I have said this before in a previous column a while back, that the key operatives of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) needed to stop behaving languidly like a bunch of pregnant women in their advanced stages of labor and prepare to battle it out, square-inch-for-square-inch with the Talensi Terrorists otherwise known as the Azorka Boys of the National Democratic Congress (NDC). At long last, it appears as if common sense and fair play are beginning to reign in the Akufo-Addo camp.

I am, however, quite a bit disappointed that the three retired South African police officers, allegedly picked up by agents from the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI), formerly the Special Branch of the Ghana Police Service (GPS), were only in the process of training some diddly 15 (fifteen) NPP operatives for crowd control and the protection of the 2016 presidential candidate of the party (See “We’re Training Party Security Not Mercenaries – NPP” Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 3/22/16).

I really don’t see any problem here, because the leaders of the New Patriotic Party reserve the inalienable right to the provision of trustworthy security detail, which our currently highly politicized Ghana Police Service cannot be wisely counted upon to provide. Besides, as Mr. Perry Okudzeto indicated the other day, the three retired South African police officers have been duly licensed and/or registered to ply their trade of training security guards and crowd control party agents in Ghana. In other words, Major Ahmed Shaik Hazis, Warrant Officer Denver Dwayhe Naidu and Captain Mlungiseleli were in the country legally.

As of this writing, the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress has yet to explain to the nation at large how it came about that a Mercedes Benz truck was able to cross Ghana’s southeastern border with Togo, at Aflao, innumerable times with an estimated cache of some 100,000 (one-hundred-thousand) clips of munitions or bullets without the accompanying necessary guns or pistols to shoot these bullets. Who has the guns and where are they stashed up? To-date, no government official, notably either the Minister of the Interior or Defense, has explained to the nation what Ghanaians ought to make out of this massive and illegal importation of bullets whose origin of shipment remains a mystery.

Put another way, the leaders and supporters, and sympathizers, of the New Patriotic Party have reasonable cause to worry about their safety and security within the country. Personally, though, I feel more self-defense training experts ought to have been flown in from South Africa to train at least 15,000 NPP supporters and activists to man many of the polling stations around the country so as to ensure that, in the words of Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, the General-Secretary of the National Democratic Congress, Nana Akufo-Addo and at least a full-half of the Ghanaian electorate are not taken for a ride come Election 2016. We also vividly remember President John Dramani Mahama planting hundreds of soldiers from the Ghana Armed Forces in the Akufo-Addo stronghold of the Eastern Region, in the lead-up to Election 2012, to clearly intimidate voters in the region. Mr. Mahama’s divisive policy agenda for the region has also been quite clear for even the most optically blighted to witness the same.

The South African connection is also quite interesting if only because it was from the erstwhile Apartheid South Africa that President Nkrumah was widely known to have imported Nazi-trained toxicologists and other Eastern-European torture specialists to “generously” afford “special treatment” to the most ardent opponents of the Convention People’s Party, notable among them Dr. J. B. Danquah. In essence, it is quite refreshing to learn that a Captain Koda, described as Nana Akufo-Addo’s head of security, should fly in some South African security experts to wisely and constructively prepare the country’s most significant opposition leader and his supporters and sympathizers to level up the electoral playing field.

The NPP leaders ought to signal their Indemnity-Clause protected bloody opponents, in no uncertain terms, that they mean business. As long as these South African security experts operate in the country above board or legally, there ought to absolutely be no cause for alarm. Boosting the private security cordon around the most prominent New Patriotic Party leaders would definitely not compromise or jeopardize our greater national security system or apparatus. To be certain, it would actually enhance the general security climate in the country.

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