Ghana Has Seen Worse Security In The Past – Security Analyst
The founder and president of the Institute for Security, Disaster and Emergency Studies (ISDES), Dr Ishmael Norman, has challenged the seeming state of fear Ghana is experiencing, saying the country has seen worse insecurity than now.
According to the security analyst, the reason to believe that Ghanaians are experiencing the worst insecurity in a while does not statistically exist. Rather, what the country is seeing is media reports that can appear omnipresent.
Dr, Norman pushed back against the narrative of insecurity with the point that things are not empirically, the factors do not support a widescale level of insecurity.
“I am not so much alarmed about the crimes in the country because the youth with guns are not that many,” he said, adding that “[w]hen it comes to issues like kidnapping, Ghana has a genetic disposition towards kidnapping because of our activities in slavery. This country has seen worse days in kidnapping.”
But Dr Norman did not appear to overlook the current situation in the interview.
“People are smuggling small arms into the country so the numbers have gone up. In every neighbourhood, they know the people who own the guns… One of the problems we have with small arms is [also] that it is the @GhPoliceService that is selling them to the people,” Dr Norman pointed out.
He also made against Ghana’s rehabilitation agenda in prisons where the “budget for feeding prisoners is GHC1.85p a day”. Experts have said that a considerable portion of convicts commit crimes and return to prison thereby putting question marks over the country’s ability to rehabilitate criminals.
Dr Norman, who is also a Senior Lecturer at the School Of Public Health in the University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS), asked Ghanaians to consider the rise in the use of cheap illicit drugs as a component of the security problem.
“The issue of drug use is also a big issue. I think the narcotics board is doing the best that it can. It’s not just tramadol you can buy to get high, there are all sorts of drugs,” the analyst was speaking on Wednesday morning on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show on the subject of armed robberies, killings and the general feeling of insecurity.
Meanwhile, the Ghana Police Service has placed a GHC20,000 bounty on the head of killers of two persons, including a cop, during a bullion van armed robbery attack at James Town in Accra on Monday.
Director of Public Affairs of the Ghana Police Service, Supt. Sheilla Kessie Abayie-Buckman announced on Tuesday as pressure piled on the security agencies to track down the robbers whose identities are yet to be known.