BNI’s Warped Verdict

The Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) is without doubt Ghana's security fault-line under the current political dispensation: its negative headlines unmatched and despised.

The name evokes memories of Hitler's Gestapo and all that constitute arbitrariness and illogicalities, with its recent verdict on the young men who have promised to unleash a reign of terror on Supreme Court judges standing as a classic case in point.

The story of how its operatives, acting upon orders from above in opposition to a court order, whisked the three South Africans away shows its disregard for the rule of law.

A security outfit, one-time Special Branch of the Ghana Police Service, unable to act within a democratic and civilized setting is most disappointing and appalling.

When critical state institutions are treated as though they are appendages of the ruling party, the outcome is what we are witnessing in the BNI with professionalism giving way to amateurism.

The verdict passed by the agency on the garrulous and irresponsible political operatives who threatened brimstone and hellfire on the Supreme Court judges, has earned for it a national opprobrium.

In any case it is not for the BNI to tell Ghanaians whether or not the persons who would appear before the Supreme Court tomorrow are capable of carrying out their threats of rape, mass murder and what have you.

Such bogus reports of so-called investigations spurred by political considerations do not inure to the confidence the people of this country have in this security agency.

We have no doubt in the caliber of personalities manning the BNI but whatever quality they possess, they have been dispossessed of this attribute by the interference of politicians at the helm more so when the leadership of the agency is ready to do the bidding of the politicians. The image of the agency is not an issue to them.

No country worth its salt would turn a blind eye to this nonsense on the airwaves. In Ghana under the current political dispensation, it is not an issue when the origin of an inappropriate language belongs to the NDC, a similarity shared by the BNI.

The verdict of the BNI is tendentious, seeking to pour cold water over what, by all standards, is a very serious breach against the Republic of Ghana and its constitution.

Blimey! The membership of a political party is incited on radio to take the law into its hands and the Chief Justice is threatened with an action which is not only immorally and inappropriate but an affront to her dignity as a person and the BNI wants us to brush it under the carpet? “The young men neither have the capacity to carry out the threats nor are they anywhere near doing it,” are reasons behind the verdict of the BNI report: what an effort by an agency which is now being used against the people of Ghana but not to protect them and the state.