Dreams in Ruins: The sporting cost of the Bawku conflict in Ghana

It was supposed to be a normal day of training for players of Bawku Unity Stars, a juvenile club in the Bawku Municipal District of the Upper East Region of Ghana. The Bawku Sports Stadium pitch was customarily rocky, the atmosphere fairly cloudy.

About 20 minutes into the session though, a seeming sense of panic and disorder started out of nowhere. Gunshots disrupted everything!

There was chaos and uncertainty, leaving the players, most of whom were adolescents, gripped with fear. In the minutes that followed, their lives flashed before their eyes.

Behind the Bawku Sports Stadium is a cemetery, usually so calm, and after that, a valley-like stretch, which serves as the unofficial barrier between the feuding Kusasi and Mamprusi tribes in Ghana.

On this day, however, calm eluded the cemetery and by extension all the bodies buried six feet underground who were supposed to be resting in peace.

The exchange of gunfire had started a few meters away from the stadium and the terrifying sound of flying bullets was getting closer and closer to where the club was training. Everything was happening so fast and as confused as these young ones were, their coach, Kabiru Abubakar, had to do something.

But with no combat training and zero experience in such situations, Kabiru could only order his players to lie face down and hope for the best. The shootings continued for a while but fortunately, Kabiru and his players escaped unscathed.

“On several occasions, we go to the stadium to train and we hear gunshots,” says Karibu, who insists he and his players still aren’t giving up their dreams.

Sometimes we have to lie face down [when we hear the sound of gunshots]. But I always tell the boys that even if they throw bombs in Bawku, as long as we remain alive, they should come for us to continue working. Sometimes we lie flat on the ground and when the situation gets better, we get back up, go home, take some few days off and we return to training when things normalise.

This happened in 2021, and four years later, in 2025, not much has changed in Bawku.

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Just shy of 10 months ago, Bawku was enjoying some rare peace and calm, with its exuberant populace going about their normal duties.

These days, however, all that’s left of it is a ghost town slapped with a curfew, having been blighted by chaos, insecurity and tribal murders.

It is a dire situation that has not only led to the senseless spilling of blood but is also killing businesses and dreams - Dreams of students, civil servants and even sportsmen and women in the township like Kabiru and the players under his care.

That latter group also includes Amos Anyenaba, whose career as a long-distance runner has stalled due to the ongoing conflict in Bawku.

“The issues around have impacted my training in a negative way,” the athlete concedes.

When I was in Navrongo, the training was very effective but the moment I completed training college and returned home [to Bawku], it has not been so effective. I’ve still been training but the performance hasn’t been that high and I’m no longer as strong and fast as I used to be.

Amos had always dreamed of becoming the first athlete from Bawku to win laurels on the national and international stage.

That dream saw him dedicate hours of his time to training. He juggled sports and education throughout his time in secondary school and training college. Now a graduate, Amos had made use of the previous months of calm in Bawku to better his finish time and competed in a few marathons across the country.

These were key moments in his fledgling career and he felt strongly within himself that he was getting closer to actualising his dreams. Fitness-wise and mentality-wise, he was hot to trot.

But in October 2024, following the enskinment and return of a parallel Chief to Bawku, everything changed for the young athlete. The long-standing conflict between the Kusasi and Mamprusi tribes reared its ugly head again and Bawku has known no peace since.

Official figures have put the death toll in the hundreds since the re-eruption of the deadly clashes in Bawku but some locals say the number is in the tens of thousands.

“When a particular tribe is killed, they don’t report to the police because they believe if they declare the deaths, the police will make that information public and their rivals will laugh at them,” Iddrisu Kassim, a journalist with Winpang Radio in Pusiga, a community near Bawku, reveals.

The only time the casualties are properly accounted for are when a person from one faction is killed in enemy territory and they cannot retrieve the body, so they report to the police for them to go in there to retrieve the body. These are the reports that you see in the media.

Kabiru himself has been a victim of the conflict. As a journalist working in the community, he frequently reports on happenings and offers correspondence to media organisations in the capital on the state of affairs in Bawku.

However, a few years ago, he was doxxed on social media after one of the feuding parties accused him of being biased in his reporting. That has put a target on his back and opened him up to threats, effectively compromising his safety.

Meanwhile, inter-school competitions in Bawku, which used to be a scouting ground for sporting talent, have ground to a halt due to the conflict. In fact, schools in Bawku have been dragged into the conflict, with students getting murdered in recent times.

“Inter-schools competitions, where teams come to scout players, are currently suspended,” adds Kassim.

This is because nobody can go into the area to organise such events. There used to be inter-groups competitions, but all that has stopped. Bawku has a festival, where every year they play a football gala. This year, they couldn’t play because there is no peace in the town.

As we speak today, due to the conflict, Bawku Technical School and Bawku Secondary School [both second cycle schools] have also developed a rivalry, which has led to a temporary closure of the schools following a clash between students.

Properties worth thousands of cedis have also been destroyed, while many have been maimed, including a promising 16-year-old kid at Kabiru’s juvenile club, who was shot multiple times in the leg when a bus he was travelling in got attacked by one of the feuding tribes.

“One of my boys is currently at the hospital because he has gunshot wounds on his left leg,” an emotional Kabiru, who more than just a coach is also a father figure at Bawku Unity Stars, opens up.

He’s also a left-footed player, so he cannot play anymore. This boy only completed secondary school last year and was in a bus en route to Bolgatanga when the bus was attacked.

Amos, who is a product of the inter-school competitions, has seen his career as an athlete badly suffer too. He used to train freely on the streets at night but the conflict has forced him to not only suspend his career but also flee from his home in Bawku to neighbouring Zebilla in order to preserve his safety.

“Because of the conflict, we have moved to Zebilla, which is not too far from Bawku. I used to train in the evenings between 6pm and 8pm using the street lights for proper vision,” says Amos.

But it’s now dangerous to run within or around Bawku in the evening, and that has led to a rescheduling of my training plans. The effectiveness of my training is no longer as high as it used to be.

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To understand the genesis of the Bawku conflict and its gravity would be to take a journey down memory lane to about three centuries ago. The Kusasis and Mamprusis, both tribes in Northern Ghana, have had a chequered history since the 1700s.

Although the Kusasis, who speak the Kusaal language, are predominantly settled in Bawku, their current capital, they are also scattered across Pusiga, Garu and the Tempane districts of the Upper East Region of Ghana.

For the Mamprusis, who speak the Mampruli language, they come from one of the oldest ethnic groups in Ghana, with their capital being Nalerigu in the NorthEast Region. Bawku and Nalerigu are, therefore, in different regions and separated by a few towns, including Bolgatanga, the capital of the Upper East Region.

So how is it possible that there’s a sempiternal feud between a tribe whose centre of rulership is in the NorthEast Region and another tribe several kilometres away and close to Ghana’s border with Burkina Faso?

The Mamprugu Kingdom, as per oral and written history, was founded in the 13th century at Pusiga, a village that shares a border with Bawku and is only 14 kilometres away.

Although the kingdom is run from Nalerigu, where the palace of the Paramount Chief of the Mamprusi people is located,  it also extends to parts of the three other regions in Ghana’s north, while its people can also be found in parts of Togo and Burkina Faso.

In fact, the tomb of Naa Gbewah, the founder of the Mamprugu Kingdom, remains in Pusiga to date, which is why the Mamprusis regard Pusiga as their ancestral home.

But Bawku has always been a town inhabited by different groups of people and a settler community for various tribes. Although the Mamprusis and Kusasis remain the dominant groups, you can also find the Hausa, Yanga, Bisa, Moshie, Dagomba and Bimoba there.

In the decades that have passed, Bawku has had Chiefs from both the Mamprusi and Kusasi tribes ascend its throne, amid a spate of infighting and chaos.

It’s a rivalry fueled by a desire for power, geographical boundaries and rulership. Both tribes believe they are the true owners of Bawku and, therefore, the Chief of the town should come from their sect.

“The Kusasis have a very rich history and when they talk to you, you’ll be convinced Bawku belongs to them. It’s the same for the Mamprusis, who equally have a great history and would convince you the place is theirs,” says security analyst Adib Saani, who has closely followed the conflict for decades.

It all depends on where in that history the story starts, so it’s impossible for me to say Bawku belongs to this side or that side. That is why there is the need for some bargaining to be done and for both sides to soften their stands and to be willing to make concessions, otherwise if they take intransigent positions, it’s going to be very difficult to deal with the issue.

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In the last four decades, Zugraan Naba Asigri Abugrago Azoka II from the Kusasi tribe has been the recognised Paramount Chief of Bawku, known locally as the Bawku Naba. Asigri Abugrago Azoka II ascended the throne in 1984 following the demise of his father, Naba Abugrago Azoka I.

Although Asigri Abugrago Azoka II’s rule has had its ups and downs and has constantly been challenged, he was gazetted as the legitimate Chief of Bawku, making him the overlord of the Bawku Traditional Area.

But not even being gazetted has halted questions over his legitimacy, especially from the Mamprusi section. The issue has been adjudicated twice in court, both of which saw the Kusasis declared as the custodians of Bawku.

The first was in the 1950s, when the colonial administration set up a commission to settle the matter once and for all. The commission’s findings backed the Kusasis’ claim and, when Dr. Kwame Nkrumah became Ghana’s first president, he implemented the commission’s findings.

That decision was said to have put Nkrumah in the bad books of the Mamprusis and, depending on who you ask, it is believed that one of the earliest assassination attempts on Nkrumah’s life was in part due to the side he backed in this long-standing feud.

On August 1, 1962, the Ghanaian leader was returning from a meeting with the then Burkina Faso president, Maurice Yameogo, where the construction of a major hydroelectric project over the Volta Lake was discussed.

On his way back via road, Nkrumah’s convoy used the route at Kulungugu, a town on the outskirts of Bawku, where school children had gathered by the roadside to catch a glimpse of the President.

As the showman that he was, Nkrumah stopped to acknowledge them and was to be presented with a bouquet of flowers by a schoolgirl. Unbeknownst to him, there was a bomb planted in the flowers.

And it exploded.

But Nkrumah was lucky to survive, mainly thanks to the proactivity of his security guard who, upon hearing a ticking sound, quickly pushed Nkrumah away.

Still, Nkrumah sustained some injuries and shrapnel was removed from his back when he was later treated at the Bawku Hospital. According to Nkrumah’s photographer at the time Dr. Chris Tsui Hesse, many of the schoolchildren were killed by the bomb.

“Kwame Nkrumah was standing on the right side of my camera that day and the school kids were performing beautifully,” Dr. Hesse narrates.

Nkrumah and his Ministers were moving towards the school girl to collect the bouquet and I was in the middle with my lens capturing everything in detail.

Immediately Nrkumah took a few steps, his body guard, Captain Samuel Buckman, pushed him to the ground and covered him with his (body guard’s) body. Then we heard boom! My camera captured so many things scattered and falling from the sky. Later, I discovered they were human parts. Many of the school kids were dead!

Two more court rulings have gone against the Mamprusis since 1957. First, an appeal in 1958 saw the verdict once again go against the Mamprusis, before in 2003, the Supreme Court again affirmed the legitimacy of the Kusasis.

That is why Asigri Abugrago Azoka II has been the lawfully recognised Chief of Bawku all this while. But in February 2023, the overlord of Mamprugu, Naa Bohugu Mahama Abdulai II, enskinned Seidu Abagre Kulugu as chief of Bawku.

This created a parallel traditional leadership, which led to renewed clashes between the Mamprusis and Kusasis in Bawku.

The government of Ghana, through its then Minister of Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, released a statement describing the enskinment of Seidu Abagre Kulugu as "illegal and a threat to National Security."

The Bolgatanga High Court later issued an arrest warrant for the overlord of Mamprugu for illegally enskinning another chief in Bawku but the warrant was rescinded a few days later following an unsuccessful attempt by the military to arrest him at his palace in Nalerigu.

Fast forward, what was already a tense situation escalated when Seidu Abagre Kulugu was escorted to enter Bawku, creating a situation where the town now had two rival Chiefs. This sparked chaos, leading to several murders and destruction of properties.

Consequently, hospitals, courts, schools, banks and NGOs in Bawku have shut down to protect their employees, which has led to a spike in unemployment.

“The conflict has brought serious hardship on the people of Bawku. We’re talking about market women, businessmen, NGOs and other sectors are all not happy with the situation,” Bawku-based journalist Kassim divulges, adding:

As we speak now, there’s no government hospital in Bawku that operates fully to save people’s lives. The workers of these institutions have run for their lives, because they believe they’re not safe.

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Both factions continue to hurt each other and the number of casualties continues to increase by the day. Coach Kabiru recounts an occasion when one of his players forewarned him of an impending attack because he was privy to where the act was going to take place due to his association with one of the feuding parties.

“We were training one day and a player told me the training session would not end well. I asked him why and all he said was that an attack was coming,” reveals the Bawku Unity Stars coach.

I didn’t believe him at first and kickstarted the training session but a few minutes later, gunshots started sounding everywhere. Bullets were flying inside the stadium so we had to hide. When the situation became calm, I asked the player how he got to know of the attack and you know his answer? “Oh coach, have you forgotten I’m a member of one of the tribes?” So I began taking his warnings seriously. It has now become a normal thing in Bawku.

The insecurity in Bawku has also seen the town placed under a curfew from 8:00pm to 5:00am for some time now but not even that has managed to stop the killings.

“We’ve been under curfew for five years now. Some of the people are now used to it. It doesn’t matter if the curfew is from 2pm to 6am, they are okay with it,” Kassim laments.

The worrying aspect is that despite having over 500 military and police personnel around, crimes are still rampant during curfew hours. People still find ways to kill and attack their rivals because they live in the town and they know all the blind spots to evade the security on patrol.

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There are more than five professional clubs in Bawku and many more juvenile teams, although most of them are facing an uncertain future due to the ongoing conflict. Some have gone extinct and others have been forced to temporarily disband the team.

There are also a few who are still holding on to slim hopes that the conflict would stop soon so they can return to playing the game they love.

One of such is Iddie Wuni Abubakar, a football administrator and founder of Bawku Royals FC, a club with U13, U15 and a senior team.

“Every night, you’ll hear gunshots,” says Iddie, who admits he’s always worried about the safety of his players.

It’s been like that since January, so the insecurity is still there and it’s affecting everybody in the town.

The conflict has taken so much from those living in Bawku, including people who are neither Kusasi nor Mamprusi but are perceived to have sympathies towards one tribe. Revenge killings have also been on the rise as the feuding parties attempt to retaliate for every death recorded on their side.

“The Kusasis have their side of the town and the Maprusis also have theirs. A Kusasi man cannot cross over to the side of the Mamprusis and vice versa,” Kassim explains.

Once they see you coming from either direction, they don’t even ask you any questions, you can consider yourself dead!

We have two players in the Ghana Premier League who hail from Bawku - Abdul Manaf and Issa Koka. Manaf is a Mamprusi by tribe and Koka is a Kusasi. They are very good friends but when they come home for holidays, they cannot visit each other due to the conflict between their tribes.

Sporadic attacks have been particularly rife on the Bolgatanga-Walewale-Tamale highway, which security sources have linked to the ongoing Bawku chieftaincy conflict.

One of the bloodiest days of the conflict came in September 2021 when nine people were killed and 17 others injured in Pusiga.

A report by the West African Network for Peace Building also showed that 23 people were killed in the space of 11 days. A pregnant woman and a two-year-old child were among the casualties.

In February, four people, including a baby, were brutally murdered when a bus travelling from Widana to Kumasi was intercepted by gunmen and set on fire. A few days later, three more people in Gumyoko were killed by another set of gunmen.

In March, a Level 400 student of the Gambaga College of Education was also shot dead. Before that, a drive-by shooting led to two deaths at Atuba, near Binduri. Similarly, a soldier was shot dead by gunmen near one of the buffer zones set up to control the ongoing conflict in Bawku.

Even worse, the conflict seems to have been extended down south to other regions, with the Kusasi Chief of the Ashanti Region and one other individual being recently gunned down by unidentified assailants riding motorbikes at Asawase.

Some gunmen also invaded the Nalerigu Senior High School and killed two students as part of the excesses of the conflict. In retaliation, a separate group of gunmen stormed the Bawku Senior High School to also kill a student there.

The attackers are said to have scaled the school’s wall, entered the dormitory and dragged the student out before spraying bullets into him.

Social media has also become a tool used by members of both Kusasi and Mamprusi factions to dox their targets and expose them to attacks.

Between 2022 and 2023 alone, at least three of the people who were doxxed on Facebook had targets put on their backs and were subsequently murdered.

Mustapha Ramadan, who is the goalkeeper and captain of Bawku Royals FC, says he personally knows over 70 people who have been killed in the conflict, including his brother, uncle and grandfather.

“Many lives have been taken. Some were burned to ashes, others were also killed unexpectedly. Whatever you’ve been hearing about Bawku is not a rumour or misinformation, they are facts,” says Ramadan.

Within my own family, I’ve lost so many people. I’ve lost a brother, uncle, grandfather and an auntie in this conflict. Recently, I was compiling a list of people I know who have lost their lives due to the conflict and I counted about 76 people. These are only people that I know personally.

The brutal murders and insecurity in Bawku have caused several athletes in the town to quit sports entirely.

“When you grow up in Bawku, there’s a perception that playing football here is useless, because your career won't progress,” Ramadan adds.

Sometimes you’ll see a very talented footballer coming up and then he’ll just retire along the way without reaching his full potential and become a wasted talent.

Also, because of the conflict, the feuding factions are reluctant to help individuals they consider to come from a rival tribe, irrespective of how talented that individual is.

Issahaku Abdullah Babangida, a former player of Bolga All Stars and the current head coach of Bawku Royals FC, says it’s hard convincing parents to release their kids to join the club due to the insecurity in the town.

Babangida cannot forget about a missed opportunity for one of his players, who was close to securing a move to a club in Ghana’s Division Three League, having already gone for trials, but the conflict scuppered the move. The club’s activities, especially when it comes to playing matches, are also only now possible with police escort.

“Although the conflict is still happening and buses are being attacked on the road, we move with Police escort,” Babangida reveals.

But currently, we’re struggling a lot. We’re even unable to register our club to play in the Division Three League due to the conflict.

What is currently happening in Bawku is a far cry from what a stable community should be. But the town has seen better days, and those who witnessed it, like Iddrisu Kassim, even if provisionally, would do anything to have those peaceful days back.

“Bawku used to be a business-centred town,” journalist Kassim harks back.

The youth of the community were always busy engaging in businesses. Everything was beautiful and businesses were moving on smoothly. Bawku was one of the most lovely towns in Ghana.

While previous attempts to end the conflict between the Kusasis and Mamprusis have failed, the worst part is that the insecurity in the area has opened Ghana to terrorist threats. Ghana shares a border with Burkina Faso, whose military is locked in a battle with jihadist groups.

There have already been attacks by insurgents on the borders of West African neighbours Benin, Ivory Coast and Togo, amidst fears that jihadist groups are expanding and could infiltrate communities destabilised by conflict.

Exactly a week after President John Mahama was sworn in, he made a visit to the Bawku and Nalerigu to try to broker peace between the two warring tribes.

There was a bit of calm after the ceasefire conversation between the President and the Chiefs of Bawku and Mamprugu, but the biggest worry was always that nobody could tell when or where the next attack was going to come from based on the volatility of the situation. And indeed, it was only a matter of time before the conflict erupted again and the killing spree continued.

Amos, for instance, is counting on peace returning to Bawku in order to get back to doing what he loves - running. The young athlete still has dreams of competing at the Olympics one day.

“As an athlete, your dream is to be seen running incredible times and breaking records,” says Amos, who shares a wry smile while picturing himself in such a situation.

My dream is to one day compete in the international marathons like the Berlin Marathon and London Marathon and so many of the international events, especially the Olympics.

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Kabiru Kassim also hopes the feuding parties will find common ground soon to give the next generation a shot at chasing their dreams.

“If there’s anyone in Bawku who knows the value of peace, it is us,” Kabiru, who manages Bawku Unity Stars, makes a passionate appeal.

We’ve all seen the consequences of this conflict. The gun is never the solution. We should find a way of resolving the situation and not resort to violence.

Violence is never the way. We must consider the young ones too. There’s a saying in English that when two elephants fight, it’s the ground that suffers. In fact, the young ones in Bawku are suffering and we need to consider their future.