National security failures

The President’s daily National Security briefings are falling below acceptable standards, the pockets of near countrywide lawlessness by alleged New Patriotic Party (NPP) activists suggest.

As we compose this commentary, the latest bout of lawlessness, if you like, criminality, has reportedly taken place in Half Assini in the Western Region expectedly by undisciplined NPP youth.

These unruly youth could have taken a cue from their counterparts in the other regions because they have not noticed any visible action being taken against them.

Such queries, important as they are, would usually be misconstrued by those responsible for managing National Security issues but the national interest dwarfs such trivial disagreements or even boardroom grumblings.

We would rather serve the cause of the national interest than the parochial preference of a government appointee in their ornate offices. President Akufo-Addo must, as a matter of urgency, take another look at the composition of the National Security team. He deserves better from these appointees.

Such lapses are becoming one too many in the country. If the National Security apparatus did not foresee the Karaga incident and the others following it then they are sleeping on their jobs and must wake up.

In National Security management such slumbers can lead to very parlous consequences. If such little yet dangerous skirmishes take place below the radar of the National Security apparatus, it can only be conjectured when others beyond them in size and consequence rear their ugly heads.

The intelligence community in the country must wake up and do their work as demanded of them by law. In some dispensations these skirmishes happening without their knowledge would have triggered the marching orders from the President.

Management of National Security matters is such a crucial affair that we cannot afford to listen to excuses like ‘mine is paperwork and nothing to do with the field work’ as one of the top men in the national security system is reported to have said recently. As for the Coordinator, he is reported to have also passed an unsavoury remark when his attention was drawn to an occurrence of National Security value.

We, Ghanaians, have a stake in the security of the nation and would raise our voices as we are doing in this editorial when we observe lapses as we have since the dawning of the new political order in the country. The change we are enjoying did not come easy. We worked for it when some of these operatives at the top of the National Security ladder were outside the political trenches so we have the right to talk and would continue to do so until the President is properly briefed.

The President’s welcome directive to the security agencies to descend on lawbreakers should be adequate warning to the political miscreants that the old order of ‘our party is in power and so we are above the law’ has no place under an NPP government.

Good governance is about discipline on the part of both the government and the governed supported by the rule of law. Nobody should therefore take the country to ransom under the circumstances.