Sogakope Assemblyman shot dead, wife in critical condition

 

Sogakope, the District capital of South Tongue, was turned on its head on Sunday as scores of youth blocked the main road to and from Accra in protest against the alleged murder of the Assembly member of the Sogakope South Electoral area.

A resident of the town, Yao Amekor,  claimed that about eight men broke into the home of Marcus Mawutor Adzahli in the early hours of Sunday. The armed assailants allegedly used cement blocks to destroy the assembly member’s burglar-proof doors before entering his room, Graphic Online reported.

Eyewitnesses account had it that the attackers shot  Adzahli several times, leading to his death.

Mr Amekor said the late assemblyman’s neighbours claimed loud gunshots woke them up around 1 a.m. when the incident happened, but they were too terrified to intervene.

The eyewitnesses claimed one gunman wore a mask while the rest were bare-faced, but the assailants were too far away to be identified.

A budding entrepreneur, Adzahli is, said to be in his thirties and, ranked as one of the leading MTN mobile money and Vodafone Cash agents in the Volta Region.

All those qualities might have drawn endeared him to the people of Sogakope South, who elected him their assembly member in 2019.

But less than a year into his tenure, his life and budding political career ended in a pool of blood.

His body has since been deposited at the South Tongu District Hospital in Sogakope, where his wife, who also sustained injuries, has been admitted at the emergency care unit.

When the news got to town, that Adzahli had been killed in his home, hundreds of residents rushed to his home to see the gory site circulating on social media for themselves.

The gory images triggered anger among the youth who took to blocking the main road to protest the murder.

The situation left a long queue of vehicles behind both ends of the Sogakope bridge for over four hours.

After hours of gridlock,  vehicular movement was restored to the area—a busy road that is a transit point for vehicles travelling to and from Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria.

It took the police and some opinion leaders to prevail on the youth to remove the roadblock.