Correspondence from Eastern Region

In the wake of rising incidents of armed robberies across the country, there always exists the threat of civilians who either confront the robbers or witness the incident.

Some witnesses of robbery incidents have been killed either because they attempted intervening in such incidents by raising alarm or hit by stray bullets during the act.

For instance, a woman who raised alarm during a bullion van robbery at James Town in Accra in 2021 was shot and killed by one of the robbers in the process.

To avert repetitions of these incidents, the queen mother of Agomeda near Dodowa in the Shai Osudoku District of the Greater Accra Region has cautioned the youth of the community from venturing to confront armed robbers during their operations in the enclave.

Robbery activities on the Dodowa-Somanya portion of the Accra-Somanya road have witnessed several robbery incidents since 2012.

Some youth of the community during a recent robbery incident at Luom junction near Agomeda two weeks ago mobilized themselves to launch a reprisal attack on the gang after police failed to respond timely.

The gang masked to conceal their identities struck on the evening of Monday, 12th June, and Thursday, 15th June 2023, blocked the road with timber logs and clubs before robbing drivers and passengers travelling from Accra to Somanya and vice versa whilst shooting indiscriminately.

The robbers dressed in full military camouflage, absconded with an unspecified amount of money, mobile phones, and other personal belongings.

Though the attacks which were underway only few kilometers away were reported to the Agomeda police, the personnel failed to respond due to lack of a vehicle and other logistics.

Some youth of Agomeda therefore mobilized, armed themselves with guns and stormed the location to confront the criminals.

One of the youths who ventured to the scene in an interview with GhanaWeb at Agomeda explained that they armed themselves with locally-manufactured guns and rode in a tricycle to the scene where they parked and observed the incident from a distance.

He continued that they however avoided a direct face-off with the robbers as they (robbers) wielded more sophisticated weapons than they did.

“Some residents who own guns brought them out and we boarded an aboboyaa (tricycle). At a distance, we realized that police personnel were coming from Somanya and this scared the robbers to run away into the nearby farms.

“On our way, we heard many gunshots…they wielded more sophisticated guns than what we had,” said the youth.

But reacting to the development, Nana Dr. Korlekwor Korli-Yohi III expressed fears over the risks involved in such situations, adding that such developments impede police interventions in armed robbery situations.

“The moment people hear of an incident, whether armed robbery case, whether explosion, you see people trooping to the scene and some of these people also go there armed and according to the police these people distract them from executing their duties because when they get to the scene everybody is holding a gun [and] they’re not able to differentiate who are the armed robbers and the civilians who are trying to defend themselves so the advice is that when there’s an incident, they should allow the police to do their job,” she said.

The traditional leader also underscored the rising incidents of crime within the Agomeda community, a development she said necessitated the establishment of the Agomeda police station few years ago to address the rising spate of insecurity in the area. Unfortunately, this has not done much to address the problem.

“It is rather unfortunate that we’re witnessing this kind of security issues in the communities. Recently, we commissioned a police station and it was based on the security issues that have been reported over the years,” said the queen mother, adding that the community would continue to do its best to support the security forces.

Asked if they would heed the advice to desist from further venturing to confront armed bandits in the absence of police action, the youth answered in the affirmative but appealed to the police administration for the Agomeda police station to be adequately resourced to curb crime in the area, threatening that members of the community would be forced to embark on a demonstration if authorities failed to do this.

The youth speaking on condition of anonymity attributed the increasing spate of robberies in the enclave to the lack of streetlights, inadequate number of police personnel and lack of logistics for the police.

“They usually block the road at the Luom junction because the place is dark and there’s no network coverage…it’s not our job but that of the police, there’s a police station here and we reported the incident to them but the number of personnel is inadequate, they don’t even have a vehicle or motorbikes so they couldn’t respond and this enabled the robbers to operate for about an hour,” one of them said.

Assemblyman for the Agomeda Electoral Area and Presiding Member of the Shai Osudoku District Assembly, Mr. Noah Osabutey also registered his displeasure over the civilian interference in the robbery activities.

He urged the residents to heed the caution of the queen mother and further called on them to report any suspicious characters seen in the community to the police for the necessary action to be taken.

Meanwhile, police have mounted a checkpoint at the Luom junction to ensure security in the area.