Residents of Jirapa and other areas in the Upper West Region are urging the police to accelerate investigations into the killing of Eric Johnson, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Royal Cosy Hill Hotel, widely known as Jirapa Dubai.

The assassination of Eric Johnson, a local of Jirapa, has deeply affected the Upper West Region, leaving the community in shock and distress.

Businessmen and women in the region, expressing their dismay, labeled the incident as barbaric, especially following previous similar occurrences in the area. Hissein Yakubu, a businessman, expressed his anguish, noting that Johnson's death, occurring around the same time as his wife's passing, compounded his grief.

Sariatu Nuhu described the loss as profoundly saddening, while Bismark Osei-Owusu lamented the untimely demise of a prominent investor, likening it to a nightmare.

Philanthropist

The late Johnson was an entrepreneur and philanthropist, who awarded scholarships to several students at all levels of education and sponsored many public interest programmes.

He was found dead on the morning of Sunday, February 11, 2024, stabbed multiple times to death inside a room in his private Villa on the hotel premises.

A ladder was found leaning on the outside of the wall of the hotel on the morning Johnson was found dead.

His private vehicle was supposedly taken away by the assassin.

The Royal Cosy Hill Hotel, which he founded, has a four-acre zoo attached, an Olympic-size swimming pool, and a drinking water factory which employs about 300 youth, mostly recruited from the locality.

Since the incident, however, operations at the hotel have come to a standstill following the arrest of the Manager, a German-trained engineer, as one of the suspects.

Seven persons, all staff of the hotel, are assisting police investigations into the matter.

One other resident, Juliet Bayor, said she was now living in fear because with the killing of the CEO in his bedroom, within the hotel with all the security arrangements in place, nobody in the community was safe.

She said she could vouch that the hotel founder would not hurt anyone, adding, however, that “that did not save him”.

Natives

In other unravelled cases involving natives of Jirapa, Richard Badombie, a lawyer and Assembly Member of the Jirapa Municipal Assembly was killed by some assassins, who blocked the road for a purported road check, near Nuoyiri around Banda Nkwanta in the Savannah Region, on May 28, 2022.

In his attempts to car open the door for them to check, they shot him dead when he opened his car for them to check and fled into the bush without taking anything from the vehicle.

Then on October 11, 2021, an assassination attempt was made on the Presiding Member of the Jirapa Municipal Assembly, Ebenezer Ayemah, at Jirapa, but he escaped.