The daredevil bravado of motorbike-riding armed robbers last Wednesday in Accra has prompted the question: What can we do as citizens to complement law enforcement?
Three things were common to the robberies which took place at the Pig Farm roundabout and the attack on a forex bureau near the Police Headquarters which should help us in our search for a solution to the security challenges posed by the criminals.
Armed robbers now prefer unregistered motorbikes for their operations because they derive versatility required for their escapades from these. They have exceptional confidence which is why they are able to launch daylight attacks without apprehension even near the Police Headquarters. Access to firearms, of course sophisticated ones, is no longer a hindrance for them as they close the chapter on locally manufactured weapons.
The foregone facilitated their attacks at the aforementioned locations, one of them fatal. Sadly, we do not appear to have reached the end of the daylight robberies, with motorbikes providing the speed and maneuverability the robbers need so badly.
When a gang of armed robbers attack a forex bureau, a stone throw away from the Police Headquarters, they have sufficiently called the bluff of the internal security agency of the country and for that matter the state as a whole.
While we are confident that the police establishment won’t take the humiliation without an equal measure of response in the form of a swift arrest of the daredevil robbers, we wish to call for a national conversation on national security.
The national security strategy document launched recently provides us with the appropriate context within which to brood over this critical subject.
With Burkina Faso and other security-threatened zones of West Africa serving as receptacles for illegal firearms some of which can easily be smuggled into Ghana as they have already, such a conversation should not be delayed any longer.
As to what we can do to stop the bravado of the armed robbers, we must as a people resolve to be security conscious and to support the police with information about suspected movements of criminals.
The police as an institution should build a bridge between law enforcement and the public so that both can share the responsibility for security management. The wide schism between the two, which is the reality, does not inure to the efficiency needed to reduce criminality to the barest minimum.
Having discovered the preferred impetus of armed robbers; motorbikes, we must lend assistance to the police to rid society of the unregistered ones largely used for robberies. The police must be encouraged to go after unregistered motorbikes and not discouraged through interferences from their superiors who themselves are harassed with calls to intervene on behalf of influential persons.
Banning motorbikes from operating between 7pm and 6am will help in addressing the menace.
The Achimota Forest area, as the road leads to the nearby police station and the stretch linking the GIMPA general area, need working streetlights.
Until that is done and patrols deployed to the area, robbers will continue to have a field day there.