The young men who brazenly displayed pistols and a pump-action gun in a viral video have reiterated their remorse over their actions.
The men including Apostle Alfred Dakurah, 43; Richard Suleman, 28; and Emmanuel Dakurah, 26, reported themselves to the police after heavy public condemnation.
Apparently, the trio are siblings and one of them has since been granted bail.
In his first interview with JoyNews, Apostle Alfred Dakurah, head pastor of Obuasi-based God’s Time Prayer Ministries, said he and his brothers are already reeling under the armed robbery tag imposed on them.
“We don’t blame anybody because we ourselves, we did the video. But rather, we blame ourselves for doing such a video,” he said.
“We truly regret because we didn’t know such video will come out and bring a lot of issues in the country and also affecting the country. And for that reason, we truly do regret recording such a video.”
“Now the entire family everybody is crying because we have been tagged that we are armed robbers and it’s a bad family,” he lamented.
According to the pastor, the incident has negatively affected the membership of his church.
“Even for myself as a pastor, even yesterday I was in church to preach. Only a few people came because many people say that the man of God is an armed robber. In my life, I have never stolen before.”
Apostle Dakurah, who spoke on how they acquired the guns, insisted that the video was recorded on November 26, 2020, at Takpo in the Upper East region.
According to him, he only used his licensed Pump Action gun at the funeral of his late grandmother in a performance of traditional Dagati rites.
“The Pump Action gun is my own gun. It’s my registered gun. And also where I come from in my culture as Dagarti in Wa, during funerals, we do shoot guns and other things for our rituals. So my grandmother died and as a leader of the family, it’s my duty to go there with a gun so that I can use the gun to perform the funeral so that’s the reason why I took the gun from Obuasi to Wa. The funeral was 26th November 2020.”
He explained that his brothers, together with other residents of Takpo in the Nadowli Kaleo District of the Upper West Region seized the pistols without magazines from people who wanted to take over a ‘galamsey’ site in that community.
“Those my younger brothers are galamseyers. Recently, there had been galamsey works going on in my village, that is, Takpo there so they had a grudge with some of the galamseyers and retrieved those guns from them after the fight because they always come there to force them just to sack them from the site because of the gold.
“So they too [my brother’s group] decided that they will fight them”.
