A terror squad is now one of the features of the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB).
The metamorphosis from the unenviable Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) days of human rights abuses under the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) days to today’s NIB should have come with a departure from the dark days of callousness, abductions and junta-sanctioned murders.
The operations of the NIB continues to be in tandem with the obnoxious ‘Order From Above’ template.
On Wednesday, the terror squad visited the residence of the Member of Parliament (MP) for Assin South, Rev. John Ntim Fordjour, leaving his seven-year-old son traumatised and the democracy ranking of the country recording another downward spiral.
The terror squad was at the MP’s residence to arrest the man who is championing the cause of good governance in the country.
The MP should have shut up and not continued with his oversight responsibility as a legislator in the august House of Parliament. He let out his suspicion about a possible cocaine deal and money laundering saga in the country and incurred the wrath of government.
The authority of the squad to do what it had gone there to do was, as said by one of the members of the squad, “my image as a police officer”. He was in police uniform, perhaps the leader of the landguard-looking characters, and thought his uniform was enough guarantee regardless of the absence of a court warrant.
In any case, whatever happened to the directive by the Speaker of Parliament on how to invite MPs to assist in investigations?
The NIB and indeed the National Security apparatus in their current state are made up of professionals and others picked from the ranks of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) foot soldiers and even serial callers.
There is no doubt that Ghana has been reset to the PNDC days and, therefore, heading in the wrong direction.
What if the balaclava-wearing characters did not even come from any of the security agencies? Ingenious criminals or even armed robbers could storm the residence of any person of their choice and do as they please under balaclavas.
What unfolded at the residence of the MP adds to the already eventful list of raids of residences of citizens, and triggers the question: what is happening in Ghana?
Is that what resetting represents, and are we going to see more of such unwarranted despicable actions by state security agencies?
This is shameful. Ghana does not deserve this treatment from a President who assumed headship of this country through the ballot box.
The gradual downward spiral of Ghana’s democracy is worrying after the many plaudits in the aftermath of elections which ushered in new crop of leaders.
President Mahama has worryingly not reacted to any of the human right abuses and good governance infringements being visited by his security gangs, which confirm the suspicion that he is in the know.
We have taken note of the remarks of the former Defence Minister, Dominic Nitiwul when in the light of the NIB sanctioned attempted arrest of Rev. Fordjour he said “we gave the Director General of the NIB a sensitive job when we were in government”.
This is the man who is executing with precision the hatchet assignments of the NDC, and with crude alacrity.
What it means is that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) under President Akufo-Addo made appointments which harmed the security of his government, as evidenced by the actions of the NIB Chief.
Those who are given such assignments, including their bosses, should remember that worst things happened in this country and citizens who lived long enough witnessed the end of such regimes and what befell the perpetrators of the evils associated with those governments.
The Ambrose Yankeys, Boye Moses and the security architecture of the Nkrumah regime followed by the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) then PNDC juntas all present important lessons about how everything on the face of the earth is transient, especially life.