Growing vigilantism is one of the biggest challenges confronting the security of Ghana, Albert Kan Dapaah, the minister in-charge of National Security has admitted.
Appearing before a three member commission of enquiry looking into the Ayawaso West Wougon electoral violence, Mr. Kan Dapaah said vigilantism is one greatest threat to Ghana’s democracy and everything must be done to foil it.
Kan Dapaah said the police have been given firm instruction to deal firmly with any of such groups saying “if crime is not punished, other also get away with it.”
The national security Minister also said what happened at Ayawaso is not a prelude to what is expected in election 2010.
, Bryan Achempong, a minister of state in-charge of National security who has been at the centre of the Ayawaso incidence for deploying masked men wielding arms on that day appeared as a witnessed. This was part of the engagement between Bryan Acheampong and the Commission of Inquiry.
Earlier the Minister of the Interior Minister, Ambrose Dery, who gave a testimony before the three-member Commission said the briefing he received from the Inspector General of Police indicated that the masked men were from an outfit of the National Security.
He also said a vehicle that was used by the team with a police logo, did not belong to the police. The confrontation that ensued between the operatives and the men in the house resulted in gunshots. Six persons were hospitalized with various degrees of injuries, with one seriously in the leg.
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, who asked the IGP to expedite action on the investigations into the matter, subsequently, set up the Commission, chaired by Justice Emile Short, a former Commissioner CHRAJ.
Professor Henrietta Mensa-Bonsu, an eminent professor in Criminal Law and former IGP Patrick Kwarteng Acheampong,, are the other members, with Dr Ernest Kofi Abotsi, a private legal practitioner, and former Dean of the GIMPA Law School, as the Secretary.
Parliament has cautioned Ghanaians to guard against irresponsible public utterances on radio which has the tendency to derail the country’s democratic gains.
According to the legislators, the public should rather use radio platforms to encourage healthy dialogue and create tolerance to build a monument of peace in the various spheres.
