Government Must Be Held Accountable Over Security Promises

Security Analyst, Emmanuel Sowatey, has called on the media and civil society organizations to hold President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and his government to account on their commitments towards improving security in the country.

President Akufo-Addo said at the 61^st Independence parade that his government would, among other things, resource the Police Service to deal with the recent increase in robbery-related cases across the country.

Speaking to Citi News, Mr Sowatey charged the media, CSOs and the general Ghanaian public to ensure that the pronouncements made by the President and the country’s security heads would be firmly implemented.

“It is up to individuals, media and civil society to hold him accountable for what he has said. At least we can have some measure, some key performance indicators to measure him by, one of which would be the psychological sense and insecure nature of the country,” he said.

He also noted that the president mentioned a number of things that would be done to improve the operations of the security agencies in the country and called on Ghanaians to be alert and monitor all these promises from the government.

“He talked about increasing logistics, he talked about recruitments and there are two more issues he said. Those are issues that can be measured to some extent, we know the threshold or the baseline now; the number of police personnel, the number of vehicles. We will check the number of more people who will be added in term of recruitments, and what thing about recruitment is that it has to be very transparent,” he said.

‘Committed to security’
In the light of the increasing spate of armed robbery cases in the country, President Nana Addo declared his resolve to ensure that Ghanaians are safe in the daily discharge of their duties.

Speaking at the 61st Independence Day celebration held at the Black Star Square, the President said: “As your President, this is an obligation I accept and I am determined to discharge faithfully. I will work to ensure that citizens are able to go about their daily duties in the confidence that they are safe.”

The President's comments come in the wake of a heightened wave of robbery attacks with the recent one involving a Lebanese who was shot and killed at Tema Industrial Area last week with the assailants making away with GHC 200,000 he had withdrawn from the bank.

A number of other incidents have also involved brazen attacks by robbers on individuals and organisations in broad daylight.

Describing these attacks as “totally unacceptable”, the President warned that “no miscreant will have the space to terrorize citizens and generate a sense of insecurity” in the country.

The Interior Minister Ambrose Dery earlier said is in the process of procuring logistics such as helicopters, drones and vehicles for the Police Service.

“We have focused to fight crime, it has never been so. In the past it has been a general approach to crime and being reactive…the law has provided that in terms of security matters, you can have sole sourcing, we might have to do that to quickly get things in.”

He said they will in the meantime procure “about three helicopters… and they will be stationed in Accra with the police and they will help in the backups.”