Legal practitioner Oliver Barker-Vormawor has questioned why the violence in Gbeniyiri has received so little media attention compared to incidents in other parts of the country.
Speaking on Newsfile on JoyNews, Barker-Vormawor lamented what he called a “partitioning of empathy” regarding the fatal land clashes in public discourse.
He observed that while at least 31 people have been killed and more than 48,000 displaced from 12 communities, the national spotlight has been overwhelmingly consumed by the Akwatia by-election.
“I am also concerned about how we petition our humanity and empathy towards reportage of issues generally. And I’ve noticed, I mean, again, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a, perhaps a long historical thing in terms of how we cover the northern part of the country, the way in which we create sympathy and empathy around issues that affect certain areas, it goes all the way down,” he said.
Mr Barker-Vormawor traced this trend back to a historical disregard for northern conflicts, which are often trivialized in both policy circles and the media. He cited past clashes such as those between the Nanumba and Konkomba that were reduced to jokes or dismissed as petty disputes, reinforcing stereotypes and limiting national empathy.
He warned that the lack of robust coverage and advocacy undermines accountability and slows national responses to humanitarian crises in the north.
“There isn’t a lot of humanity in how we report these issues,” he said, adding that the media’s concentration of resources in the south further distorts national attention.
“And if you look at the extent of coverage Akwatia it’s completely disproportionate towards the loss of lives at the scale in which they were happening in Gbiniyiri and the surrounding areas,” he added.
The Gbeniyiri clashes, which have left thousands fleeing into Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire, represent one of Ghana’s deadliest internal conflicts in recent years.