Letter to Jomo: Will Paul shoot the bandit?

President Mills got himself a brand new Inspector General of Police: Some people had complained that former acting IGP Elizabeth Mills-Robertson looked too much of a genial, comely, goody-goody grandma to frighten the newest recruit in an armed robbery gang.

They preferred a guy with muscles like timber logs, a chest like a gas tank, a murderous glint in the eye, a cocked hand-gun all ready in its holster and a permanent scowl fierce enough to make the most daring robber quake in his boots and pee in his pants.

New IGP Paul Quaye may not exactly fit the description word for word but hey, the man will do. He looks like the very calm and collected type whose potential deadliness and ruthlessness if need be, is easily missed even by experts in the game.

From Kaneshie Market pick-pockets to nocturnal robbers, the bandits who have seized power in Ghana had better look out for this guy.

Years ago a senior lady of the Daily Graphic came distressingly close to being decapitated by a street thief at the Kaneshie Market.

The flow of motor traffic had just come to a halt close to the footbridge at the market. It was about 7.30 p.m. Suddenly, a young bandit lunged at her from the shadows as the lady sat in the front passenger seat of a car and grabbed at a gold necklace around her neck. Almost simultaneously, the flow of motor vehicles resumed.

A spontaneous and bizarre tug of war ensued, lasting only a few crazy moments but leaving the lady no less traumatised than if it had gone on for an eternity:

The car shot forward with the accelerating thrust of automotive locomotion in the direction of Odorkor while the thief hung determinedly on to the piece of jewelry around madam's delicate neck, as if his very life depended on it.

The lady lets out a shriek more in instinctive response to pain and anger than to the loss of the piece of jewelry. Before the curtain comes down on the swift drama, the thief scoots of into the crowded spaces and the good lady massages her bruised neck.

In one of those inexplicable occurrences which appear to repeat themselves in the unpredictable human circumstances the very same drama was played out at the same location recently:

A young lady journalist of the Ghana News Agency on her way home from a typical day of hectic news gathering assignments was alighting from a bus at the Knaeshie market when one of the army of thieves at the place grabbed her cell phone and vanished into the night.

She goes to the Kaneshie Police Station to make a report. Cops on duty appear to attach some entertainment value to her notion that anyone could retrieve a phone snatched at the place.

She is advised to make her way back to the market and report the snatching to two cops assigned to the crime-ridden market area.

Scandalised more by the lack of sympathy from the law than the loss of her phone, the girl begins to weep. God will always have people in little corners at opportune moments to execute His will when he intervenes in the lives of people: A fairly senior cop shows up and escorts the reporter back to the market.

The cop talks to some boys at the scene of the crime. He is led to the thief who with scant ceremony, hands back the phone. Thief, cop and victim then go their separate ways, each to live happily ever after.

The tale is only too familiar: The cops know the thieves. The thieves know the cops. In many communities people know the thieves!
Professor Mills is apparently aware that he has inherited an extremely dire internal security situation. That must explain why he returned from London recently with an international security firm in discreet tow.

The security firm is supposed to help us launch attacks on cocaine distribution and consumption, the proliferation of guns and armed robbery which are linked in a strong chain almost impossible to break:

The international community says we are an oasis of stability in a region of great turmoil. That is just like saying Ghana is now a patch of dry grass surrounded by a raging fire that keeps coming closer. I feel sorry for the nation and those who do not believe this.

No one feels safe in this country any more and it promises to get even worse. A time is coming soon when people will look at the next person in a shop, restaurant, and out-patient department of a hospital, bus, taxi cab and even church pew, with suspicion.

Some experts believe Ghana is just about to become an arena for the kind of serious crimes with the potential to destroy her completely.

We should have tackled this monster when it was still growing. Now it has outgrown itself in ferocity and seized control of this country without any power sharing agreement with the authorities.

It is scary because we are not dealing with elements capable of reasoning with society. The ruthless killers and robbers swarming about with skull-loads of coke are barely human, having been rendered emotionless and totally incapable of love, affection or pity for any human being.

Let the British and American security chaps who are coming in begin their work and let us see how they fare in the battle with this monster.

The New York Times referred to our great republic this week as “the small nation of Ghana”, which indeed we are in terms of physical geography.

The NYT thinks Obama is bypassing his father's native Kenya in favour of a visit to Ghana only because Kenya is 'still tense and unsettled.”

How very complimentary the New York Times is of Ghana, Jomo. It is useful to know what your friend and enemies say about you.
Then there are the guys in the proverbial 10-gallon hats and tail coats at the IMF who have began calling Mills's administration “a center left” government.

I thought political ideology had died with the cold war, Jomo. The West keeps confusing us don't they?

As with human affairs, so is it with geopolitics: People feel safe and secure when they can put you in a box and label the box. That way, they have nothing to worry about because they think they know what is in the box.

If you refuse to be put in any darned box and labeled, they get worried and fret: They don't know who they are dealing with! So? Solateedoo, Ghana now plays “center left” on the global political turf. Obama need not worry, we are one with him and I daresay he knows it.

NB: Too much sweat and no snooze, breaks the old boy's creaky bones, so I take a short break, Jomo.

   Comments0