The National Tribute Desk Report

There is mounting tension between appointees of President Mahama admistration and Inspector General of the Ghana Police who was recently elevated to his current position by president John Mahama over a huge protocol enlistment list, your authoritative, The National Tribute can report .

According deepthroat sources at the police headquaters, some ministers of the government who have allegedly formed a group, presented to the IGP a tall list of persons to be considered for the police enlistment without going through the vigirous processes associated with the normal recruitment exercise.

The sources told this paper exclusively that, the IGP flatly refused to honour most of the persons in the list which had come from almost all the ten regions of the country. Some of the applicants on the list were without any educational qualifications. This, according the sources has angered the ministers and other government appointees who presented the names for consideration.

According to insiders, the list which was presented to the IGP by the government appointees is more than the total numbers of persons to be recruited into the police service this year, raising curious eyesbrows among senior officers in the service.

The IGP's rejection of most of the people on the list which, according to our investigations, had to do with issues of over aged and failure to meet requirements demanded by the service. This has triggered a bitter fight between the police chief and top members of the government with some calling for his removal.

The general criteria for short-listing eligible candidates into the police service are that one must be a Ghanaian, of NOT less than eighteen (18) years and NOT more than twenty-five (25) years of age by 1st April, 2016. The applicant one must be, at least 5 feet 8 inches (1.73 meters) tall for males, and 5 feet 4 inches (1.63 meters) for females and must be physically fit.

The applicant must be of good character without any criminal records, he/she must posses a minimum academic qualification of six (6) credits (A1 to C6) at WASSCE including English Language and Mathematics and those applicants with a D7 in Core Mathematics may be considered, only if the total aggregate is a minimum of 36 or better.

But our sources told the paper that most of the people contained in the protocol list submitted to the IGP did not meet the criteria, a reason he refused to allow them into the service.

The paper's checks at most of the police posts in the country revealed that majority of rogue police officers got into the service through protocol enlistment initiated by politicians who do it for political gains.

"Most of bad nuts in the police service are the protocol ones brought into the service by these politicians because they hardly ever go through the rigours of the recruitment process. And I think they [Police Service] should be bold enough to say 'enough is enough',", a senior officer who spoke to the paper on condition of anonymity said.

The visibly angry officer said further, "Look, dear politicians and chiefs, don't bring these guys for us to recruit because for over X-number of years, if 70 officers have committed crimes, and 40 of them were protocol people, then they have an empirical basis to engage and to say 'No, we won't recruit these people'. ..."
According to the top officer, the issue of protocol list with most of the services would not go away until the service itself is bold enough to tell those who are pushing them to recruit unqualified people through protocol lists that 'we won't do it again because the dignified men and women within the service are being disgraced because of these few bad nuts.'"

Another officer who spoke to the paper yesterday over the raging feud between government appointees and the IGP said protocol lists, over the years, have contributed to the in­creasing involve­ment of security personnel in criminal activities because such people do not go through the strict and ­adequate scrutiny during recruitment of personnel into the various security services and must be stopped.

The officer also revealed that sen­ior officers of the security services are given quotas which enable them to bring people to gain automatic entry into the services, a practice he noted, was unprofessional and must be condemned.

The officer said a greater per­centage of officers caught en­gaging in criminal activities have been found to be those recruited through the quota and the so-called protocol system. Little or no background checks were con­ducted on such recruits.

It is recalled that in the past years, a number of security personnel have been arrested for engag­ing in criminal activities such as kidnapping and robbery.

The Police Intelligence and Professional Standards (PIPS) Bureau under the Ghana Po­lice Service said 108 police officers were dismissed from the service between January 2011 and June 2013 after they were found guilty of various offences.

An additional 132 person­nel of the service were de­moted while 239 were sanctioned during the period.