The Director General of the Ghana Prisons Service, Patience Baffoe-Bonnie, has shared a difficult experience from her early days as a prison officer.

Speaking in an interview on Adom TV in a video shared on April 29, 2026, Baffoe-Bonnie narrated how she nearly got blamed for an inmate’s escape.

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According to her, the incident happened when she was a young recruit on her first posting to Sekondi, where she had been assigned on a hospital duty at the Effia Nkwanta Regional Hospital.

She explained that she had gone to relieve a colleague who was supposed to hand over to her at the hospital where an inmate was on admission.

“I was a recruit. My first posting was to Sekondi and per the [duty] roster, I was on hospital duty for the weekend. When I got to the premises of Effia Nkwanta hospital, I met my colleague who I was supposed to take over from,” she said in Twi dialect.

Baffoe-Bonnie added that the colleague attempted to leave before a proper handover was done, but she insisted on verifying the situation.

“She told me she was done for the day and was leaving even though my shift period wasn’t yet up. My colleague told me that the prisoner was in the hospital so I should take over but I insisted she goes with me to ensure the prisoner was there and a proper shift change over appropriately done,” she stated.

According to her, it later emerged that the inmate had already escaped before she arrived.

“Unknown to her, the prisoner had escaped with even the nurses trying to locate her whereabouts but couldn’t find her. The prisoner, was a woman who had been arrested for robbery but due to a medical condition she was operated on and was recovering,” she recounted.

She further explained how the inmate managed to escape from the hospital ward, under the pretext of going to fetch water.

“The prisoner told the nurses she wanted to fetch water. She removed her prison uniform and hid it in other dresses, removed the drip that had been placed on her and broke the window. By the time they realised what had happened, the prisoner had already escaped [from the hospital],” she said.

She stressed that her insistence on a proper protocols saved her from being wrongly accused.

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“So, my colleague knew that the prisoner had escaped under her watch but she wanted me to take the fall for it. If not for the grace of God, I would have been blamed for it,” she added.



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