In the year 2016, as I kept following up on my radio station authorization application, I observed how wrong it was for us to think that once we have policemen and women guarding our premises, it meant we were protected. My subsequent observations have confirmed that our men in uniform are sometimes so ordinary, that, sometimes even corn roasters are more alert than them.
In my first visit to the plush offices of the NCA, I saw two police persons guarding the Fidelity Bank, with guns, seated, one on the right, the other on the left. Both security men had their guns lying on their laps, as they engrossed themselves in their phones, doing what I suspected to be ‘WhatsApping’. As I entered the premises, they never bothered to look at me, and did not even raise their heads to look my way.
Last week I visited the GCB/Capital Bank Branch at Osu Oxford Street, near Danquah Circle. I met a Policewoman on duty. Her gun was lying flat and freely on her laps, while she engaged in conversations with some persons I could not identify. I walked right into the banking hall without her noticing me, and upon my return, she was done with the conversation, but this time around, she was on her phone, WhatsApping, I guess.
And this brings me to Kwabenya. Last week, a gang of armed men were reported to have attacked the Kwabenya Police Station and freed some hardened criminals who were held in detention for various violent crimes. One of the gangsters was reported to have pretended he had a complaint to lodge, entered the charge office, to lodge a complaint.
The short part of the story is that, these gangsters shot Inspector Emmanuel Ashilevi who was on duty as a monitoring officer, held the counter officer, the charge office guard and the night investigator hostage, and that enabled them to free their criminal colleagues from the police cells.
I was told it was a bread seller who aided the jailbreak that led to the shooting and killing of Inspector Ashilevi, and the escape of the seven inmates. Nancy Dentah, a petty trader, is reported to have initiated contacts between inmates and the armed group by smuggling her phone to the Nigerian inmate in the cell, hours before the attack.
I have one request for Mr. IGP; when you are carrying out your investigations, kindly investigate exactly what the counter officer was doing when the criminals entered the station, where was Mr. Emmanuel Ashilevi, and what exactly was he doing when those criminals entered the station, and the state of alertness at the station when the gangsters entered the premises.
We are told by the Police that Mr. Emmanuel Ashilevi was the monitoring officer at the time of the incidence. Which means he was supposed to be alert and wielding a gun, right? How did it happen that Nancy was able to, directly, hand over her phone to an inmate, in a cell, across the counter? And what was she doing at the station at that time of the night, 1am? How did it happen that Mr. Emmanuel Ashilevi got shot in the buttocks? Was he running away from the criminals, or was he lying on the woman, or he simply turned his back to them? And don’t you think that Nancy, the trader, if her attribution is true, seem more fit to be a Police Officer, than the many inactive young men in uniform?
The Ghana Police Service recently announced January 29, 2018, as the date for the next phase of its recruitment exercise for 2017/2018. The Police Administration has subsequently warned against the presentation of forged documents at the screening centers as offenders would be arrested and prosecuted.
We have been here before, you remember? All these processes and warnings are exactly similar to what Patrick Timbilla did a couple of years ago. COP Patrick Timbilla, a former Police Commissioner in charge of Human Resource at the Ghana Police Service, was interdicted for what is reported to be the biggest Police Recruitment Scam in Ghana, issuing out several hundreds of fake police enlistment letters, defrauding several hundreds of unemployed youth of amounts reported to be running into millions of cedis.
While the man, Timbilla, was defrauding prospective police recruits, and while he was helping applicants to defraud the state, he, at the same time, organized a press conference to warn against presentation of fraudulent documents; do you get the tactics? This is what is called Psychological Repudiation of Attention (PRA) – it used to be practiced by cocks when they wish to rape hens, pretending as though the hens were not their targets.
If COP Patrick Timbilla had not been interdicted, he could have been rewarded with the position of an IGP by now.
A couple of years ago, a screen printer who collected GH¢8,000.00 from one Reverend Jerry Robert, under the pretext of enlisting him into the Ghana Police Service or the Ghana Armed Forces, but failed to do so, was charged with the offence, and was convicted to a fine. The Police Prosecutor who handled the case, preferred charges against the screen printer who defrauded the Reverend Minister, but failed to prosecute the so-called Reverend Minister who attempted to use fraudulent means to enter the Ghana Police Service – do you get it? If this Reverend Minister had succeeded in bribing his way into the Ghana Police Service, he could have, like many others, bribed himself all the way up to the position of a COP. The implication of this selective prosecution of the screen printer, is that, the Reverend did no wrong when he paid GH¢8,000 to facilitate his fraudulent entry into the Army or the Police Service.
In 2015, COP John Kudalor, the then Director-General in charge of operations of the Ghana Police Service, led a team of Police personnel to brutalize Ghanaians who took part in a ‘Let My Vote Count Alliance’ demonstration, to demand a new voters’ register. Protesting men and women were brutalized for picketing at the headquarters of the Electoral Commission, and COP John Kudalor seemed determined to kill them. He was all over the media, congratulating his men for brutalizing the demonstrators.
A few months after these brutalities, John Kudalor was promoted from being the Director-General of Police Operations, to the ultimate, Inspector-General of Police (IGP).
Back to Patrick Timbilla: After his arrest, Patrick Timbilla was made to face a COP Bright Oduro-led special investigative task force. Nothing has since been heard of that special investigative taskforce. While Bright Oduro was chairing a committee to investigate Timbilla’s corrupt practices, he was himself being accused of criminally aiding violent criminals such as land guards.
Not long after COP Bright Oduro had chaired that Special Taskforce to investigate COP Patrick Timbilla, he, COP Bright Oduro was made the Director-General of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Ghana Police Service (CID), earning himself a promotion in the process, after his investigative reports continued to collect dust while the criminal allegation on his head continued to be rumored.
In the midst of these accusations and his continuous occupation of the position of the Director-General of the CID, his Deputy, then ACP Maame Tiwaa Addo-Danquah, was being accused of covering up a corruption allegation levelled against two Deputy Chiefs of Staff, Francis Asenso-Boakye and Samuel Abu Jinapor.
While the cover-up allegation against Maame Tiwaa raged on, COP Bright Oduro was sacked from his post as CID boss for his alleged involvement in criminally protecting land-guards in the country. The exit of Bright Oduro then immediately paved the way for ACP Maame Tiwaa to grab the position – regardless of the ongoing scandal in her name. A few weeks after assuming the position of Acting Director-General of the CID, Maame Tiwaa got promoted in ranks, to the rank of DCOP.
This week I have read in the newspapers that DCOP Maame Tiwa Addo-Danquah has been confirmed as the Director-General of the CID. Do you get me? The allegation of the suppression of the evidence of fraud did not matter to the Police Administration. There is an ongoing CID investigation into a matter involving the same person who is now being promoted to head the very CID which is investigating her, do you get me? And do you see how close she is getting, to becoming an IGP?
Sometimes I feel like vomiting…
James Kofi Annan