Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia
In furtherance of our promise to continue the discourse on the fault-lines in law enforcement management in the country we wish to call the attention of the Police Council to the contents of the radio interviews granted by the immediate past Director-General of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID).
The swiftness with which Bright Oduro crossed swords with not only the Police Administration but the National Security Minister provoked varied thoughts about the state of the law enforcement system and the need for its total overhaul if sufficient headway is to be registered in our quest for good governance.
He sought to create the impression about a Police Administration in which selectiveness rules in opposition to standard application of procedures. If others were allowed to stay on until their last official day in Service, why did he not enjoy a similar opportunity? Although his case is different having been triggered by suspected cases of not managing well land guard cases, the Administration was constrained to give him the marching orders.
Has he forgotten so soon about the wobbling Police Service of which he was a part and whose inappropriate state he contributed to? Did he not know about the wanton discrimination regarding those qualified to proceed for peacekeeping operations and the delayed promotion of personnel under the previous administration?
We are pleased about his tacit agreement that something is wrong with law enforcement administration in the country – something he lived with for his over close to three decades in the Service.
It is interesting that he is complaining about not being allowed an opportunity to come and defend himself in the face of petitions against him especially as they pertained to his alleged land guard links. If that is the order in the Police Service whose top echelon he belonged to, it stands to reason that there are fault-lines which must be addressed if the Police Service should be put on good footing to discharge its statutory roles.
It is pleasing to note that nowhere in his submissions on radio did he query our report. Unfortunately, a garrulous Majority MP was on Metro TV’s morning programme Monday morning flaying our report for carrying falsehood.
We wish to tell the uninformed MP and his ilk that in DAILY GUIDE, we undertake due diligence before publishing stories. Now that the man himself has spoken, we demand an apology from the honourable man whose name we would rather not mention because he does not deserve such honour.
The CID being a critical segment of the Police, demands persons of exceptional integrity. A deficit of this attribute is reason land guards have blossomed in the Greater Accra Region; the temptation to grab land too juicy to be turned down.
Whoever is going to head the CID must be a person of exceptional pedigree who would not succumb to the dictates of bad politicians to do unwholesome things such as altering the contents of reports.
It is interesting hearing Bright Oduro asking politicians to allow police officers to do their work. He did not add ‘professionally’. When politicians at the helm discover a CID boss dining and wining with bad chiefs and protecting their land guards, they must, in the interest of good governance, intervene with a marching order. We shall return to this subject at another time.