Brigadier General Sackey: GAF must rethink recruitment after El Wak stampede

Retired Brigadier General Robert Offei Sackey has called for a complete review of the Ghana Armed Forces’ recruitment procedures following the deadly stampede at the El-Wak Sports Stadium last Wednesday.

The Wednesday, November 12, 2025, stampede left six people dead, five in the Intensive Care Unit, and 12 others in critical condition at the 37 Military Hospital. Thousands of applicants had converged on the stadium in hopes of securing military enlistment when overcrowding and disorganised queues led to chaos.

Speaking in an interview after the incident on Saturday, November 15, General Sackey stressed that “In my view, we should look at the practical approach — how it happened, and whether this method of recruitment is still what we should pursue. There are so many ways of going about it.”

He also criticised the decision to combine applicants from the Army, Navy, and Air Force into a single mass entry. He noted that earlier recruitment exercises were more orderly because each service processed candidates separately.

While acknowledging that indiscipline among parts of the crowd contributed to the crush, he maintained that proper planning and effective crowd management should have prevented such a disaster.

“It could have been averted. it could have been averted because in previous years they were now coming in columns of services-that is Navy, Airforce and then army. It is unfortunate that in this particular instance they mixed all the three services together and brought in as it was written in the newspapers of about more than 20,000.

That is about the size of spectators at the Accra Sports Stadium…In the first place apart from poor crowd control, indiscipline by people who have converged at the place to sit down quietly caused them to stampede. I think the first blame goes to the indiscipline of the crowd.”