Police at the Bolgatanga District Police Station in the Upper East Region Wednesday, December 29, 2021, arrested a blogger and student journalist, Joseph Dumolga known by the Facebook username ‘Joe Elom Dumolga-Blogger’ for publications on Facebook about an ongoing beauty pageant in the region, Miss Upper East Ghana.
The HarmattanGh.com blogger who is also a student at Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ) was said to have been charged on the same day with the offence of ‘offensive conduct conducive to the breach of the peace’ contrary to section 207 of the Criminal and Other Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29).
Section 207 provides as follows:
Any person who in any public place or at any public meeting uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with intent to provoke a breach of the peace or where-by a breach of the peace is likely to be occasioned, shall be guilty of a misdemeanour.
His arrest follows a complaint lodged by organisers of the pageant, Ayelbis Events, at the police station. The organisers said the blogger constantly targeted them in his social media posts, and in many instances described them as ‘scammers’ among other things that in their view impugn criminality on their part.
The organisers confirmed they lodged the complaint and hoped the police facilitate a dialogue with the blogger to stop his conduct which they felt could inflame passion among patrons of the beauty pageant.
According to the organisers it was not their intention to have any criminal charges pressed against the blogger as it turned out.
The blogger was later granted bail and the complaint against him subsequently withdrawn after he was made to pull down the posts and rendered an apology to the organizers of the event.
