have tracked the unlawful arrest and detention of Alhaji Abagre by the GAF from his residence in Bawku to Accra where he is in the unlawful custody of the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB) who never effected his unlawful arrest but had to take steps to regularize his unconstitutional and unlawful abduction by moving the Circuit Court, Adenta on 26 December 2025 “praying for a detention order of the Accused Seidu Abagre@Naa Sheriga Kulga II pending investigations, upon the grounds contained in the supporting affidavit.” The application was filed and moved the same day without the alleged accused being produced before the court or given the right to a lawyer as mandated under the 1992 Constitution. There is no chief known as Naa Sheriga Kulga II in the register of chiefs in Ghana or gazetted and recognized as such but President Mahama’s government is according de facto recognition to Alhaji Abagre in the filed processes in the courts.
The deponent of the affidavit filed in support of the application to the Circuit Court named Isaac Kombat, a police detective of the Ghana Police Service who is on secondment to the NIB, Accra, deposed to statements on oath which are knowingly false and constitute perjury on the face of the record which the Circuit Court Judge should have known. Nonetheless, for the unconstitutional preventive detention of Alhaji Abagre, the Circuit Court Judge granted the application in the following unconstitutional and unlawful words:
“By Court
Motion granted: Seidu Abagre also known as Naa Shariga Kulga is hereby remanded to the custody of the National Security until further orders are made by this court or any other court of competent jurisdiction.”
On the face of the application Alhaji Abagre was in the unlawful custody of the NIB who took custody of him from the unlawful custody of the GAF that abducted him from his residence in Bawku on 24 December 2025 upon the orders of President Mahama. It is basic knowledge that Alhaji Abagre who had been arrested without a warrant was to be brought before a court within forty-eight hours failing which the ex parte application before the Adenta Circuit Court Judge was not only unlawful but unconstitutional. Nonetheless, the Circuit Court Judge instead of ordering the production of the suspect before her, ordered his indefinite preventive detention long after all the Constitutions of Ghana from the 1969 Constitution, the 1979 Constitution, and the 1992 Constitution prohibited any vestiges of the Preventive Detention Act, 1958 as a basis of arbitrary detention in Ghana.
There is only one legitimate Bawku-Naba in Ghana and he was enskinned on 24 April 1984 when I was the Acting PNDC Secretary for the Upper East Region. I was also the Bawku-Naba’s lawyer in the Supreme Court when the suit against him was discontinued without liberty to come back on the same matter of the constitutionality of the Chieftaincy (Restoration of Status of Chiefs) Law, 1983 (PNDCL 75). Consequently, I take the view that any person who holds himself out as the Bawku-Naba other than Bawku-Naba Asigiri Abugrago Azoka II opens himself up for arrest and prosecution for impersonation and other applicable criminal offences in accordance with the due process of law.
The Government of Ghana in its application to the Circuit Court Adenta presented a weak case as though it did not know the facts surrounding the enskinment of Alhaji Seidu Abagre by the Nayiri. The government was, therefore, perjuring itself when it deposed to the supporting affidavit stating, inter alia, that: “4...the Accused sometime in the year 2024, enskinned himself as a rival Bawku Naaba in Nalerigu and sneaked into Bawku and started posing and acting as a rival Bawku Naaba for the Mamprusi people, which led to unrest in the region; 5 That preliminary investigations reveal that the Accused has recruited some individuals and groups to protect him in Bawku; 6. That after subjecting himself to the Asantehene mediation and refused to comply with same.” Paragraph 7 is scandalous!
Firstly, Alhaji Seidu Abagre was enskinned by the Nayiri on 15 February 2023 and “not sometime in the year 2024” under the watchful eyes of the government of the day whose Ministry of National Security implanted him in Bawku on 24 October 2024. Secondly it is a known fact that the Mamprusis and Kusasis have been engaged in violent conflict for decades and therefore Alhaji Seidu Abagre had no need to recruit any individual and groups to protect him in the Mamprusi enclave in Bawku town. Thirdly, it is open knowledge that it was the Nayiri rather than Alhaji Seidu Abagre who was a party to the Asantehene’s unlawful mediation and therefore the person to comply with the mediation is the Nayiri. But that does not empower Alhaji Abagre to hold himself out in the Bawku Traditional Area as the Bawku-Naba by any name or chieftaincy title in violation of Act 759 which is not the case the government presented to the Adenta Circuit Court.
President Mahama could have enforced the law on the existence of only one recognized Bawku-Naba as Overlord of the Bawku Traditional Area without enhancing the status of Alhaji Seidu Abagre “as a rival Bawku-Naaba for the Mamprusi people” as no such status is known to the law. President Mahama did not need any Asantehene to be his cover for the exercise of the executive authority vested in him under the Constitution and to act in accordance with the due process of law. This includes obtaining a warrant from a court of law to effect an arrest for a suspected criminal offence or offences rather than abducting the suspect. President Mahama did not also need to weaponize the Ghana Armed Forces, the Ghana Police Service, the Security and Intelligence Agencies, and the Judiciary exemplified by the Adenta Circuit Court to enforce the right of Bawku-Naba, Asigiri Abugrago Azoka II as the only recognized and gazetted Overlord of the Bawku Traditional Council.
The only lasting solution to the Bawku Affairs is to enforce the existing law in strict compliance with the 1992 Constitution and the laws of Ghana without reference to electoral political objectives.
Martin A. B. K. Amidu – 10 January 2026.