Post-poll violence: Arrests not enough – Analyst

Security analyst Nana Owusu Sekyere has suggested that the Ghana Police Service is not doing enough to prevent pockets of post-election violence from escalating.

Speaking on Class FM’s 505 news programme in an interview with Emefa Apawu on Friday, December 16, Mr Sekyere suggested that proactive measures must be instituted, adding that the number of arrests by the police nationwide since the violence started was inadequate.

“Even 12 [arrests] for me, is way below the mark. How many people have not gone to vandalise tollbooths? How many people have not taken over state property? How many people have not perpetrated crimes?” he asked.

He had earlier stated: “You are legally mandated when your security agencies, in this case the police service, are unable to handle the issues internally, [to] declare a state of emergency, and that is when you bring in the military, and I was expecting that to happen. We shouldn’t take things for granted because it is clear that our police and our security agencies, mandated to curtail or to hold peace during this election process, have not done the job. If I were the president, I would have declared a state of emergency seeing how this is progressing.”

For him the police has not done enough and proposes alternative options to ensure that the lawlessness perpetrated by some jubilant supporters is clamped down.

Mr. Sekyere has, therefore, admonished government to declare a state of emergency as an option to prevent escalation of the post-election violence in those parts of the country where there is a threat to the peace.

“Why don’t we look at preventive measures to cure the situation? If we have run out of options, I don’t see why we cannot declare a state of emergency…in specific areas over a certain period of time,” he said.

He called for an identification of areas of prevailing hostility and the imposition of a state of emergency there.

“At least that will be the first step to holding these pockets of violence down,” he suggested.

Meanwhile, the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), in a presser on Thursday December 15, threatened to defend itself if attacks allegedly perpetrated by New Patriotic Party (NPP) supporters did not stop.