This article is probably going to fall into a vacuum. It is probably going to fall on sand so dry and patched that no amount of water poured on it is going to have effect. But I am still going to try.
It must be acknowledged that one of the most effectively resourced organizations in Ghana at present, is the Ghana Police Service. Conditions in that organization are far from ideal, admittedly. But the same situation and worse, exist in other state-controlled organizations. The Service however has it better. It has stations and presence in every region, district, town and most villages in Ghana.
That cannot be said for most state organizations.
The width and breadth of the Service, as well as the resources available to it, make it a formidable tool. In terms of manpower, it may (with the possible exception of teachers) be the single biggest organization in Ghana.
The Service was set up primarily to promote law and order. In that, it serves a good purpose, since Ghana can be described as a lawful country. Ghanaians are generally pacifist, which may be responsible for the large degree of peace and safety we all enjoy.
However, many things happen in Ghana which leads one to the view that were Ghanaians to be less pacifistic by nature, things would have gone haywire many, many years ago.
Some of the things that one can describe as extremely provocative, are some things like what we witnessed at Ablekuma North on Friday. It seems that some people have decided that they can intimidate and scare Ghanaians into docility by exhibiting extreme violence and intimidation.
I was appalled, in the extreme, when I came upon some of the videos from Ablekuma North. Obviously, the people who went there were orchestrated by an unseen hand.
I have been told that an official of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) has boasted that events during the upcoming by-election at Akwatia would be worse. Remember, even before Ablekuma North, elections at Akwatia has always been marred by violence.
Before Ablekuma North, Ghana had been witness to such incidents of electoral violence on many occasions in the past. The last such incident was at Ayawaso.
I particularly recall when I was threatened at Kantamanto with a matchet in a similar incident in the past.
My beef with the Ghana Police Service today, is that in times past, it had conveniently failed to identify and prosecute perpetrators engaged in similar acts. This woeful failure is hard to understand, because the police generally, as much as possible, have cameras covering such elections. Again, due to the plethora of media, there is abundant video evidence of many of these acts of vandalism and assault. One would have thought that by using these material and videos, it would be possible for the police to identify the perpetrators of these acts of violence, hound them down, and prosecute them.
I struggle to recall such a prosecution arising out of the countless examples of electoral violence in Ghana. I can be corrected, but this does not create a favourable reputation for the Ghana Police Service.
More often than not, it has been suggested that the people responsible for these acts of violence are people linked to the ruling party of the day. Which leads to the surmise that the police are wary to conduct investigations with consequent prosecutions because they fear the powers that be.
This means that instead of doing the job, the police are busy looking over their shoulders at the person who controls their avenues of promotion and progression. This of course, lets off the criminals, who are developing greater levels of impunity.
I say that the Ghana Police Service has duty to make itself relevant. Otherwise, organizations with interests would find that the only way for their survival and viability, would be to set up their own corps of thugs to deploy when the need calls for same.
And if that happens, it would be the case that in the near future, we would one day witness acts of such violence that would cause all of us to raise our collective hands in horror.
A stitch in time saves nine.
(PERISCOPE DEPTH of Monday, 14th July, 2025. PERISCOPE DEPTH is published every Monday in the Daily Searchlight).
