WHEN THE late Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah became the first president of Ghana, he went to the United Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) to confer with his fellow Head of State.
The Osagyefo wanted to strengthen the security of his country and wanted advice from his Soviet counterpart. As a socialist, he knew the only country that could help him was the architects of communism.
He had read extensively about the Komiter Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security), known worldwide by three letters: KGB.
Dr. Nkrumah knew the KGB oversees an intricate network of espionage and information-gathering operations that further the political objectives of the Communist Party.
In fact, the Osagyefo also knew of the KGB's awesome power and a well-earned reputation for ruthlessness and brutality.
As a new face in the communist world, Dr. Nkrumah could not have gone to any other country but the USSR for advice. Those were the days of Cold War, and counter intelligence was very important.
When he returned home, he quickly met with his cabinet and thereafter the Special Branch of the Ghana Police Service was formed.
A few years later, the Osagyefo visited China and returned to form the Young Pioneer Movement. The two groups complemented each other's job as counter intelligence agents of the Convention Peoples Party (CPP).
Whiles the Young Pioneers spied on their parents and fellow Ghanaians and reported back to their comrades, the SB was on the prowl against perceived enemies of Dr. Nkrumah. Before Ghanaians could blink an eye, several politicians were marched to the Nsawam Prison. Many perished there whiles others went blind.
When Nkrumah was overthrown and the Nsawam Prison was opened, Ghanaians wept as weak and sick men and women staggered home after serving several years in that dungeon.
The SB continued to do their work without any interference from any government. The difference was that successive governments retrained them to suit the modern trend of intelligence gathering.
When Rawlings launched his second coup in 1981, hundreds in the SB were killed simply because they were spying on Kojo Tsikata and Rawlings.
The outfit was hurriedly disbanded and many of them had to run away to save their lives. That was the beginning of the formation of the Bureau of National Investigation (BNI).
During the revolutionary days, the BNI graduated from their role as national investigators to become the Bureau of National Inquisition.
Supported by vengeful soldiers, these undercover agents of the revolutionaries left no stone unturned as they sniffed every nook and cranny to satisfy the one and only supremo of the wish-to-be-forgotten revolution.
One mistake ex-president Kufuor did was that he did not remake the BNI. He might have thought as the president of the whole nation, people should be allowed to do their jobs without any interference. Not a single agent was dismissed or redeployed.
He allowed them to do their work as Ghanaians, and when the party lost power these people started to show their true colors.
They began with the seizure of cars, passports and unnecessary arrests of perceived wrongdoers. Today's BNI has the hunting licenses to go anywhere in the system.
We seem to be revisiting the revolutionary days when these guys took the laws into their hands and held the good people of this country at ransom.
Nearly three decades after its establishment, I was expecting the BNI to learn lessons from the way other state security agents like Israel's ha-mossad le modiin ule-tafkidim Meyuhadim or Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks, simply called MOSSAD, America's Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agencies (CIA), and the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), colloquially known as MI5 and MI6 operate. Guys in these outfits do not bother themselves with the mere seizure of cars and passports.
They leave that to the ordinary police to do, and rather concentrate on intricate networks of espionage and information gathering operations that further the collective objectives of their countries, not their parties.
Much modern intelligence work is concerned not with military plans or industrial blueprints, but with internal state security and for that matter the security of the citizens as they go about their duties.
Take the issue of armed robbery for example, what is the BNI doing to help the police nip the menace in the bud instead of shooting to kill?
The BNI guys were in this country when the Kufuor administration brought in the FBI to help solve the problem of the serial killing of our women in the national capital, and I want to believe they worked with the FBI.
The time has come for us to spend some money and dispatch them abroad to be trained in how to zero in on targets and arrest before the offence is committed. A good intelligence agent is one who possesses perfect anonymity as a spy.
In fact, a good agent builds a career on being a nonentity, the man you can't know. In the intelligence world, power lies with the man who is a mystery to all but himself. In the espionage world, it is called impenetrability.
Chroniclers of the shadowy world of espionage will tell you that only a fool will try to penetrate the MOSSAD.
Do we see these things in our BNI operatives? The answer is a big NO. They are commonly sighted in the areas they operate and as such the anonymity of a master spy is lost entirely.
Some of them do not hesitate to proudly introduce themselves to people as BNI operatives. The problems we are having in Bawku, Guipe and Yendi could have been solved long ago if the BNI had been smart enough.
The government must send a lot of them to these areas to sniff for any information that may lead to the arrest of troublemakers before they cause the trouble, instead of using them to harass perceived political enemies.
Look at what happened at Guipe when the Veep went there to commission a sheabutter factory! I wondered why the BNI could not fathom the security situation before the gentleman arrived, only to meet the exchange of gun shots.
If they had been smarter, they could have even nipped the trouble in the bud or briefed the Veep on the situation on the ground before his arrival in the town.
No wonder US President Obama and his convoy had to drive off from the Kotoka International Airport when he paid us a visit, leaving Egya Atta and his ministers stranded. The FBI feared for the security of their president because of the infantile security arrangement at the airport and whisked him away in the BEAST, leaving Mills and his ministers to mill around Air Force One and daring them to beat the BEAST with their landcruisers if they could!!! Who say man no dey?
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