Recently, there is an ongoing debate about whether any of the opposition parties or only the government should have the power to provide security and protection for all Ghanaians. This fierce discourse has come into the national forefront as a result of the recent state arrest of the three South African ex-police personnel.

The trio came to Ghana at the invitation of the main opposition party NPP to help train a security detail for the party’s presidential leadership. Surprisingly, the security experts’ lawful training activities meant for their clients (NPP presidential leadership) have led to a disproportionate response from the BNI (Backward to National Inquisitions) with tacit cheerleading from the Mahama-led government.

Before digging any deep into the outlandish drama surrounding the three South Africans’ arrest and their inexplicable detention by the BNI, let’s ask some few questions at this point if we may ever get answers in the first place.

First, why does the government insist its main political rival (NPP) must be using the three former SA police officers as a front to attempt to destabilize the nation’s security? How sensibly does it serve the interest of the NPP or any of the opposition parties to create chaos and instability in the country that each party is trying to get electoral mandate to govern democratically?

On what credible basis does the BNI use to go in and arrest the imported South African security trainers? Is the BNI required to operate under the rule of law and show non-partisanship in carrying out its functions, or it is an agency that just seeks to do the biddings of the government of the day?

Clearly, there are countlessly relevant questions that can be examined here in view of the bizarre and the blatant disregard for the rule of law by the seemingly biased and unprofessional BNI. It is obvious that the agency has become an outpost for state-sanctioned vindictive inquisitions in addition to operating as a secret police arm of the ruling government that is strikingly similar tothe Soviet-era KGB tactics.

It is backward-looking thinking that in almost all African countries, including Ghana, the government in power always behaves as if it has all the answers to the problems confrontingits citizens. Hence it is not surprising that most of the governments’ operations are heavily concentrated in the Africa capitals where the presidents live.

The narrative is all too familiar: In Ghana and in the rest of Africa, the government of the day runs everything, probably with the exception of South Africa.Suffice to say,

Another disheartening political reality is that African governments have perennial misplaced priorities. This entrenched political culture leads to unequal distribution of the state’s meager resources with its attendantpoverty and underdevelopment.

The frustrations and disillusionments that build up often find various outlets and tipping points. In some cases the ordinary citizens or groupswho can affordtry to improvise to survive and also provide for their own armed security in the midst of corrupt, partisan, and dysfunctional police force and law enforcement system.The result is thatpolitical opponents and other dissenting citizens’ daily lives are always monitored and viewed with suspicious lensesby the ruling governments in Africa.

Thus, the Mahama’s government supportivereaction, as well as the BNI’s suspicious arrest and iron-fisted treatment of the three South African security expertscontracted by the NPP can be unwrapped in the preceding context.

Like all African ruling governments,the Mahama-led administration strongly ascribes to the discreditedbelief that it has the sole authority  and monopoly over all firearms, including the provision of security and protection of  all Ghanaianswhether the state resources can be sustainableenough or not. Certainly, one of the basic functions of any government is to ensure law and order and in the process protects all its citizens.

This does not mean citizens, including opposition parties, can’t hire competent trainers to train their security detail solely for the protection of the parties’ leadership and property. From all indications, the NPP leadership or Nana Akufo Addo and his campaign team have not broken any Ghanaian law; neither do that civil training conducted by the South Africans suggests that there is any underlying destabilization motive geared toward the country.

The catch here is that because of endemic corruption bedeviled ruling African governments, they tend to be scared of their own shadows. That is why every little move by political opponents takes the breath away from the current ruling class.

It is worthy to note that the past NPP government might have done or the future NPP regime may do the same thing to its political opponents given similar set of circumstances such as in the case of the three ex-South Africa police officers; but, that is entirely another legitimate case one can make in another time.

This particular conversation is not about pointing out any moral equivalence regarding what the past NPP government did to the NDC members when they were out of power.After all they say “two wrongs do not equal right.”

The emphasis here is that we can’t blame any opposition party or Nana Addo and his team for seeking first-class private security training and protection in asociety in which (again and again) the law enforcement mechanism, including the BNI, has clearly shown that it is the minion of the government of the day.

Again, in a typical Africa society like Ghana with weak democratic structures and over-the-roof corrupt bureaucracies, it is suicidal for defenseless citizens to look up exclusively to the state for its security needs.Besides that almost everyone in Ghana owns a cellphone, many of our roads and communication network systems are third-rate and mediocre, to say the least.

There is a non-existence of centralized nationwide emergency communication system in Ghana. This means on average, the emergency crew or the police response time to unfolding crime scene takes hours instead of few minutes.

As one Ghanaian writer Kwame Afadzi Insaidoo rightly pointed out in his book “Ghana: A Time to Heal & Renew the Nation,”theongoing problem within Ghana police force is that “the police departments complain that they do not have enough cars and lack of petrol or gas to fill their cars to respond rapidly to crime in progress” (p.118).

In a dysfunctional law enforcement environment as we have in Ghana, do you blame any smart or security-conscious political organization or any prominent citizen to sit tight without finding lawful ways to protect himself? In democracy, citizens have legal rights to protect themselves.

 

Bernard Asubonteng teaches political science and critical thinking at the college/university level. He is based in the United States, and can be reached at detrio03@aol.com