Retired Commissioner of Police (COP) Alex George Mensah has succeeded in implicating the leadership of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in an attempt to nip the integrity of the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Dr. George Akuffo Dampare and the entire Police Service of Ghana.

COP Mensah (rtd) gained public attention in July 2023 when a covertly recorded conservation surfaced, revealing a plot to oust the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Dr. George Akuffo Dampare. The retired senior police officer, together with one Superintendent Emmanuel Eric Gyebi, and NPP member Mr. Bugri Naabu, was prominent in the tape.

A parliamentary probe into the audio revealed that COP Mensah’s allegations against IGP Dampare were trivial, self-centred, and ill-motivated, threatening the reputation of the police service of our country.

On Monday, September 18, 2023, COP Alex Mensah officially retired from the Ghana Police Service to pursue a political career. He has been cleared to contest the parliamentary elections of the NPP ahead of the 2024 general elections. This move, combined with biases observed during the parliamentary inquiry, suggests NPP leadership’s involvement in the scheme to remove the IGP.

It is on record that on the day of the by-election in Assin North Constituency in 2023, the General Secretary of the NPP, Justin Kodua Frimpong (Esq.), sensing the NPP’s loss of touch with the constituents of Assin North, blamed the electoral woes of his party on the police service, laying the groundwork for the allegations against the IGP. In the leaked audio, COP Alex Mensah allegedly forewarned the NPP about Dr. Dampare if the party intended to retain power in 2025. The General Secretary’s statement was, therefore, rightly interpreted as a call supporting the agenda to remove the IGP.

It required one with extraordinary leadership skills, tactics, and strategies to win a fiercely contested election such as the Assin North by-election – traits that have eluded the NPP General Secretary, Justin Kodua Frimpong. The abysmal performance of the NPP in the recent District level Assembly election is a clear testament to the absence of political leadership within the party. The clueless General Secretary should demonstrate competence and leadership, utilising the human resources available to him at the party headquarters to the advantage of the party.

Sources close to NPP leadership have disclosed the series of engagements that transpired between COP Alex George Mensah (rtd), the General Secretary of the NPP, and Maame Yaa Tiwaa Addo-Danquah, Executive Director of the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO), who has for years been eyeing the position of the Inspector General of Police, on the subject of the IGP’s deposition.

Critics question why a senior police officer who made unfounded allegations against the police service of Ghana is cleared by a political party for its primaries. They speculate that COP Alex George Mensah’s (rtd) candidacy is a reward after failed attempts to oust Dr. George Akuffo Dampare. Could this really be the case?