Two debate teams have viewed the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) through two different lenses - an exalted lens of state protector and a downgrading view that the security apparatus has been reduced to chasing after debtors.
Joy FM Thought Leadership served a debate to the three lawyers and a security expert. The Motion: ‘ THE BNI IS AN OUTLAW ORGANIZATION AND SHOULD BE SCRAPPED’ .
In the ‘Crucify-Him’ corner was a lawyer and former deputy Interior minister Capt Rtd Nkrabea Effah Darteh and a special weapon that proved decisive in rebuttals, Mr. Hassan Tampuli.
If they had their way, the BNI ought to be scrapped.
But not on the life of the two opposing debaters in the ‘let-him-live’ corner. Head of the Department of Research at the Kofi Annan Peace Keeping Training Centre Dr. Kwesi Aning and a law lecturer at Wisconsin University College, Osei Bonsu Dickson.
The audience’s attention and awe were up for grabs and they signaled it with a lively round of applause to open the debate.
Nkrabea Effah Darteh, politician, lawyer, soldier
Possibly the only debater with the most frequent brushes with the BNI, Nkrabea Effah Darteh, politician, lawyer, soldier argued that a state institution is an outlaw organisation because it is capricious and arbitrary in the use of its powers.
A BNI that is impervious to court orders no longer deserves a legally-backed existence.
He pointed out the anti-Human Rights culture at the BNI.
Nkrabea Effah Darteh said lawyers suffer extreme frustration when trying to see his client tucked away into dark emptiness.
He made an appeal to the moderator who is also a lawyer, Prof. Ken Attafuah.
‘Prof. Attafuah you are a criminal lawyer like me. I can guarantee it is very painful to go to see your client at the BNI’.
“It is terrible, it is terrible...I say this with emotion’
“Suspects are not convicted prisoners”, he reminded the audience. For a suspect who has not been proven guilty, subjecting him to harassing treatment and deprivation, reveals an unruly and ugly underside of a civilized society.
If the BNI was focusing on its important task of national security, the provocative comments of former Transport minister Dzifa Attivor ought to have been magnetic in catching their attention.
It did not.
If BNI cannot hear the sound of conflict inherent in the comments, it has lost it sense of existence, Effah Darty condemned.
He is worried about the BNI’s love for fear tactics, its intimidating long walls and dark cells akin to a maximum security prison and poor apathetic response to any inquiry.
“Nobody will answer any question of yours”, when you go there to see a client, Nkrabea Effah Darteh fumed.
“Even where to park your car is a problem,” he threw in an opportunity to laugh.
Against the motion, Dr. Kwesi Aning
Dr. Kwesi Aning suggested that an attack on the BNI is an attack on a person’s own good night’s sleep because the careless snores, deep sleep and good dreams are as a result of the hardwork of the BNI.
The third leg of Ghana’s intelligence unit is the reason why Ghana has also not been overwhelmed by a worldwide drug trafficking industry valued at $58 billion.
Mind you drug lords have overthrown states, he painted a picture of what might be without the BNI. Even Ghana’s middle-income status has been partly preserved because Ghana is not a transit point for drugs. If drugs came in, it would destroy the economy.
But if there is any time to ban the BNI, this is a bad and terrible time. There are terror threats lurking around the sub-region. Only Boko Haram would applaud the dismantling of a security agency at a time such as this.
The BNI has helped provide Ghanaians “ freedom from want and freedom from fear”.
In a jab to Nkrabea Effah Darteh, the security expert said that Ghanaians who go to the embassies for visas, surrender their mobile phones at the point of entry. Some embassies have walls higher than the BNI.
Nobody has asked embassies to be outlawed.
Supporting speakers: Hassan Tampuli vs Osei Bonsu Dickson
Lawyer Hassan Tampuli
The BNI has a debt-collecting tag was popularized on the night by the second card of the team asking for the dismantling of the BNI - lawyer Hassan Tampuli.
Providing national security is good and so is the other function of gathering economic intelligence.
But the Achilles heel of the BNI is the function described as ‘any other duties’.
This omnibus provision is responsible for some of the disgrace the BNI attracts. The provision has been so abused that BNI officers have proved better and more efficient in debt collection.
Debt collection assignments, he said, is an example of an intelligence-gathering organization that is “majoring on the minors and minoring on the majors”.
The BNI was badly exposed in 2001 after a bitter chieftancy conflict plunged Dagbon into war. A paramount chief was killed in broad daylight.
Where was the intelligence-gathering BNI? Gathering fish?, his soundbite rippled the quiet audience.
True, grand security threats exist, but the BNI has been reduced to chasing and tracking down petty thieves.
The rate at which BNI loses court cases is a sign that the organization has outlawed itself by its chronic inability to love the law and stay within it.
Parliament has oversight responsibility over the security apparatus. But recently a BNI operative exercised ‘oversight responsibility’ over an MP, harassing him at the instructions of another MP in government, he alleged.
This is how far the BNI has grown beyond the law and “made it impossible for the law to apply to it.
“Rascality! How on earth can a BNI officer set upon an MP?” the lawyer allowed some emotion and watched his point sink in.
As Dr. Kwesi Aning went after the retired soldier’s criticism of the BNI as seizing phones and building high walls, lawyer Hassan Tampuli went after Aning’s response that the embassy also seizes mobile phones at entry.
The lawyer reminded the security expert that people enter the embassy’s offices voluntarily. Nobody volunteers to enter BNI cells.
His attack on Dr. Aning’s argument was not finished.
The lawyer said that if the BNI is busting drug traffickers, then another body Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) ought to be disbanded. It is either BNI or NACOB, not both.
The BNI is putting its fingers in too many pies, he suggested. It is time to chop off the hand that holds the fingers.
Osei Bonsu Dickson ties it up
Supporting speaker against the motion, Osei Bonsu Dickson said the monstrous picture painted by Dr. Aning and Tampuli was because there is an opening in the law that is been exploited to shame the BNI.
The Security and Intelligence Agencies Act (Act 526) 1996 which set up the BNI has not been amended or reviewed for 20 years, he drew attention.
'We are throwing away the baby with the bath water' if the law creating the BNI is left unreviewed.
He then proceeded to spread BNI blunders around. The Police CEPs also break the law. Should we disband them too?
When lawyer Tampuli got his chance moments later, he reminded his colleague that if these agencies are lawless, then disbanding one lawless of the lot is a good start.
“If we take out the BNI it is one trouble less” he said.
Listen to entire debate
Story by Ghana|myjoyonline.com|[email protected]
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