NPP member Fatimatu Abubakar has questioned the government’s response to the sexual abuse allegations involving Obuasi Senior High Technical School headmaster Zakaria Abdulai, arguing that authorities have demonstrated greater urgency in handling other cases.
Fatimatu said the response to the allegations had been inadequate compared with the speed at which authorities reportedly arrested and prosecuted students accused of vandalising the headmaster’s bungalow.
She said the students resorted to taking matters into their own hands after losing confidence in the institutions they had approached for help.
“The most shameful thing that has happened in the whole situation is the fact that when the students in Obuasi Senior High Technical realised that over the period they were not going to get justice anywhere, children who have been failed by the state decided to take matters into their own hands,” she on TV3’s Keypoints.
Fatimatu noted that people accused of vandalism had reportedly been arrested and put before court, while the handling of the allegations against the headmaster had attracted criticism over delays and the response of officials.
She also questioned what she described as the government’s ability to identify and arrest people over statements made on social media while failing to show comparable urgency over the allegations involving schoolchildren.
“A government that is able to go on TikTok and fish out people who are doing TikTok lives and then speaking against the government cannot go on the same TikTok where students from Juaben secondary and past students are organising live and now forming communities to share what they have gone through,” she said.
The former minister also criticised officials for repeatedly invoking due process in response to public concern, saying the seriousness of the allegations demanded urgent action.
“It is strange to me that a country that can put someone in remand for three weeks for misdemeanor pending investigation thinks an allegation on rape is not grave enough,” she said.
Fatimatu warned that failure to pursue the case seriously could deepen the distrust that victims have in the justice system and discourage other children from reporting abuse.
She cautioned that when people believe institutions will not protect them, they may resort to dangerous forms of retaliation.
“If nothing serious is done about this case, I tell you that once again any future victims will make sure they are holding cutlasses or holding knives and taking laws into their own hands,” she said.
