The Minority in Parliament is demanding the immediate suspension and dissolution of the ongoing recruitment exercise into Ghana’s security services, citing what it describes as major transparency and fairness concerns.

Speaking in an interview with JoyNews, the Ranking Member on Parliament’s Defence and Interior Committee, John Ntim Fordjour, called for a bipartisan parliamentary probe into the process and urged authorities to refund all monies paid by applicants.

Rev Fordjour described the situation as a “major recruitment scandal” and insisted that the process must be halted immediately.

“They should refund, as a matter of urgency, everyone — whether New Patriotic Party, National Democratic Congress, or apolitical. They should refund and dissolve this biggest recruitment scandal,” he said.

His comments follow revelations by the Interior Minister, Mohammed Mubarak Muntaka, that nearly 500,000 young Ghanaians applied for recruitment into the security services despite financial clearance existing for only about 5,000 positions.

The exercise has already seen hundreds of thousands of applicants disqualified after aptitude tests, sparking widespread frustration among young people across the country who had hoped to secure positions in the services.

According to the Assin South MP, the current recruitment arrangement should be scrapped and replaced with a system where the individual security agencies manage their own recruitment processes while the Interior Ministry provides policy oversight.

“They should immediately suspend it, refund everybody’s money, and revert to a system where the security agencies themselves own the recruitment and provide merit-based policy direction,” he stated.

Rev. Fordjour also raised concerns about the transparency of the aptitude testing process, arguing that applicants should receive immediate feedback on their performance.

He criticised the current system where applicants are notified days later via text message that they have been disqualified, even when they believe they performed well.

“When you are sitting the aptitude test, you must be afforded uninterrupted 45 minutes of internet access. When you finish answering, there should be transparent feedback — AI-generated — so that you immediately know your assessment,” he explained.