By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
April 24, 2016
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

Ghana under the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) may well be fast on its way to reverting to the bad old days when Chairman Jerry John Rawlings and his so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) ruled the roost. The Mahama cabinet appointees clearly lack a sense of professionalism, otherwise we would not have the Minister of Roads and Highways presume to play the clearly and neatly defined role of the Minister of the Interior (See “BNI’s Profiling of Nana Addo’s Men in His Interest – Minister” Citifmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 4/24/16).

The decision by agents of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) to profile the personal bodyguard and photographer of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the country’s foremost opposition leader, procedurally defies common sense. The motive behind such profiling, as revealed by Alhaji Inusah Fuseini, the NDC-Member of Parliament for Tamale-Central, however, is quite reasonable and in some respects even laudable. The fact of the matter is that the BNI ought to have embarked on such a venture as a matter of principle, not ad-hoc and in the indisputably hostile manner in which it is widely alleged to have done.

For instance, the Director of the BNI, whoever s/he may be, could have dispatched a memorandum to the Speaker of Parliament, Mr. Edward Doe Adjaho, solemnly advising all Members of the House, as well as other senior staff members, to have their security detail and chauffeurs book an appointment with BNI operatives for purposes of security clearance. What we have in the cases of Akufo’s photographer and bodyguard is clear tantamount to a flagrant violation of the human and civil rights of these two Ghanaian citizens.

We are told that the two unnamed men had accompanied Capt. Edmund Koda, Head of the New Patriotic Party flagbearer’s security detail, to retrieve some unspecified items seized by BNI operatives at the time of the arrest and detention of the three retired South African police officers, who had reportedly been invited by Capt. Koda to train the party’s security personnel for crowd control and other allied activities in the lead-up to the 2016 general election. You see, in a civilized constitutional democracy of the sort being studiously and doggedly pursued by the Ghanaian citizenry, you just don’t walk into the offices of any security agency, uninvited but for quite legitimate purposes, as clearly seems to have been the case of Akufo-Addo’s photographer and bodyguard, only to be unduly and instantly subjected to the sort of interrogation or orders the two are reported to have endured.

The Roads and Highways Minister claims that the personality profiling of citizens was initiated under the Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party government. If, indeed, Mr. Fuseini believes that it was a good policy, then rather than invoking this precedent to merely defend this patent BNI violation of the civil rights of the two Akufo-Addo aides, why has the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress’ government waited until this watershed election year to attempt to put the same policy to use? Needless to say, you don’t need a college degree to fully appreciate the fact that Mr. Fuseini is just mischievously playing the notorious “equalization” game that the NDC operatives are repulsively known for.

I have said this before and hereby repeat the same, that if the Mahama government operatives were really interested in our national security, they would have long adequately funded the National Identification Card/System project, which would have made it much easier to keep track of all trouble-makers and potential trouble-makers, irrespective of ideological bent or suasion.

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