Opinions of Friday, 18 November 2016

Columnist: dailyguideafrica

Admission of homicide

Alhaji Collins Dauda, Minister who Alhaji Collins Dauda, Minister who

Alhaji Collins Dauda, Minister who’s brother claims he has killed many people

The airwaves provide the best means of determining Ghana’s level of degeneration. Last week provided one such instance: it was so bad that those who heard the sabre-rattling by a political activist as he boasted of the many persons he has killed could not avoid being melancholic.

It is no longer inappropriate and criminal, it would seem, to threaten to kill and to boast of killing many persons under the circumstances. Unless the police take action on the voice which most Ghanaians heard last week, their image would suffer a further downward spiral.

The man who insulted the justice administration system and those responsible for enforcing the law, as it were, did not miss a night away from his home. In other words, nobody invited him from any police station to assist investigation into his boastful killing sprees.

There are certainly many unsolved murder cases in the Brong-Ahafo Region, especially in the Asutifi South Constituency, where Naaba Abdulai is the local champion straddling the place with impunity. After all, his brother is a minister in a government which sees nothing wrong with impunity. That is why Naaba is able to do what he claims he does in his part of the region without regard for the law.

By such remarks, the Brong-Ahafo police have been rendered useless and the administration of law enforcement at the headquarters level humiliated beyond compare. That is the sickening situation report of law enforcement in the country today.

Given the fact that under the current dispensation Naaba would continue to control what he surveys in Asutifi South, how he wants to, we can only express concern about the state of the country today and keep hope alive so that we do not break down.

It is amazing, however, that in the face of the glaring degenerative state of our law enforcement system and governance, we are being told to believe that all is well. We dispute the president’s position that his tenure is incomparable in terms of quality governance. A tenure in which selective justice rules is not an attribute of good governance; we can bet without a shred of doubt.

The appalling state of law enforcement or its docility is a result of bad governance. Unless governance is improved through a replacement or a total overhaul, the situation can only get worse. That is an incontestable fact we would defend any day.

There is a reason police officers would overlook breaches of the law by persons presenting themselves as activists of the ruling party: a very smelly reality under the current political dispensation.

We wish the Police Administration would issue a statement on the claim by Naaba Abdulai of being a serial killer alongside others because it is as scary as it is irresponsible, even if it is hot air as some would want to describe it.

This is not a claim which should be written off. Silence on the part of the police is not an option. It only denotes irresponsibility or suggests acquiescence.

As for the president, he might not condemn it because he hardly hears such stuff.