Security Analyst wants ‘unfit and incompetent’ IGP fired

International security analyst Adam Bonaa says the Inspector General of Police (IGP), James Oppong-Boanuh, has been incompetent in fighting crime in the country.

He is asking President Akufo-Addo to fire him.

According to him, crime fighting is at its worst in the country and that the President should not delude himself into thinking it is going to go down soon if he does not change the current IGP.

Mr Bonaa challenged the President to act on his word when he charged the IGP to find the killers of the Mfantseman Member of Parliament (MP) Ekow Hayford or lose his job.

But until now Mr Oppong-Boanuh is still at post and the killers are still at large.

He said he is not surprised about the flagrant robbery in a populated neighborhood like Adedenkpo near Jamestown because until government fixes the glitches in the security apparatus, Ghana will become a country where young people can brandish weapons to commit heinous crimes.

Mr Bonaa said these in an interview with Emmanuel Samani on the New Day morning show on TV3 Tuesday, June 15.

He was speaking on the heels of the brazen attack on a bullion van by armed robbers in Adedenkpo, killing a police officer and a bystander and absconding with cash and the slain officer’s AK 47 firearm.

“From the beginning of last year and this year, we have recorded some of the very gory, dastardly crimes.

“You know one of the MPs in the Central Region was killed and the President did tell the IGP to catch him or what will happen will happen. Nothing has happened to the IGP and the killers are still out there and it is business as usual.

“What happened in the Jamestown area, that overpopulated area for me, I am not surprised because at the moment, crime fighting is at its worst. And until we fix the challenges, Ghana is becoming more or less a nation where young people can brandish firearms and do what they want to do and nobody cares.

“Let’s not joke with this thing because until we probably get two eliminations, they will never know these things are serious,” he charged.

On the question of police officers who have fallen under the spate of gun crime in the line of duty in the country, Mr Bonaa said: “I think in this year alone about three of them, one of them I remember took place in the Brong Ahafo area, I think another took place in the Ashanti Region area, several of them have lost their lives, I mean. Can you imagine that the homicide detectives who went there counted as many as 20 AK 47 shells. It means that these armed robbers are probably tacticians, these are people who knew what they were doing, they discharged as many as 20 from an AK 47. And if you know how powerful a bullet from an AK 47 can go, I mean from 50 meters it can still do a lot of damage, no wonder two people died instantly.

“And I say that until the President sees it necessary to replace the current IGP and all the police officers who they have given the mandate to be in charge of various posts should go for young ones who are waiting to climb the ladder. James Oppong-Boanuh has done his best but at the moment, under the current circumstances he is so unfit, so incompetent to tackle the current insecurity challenge we have in this country.

“And as far as I’m concerned, police officers are demoralized and we can see police officers escorting bullion vans with no helmet on, no body armour with their AK47.”

---3news.com