The recent daylight robbery at a jewelry store in Adabraka has raised significant concerns about Ghana’s security infrastructure.

According to a member of Parliament's Defence and Interior Committee, Peter Lanchene Toobu, the incident, in which over six million cedis were stolen, reveals a failure in the country’s security responsiveness.

“What happened in Adabraka in broad daylight is an embarrassment to our whole security architecture. It is an embarrassment and a failure for us to bring our citizens to a level that they would be security conscious,” he said in an interview on JoyNews’ AM Show on Monday, November 4.

The robbery involved four armed, masked men who fired shots to disperse the crowd before looting large bags of cash from a parked Toyota Corolla.

Despite the daylight setting and public location, no immediate intervention occurred, which Mr Toobu sees as a critical lapse in police vigilance.

He criticised both the police and the business owner, stating that better security measures could have prevented the robbery.

He stressed that the event was a wake-up call, showing that citizens need to be more security-conscious and proactive.

Mr Toobu also questioned the jewelry store owner's security measures, noting that businesses handling large cash volumes should consider police escorts.

He pointed out that the Ghana Police Service could provide such services upon request, especially for high-risk businesses, adding that responsibility for personal security begins with the business owners.

"Your personal security is your responsibility, when we are talking about security on another level, people are trained and they have the expertise to grant you service, the Ghana Police is supposed to grant him with a service and that opportunity for you to be served depends on how you open up.

"Armed robbers are attracted to cash and motivated by money so when you generate money in your business, you should know that that is a magnet for robbery. If you know that, what would you do to provide security for yourself?” he asked.

Supporting this view, criminologist Dr. Jones Opoku Ware from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology advocated for increased police patrols in high-risk commercial areas like Adabraka.

He mentioned that crimes of this nature often involve insider knowledge, underlining the need for owners to minimize on-premises cash holdings to deter such robberies.

“We have said this over and again because the fact that you are operating such businesses that attract this huge sum of money would require that you don’t keep this huge sum of money with you because such crimes are almost insider jobs.”