A retired Police officer has blamed the recent spate of insecurity in the country on the recruitment of unqualified persons into the Ghana Police Service.

Speaking on the AM Show, Wednesday, Peter Lanchene Toobu, intimated that recruitment of police personnel has become political with some top government officials using the Police Service as a dumping ground for unqualified party faithful.

He said the difficulties in curbing the menace of armed robbery results from ill-prepared police officials being made to deal with security challenges facing the country.

"If you need your country to progress to the best level, put your best brains in there and let them do that job honestly. I am saying it as a fact, we have taken security for granted, it has become a dumping ground, people that can’t get jobs because of incompetence, they can become Police Officers. It is the trend that is, unfortunately, graduating into bizarre levels from 1992 when we started this 4th republic."

Mr Toobu, who is also the MP for Wa West made these comments in reaction to the recent surge in daylight robberies in Ghana. This includes a robbery incident involving a bullion van at Adedenkpo, a suburb of James Town in Accra on Monday, June 14, which left a police officer and a hawker dead.

Earlier on Wednesday, June 9, a man was shot in the stomach by two armed men during a daylight robbery . He was pronounced dead 24 hours after being treated at the 37 Military Hospital.

Apart from that, two armed men on the same day, broke into a forex bureau near Honeysuckle in Osu. They stormed the place near the Police Headquarters in Accra, and made away with an undisclosed amount of money.

As the country struggles to find answers to the cause of insecurity and the surge in robbery cases, Mr Lanchene Toobu was emphatic on the need for government to put a stop to politicisation in the recruitment of security personnel.

He noted that aside endangering the lives of the citizenry, the country risks remaining underdeveloped.

"We have to stop it and we have to speak out and let people understand that listen, this is not the way to go. Because without security, we cannot have development and when our security is so poor that the officers themselves are not of the quality that we need, when they go out there, their performance will disgrace us."

"If you are not supposed to wear the police uniform and you go in there because of protocol, one, either you die on the job or you kill people recklessly. Policing is a calling," he added.

Mr Toobu further added that in order to curb the recent menace, "it is time for us to sit up as a country and move away from the level of hypocrisy. What is right is right and what is wrong is wrong.   

"The James town incident was not an incident in isolation, these things have been happening since 2016 and all of us are in this country, when it happens the reaction is the same, you see all kinds of big people rushing to the scene, visiting the families and doing what is culturally acceptable and after a week or two, the story dies down," he bemoaned