Politics of acrimony

When Ghanaians went to the polls in a referendum on April 29, 1992 to endorse the 1992 Constitution, they did so as an affirmation of their confidence in multi-party democracy. Earlier attempts at constitutional ruled suffered premature ends when men in uniform and their civilian collaborators conspired to overthrow these governments in the name of serving the national interest. I shudder to talk about the First Republic because at the time of the February 24, 1966 coup, the country was a one-party state and the President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah was a Life President. Whether there was any constitutional means of effecting a change is, therefore, subject to debate. The case was quite different in 1972 and 1981 when the constitutional governments of Dr K. A. Busia and Dr Hilla Limann were overthrown through military coups in that order. It was obvious that the long spells of military and military/civilian dictatorship did not serve the interest of the country. The result of the 1992 referendum was, therefore, an endorsement of multi-party rule and a decision by the people to embrace democracy, which opens the doors to freedom of expression, exchange of divergent ideas and most important of all, the power to choose from qualified candidates who offer themselves for election as leaders of our country. The road of the latest democratic journey continued, after the referendum, with the lifting of the ban on political activities which were outlawed after the December 31, 1981 coup on May 18, 1992. The first presidential and parliamentary elections in November and December of that year were not without drama and confusion. The book, The Stolen Verdict, was a compilation of by the New Patriotic Party (NPP), events and incidents which it claimed culminated in its defeat. After that, the country continued with its resolve to pursue democracy even though every election came under a heavy cloud of suspicion. One would have expected that the more we advance in this journey and learn from our mistakes, the less the burden of democratic practice. Even though electoral reforms are bringing improvement in the electoral process, our political atmosphere is getting more and more polluted by the day. Again, apart from individual freedoms and liberties which the constitution guarantees every citizen, we are missing some of the beautiful things of democracy. Many of us thought multi-party democracy was an opportunity to shift through the lot and come to a national consensus on things that are good for all of us and pursue them with national vigour and commitment for full attainment. Our economy is still in a primitive state relying mainly on the export of raw materials. We still export the bulk of our cocoa in the raw beans state. That is not only a reduction in revenue; it means we are missing out in the many uses of cocoa beans. It also means our industry cannot expand beyond the cultivation of the crop which opens very limited employment opportunities to our citizens. We are still exporting manganese in the ore form which fetches very little revenue on the market and offers very little employment to highly trained and skilled professionals. Ghana is richly endowed with bauxite which is the main ingredient in any integrated aluminium industry. We already have a smelter and large quantities of salt and oil and gas for energy. Unfortunately, we are not able to exploit this tremendous opportunity to become a rich industrialised nation. We are rather exporting bauxite ore, while VALCO cannot produce at full capacity because it relies on imported raw materials. As a nation, we cannot boast of a first-class network of roads linking our towns and cities to open up the country for business and industry. The roads in our national capital, Accra are under stress and movement within the city for business has become a nightmare. Our railway system left for us by the colonial masters is in shambles; a system that could have fetched us millions in foreign exchange by exploiting the misfortune of our landlocked neighbours up north. These and other problems we thought would rather have engaged our attention as we take advantage of the blessings of democracy to pursue them with oneness of purpose. Instead, we are drifting from our real problems and are polarised on partisan lines. Dr Tony Aidoo was right when he questioned whether Ghanaians were not disappointed that they had chosen democracy as the path to development. Today, our ears are deafened in a cacophony of appeals for a peaceful election. Why should an election of Members of Parliament and a president to lead this country to progress become a battle cry such that everybody should be on his/her knees begging for peace? Who are we begging? Are they the same Ghanaians who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of democracy? We cannot pretend but realise that we have turned our politics from a mission to serve into an opportunity to loot. That ambition has become so pronounced that we have lost our focus as a nation and are ready to tear each other apart. Ghana is very well-endowed beyond explanation and all we need are good leadership, good guidance and direction and a united and discerning population to move on. Our blind ambition to take all the credit for everything good while blaming all others is not good for our national psyche. We must be able to realise that those who did the preparation of the ground, those who did the planting and those who did the harvesting all combined collectively to ensure a national objective or goal. Our greatness lies in our acceptance of our weaknesses and appreciating the efforts of others in nation-building. Our politics should not be that of enemies or foes. It should be that of a different set of people pursuing a national development agenda in a particular way which will produce the same results. If our politicians want the best for us; if their quest for office is to use their talents and skills to develop this country, then they should spare us the acrimony, the vilifications and intolerance. Let it not be said that because of the activities of a few selfish and disgruntled politicians, Ghanaians have regretted opting for democracy. The international community is doing everything to support us in our democratic efforts. Let us not fail ourselves. fokofi@yahoo.co.uk kofiakordor.blogspot.com

A roof over our heads

I believe there are strong reasons why the government at one time took a decision to reallocate government bungalows in certain parts of Accra and other cities and towns for redevelopment. From where I stand, I can hazard a guess of one or two reasons. Those bungalows were constructed during the colonial era and white masters wanted to distance themselves as far as possible from the black servants. So these properties were sited on large acreages of land with what was described as ‘boys quarters’ quite a distance from the main bungalow. The state could afford such luxury because the beneficiaries were few and land was not under pressure. Today, those who qualify to be housed by the state, technically speaking, are legion but resources limited. Looking critically at things today, it does not make sense to house a single family at state expense on a parcel of land that could conveniently house more than 10 families. It also became clear that the maintenance of these colonial mansions have become a heavy burden on the national budget. Apart from the politician occupants who manage to get things done their own way, most of these bungalows have been virtually abandoned without any facelift. The Accra Redevelopment Project might have been conceived on sound reasoning but opened itself to abuse when it came to implementation. In the first place, if the issue was about making economic use of available land, the same plot which had a single bungalow could have been redeveloped to accommdate more families. If the issue is about the state downloading the burden of housing some category of workers, the position must be made clear so that public servants will be clear in their minds that their accommodation is not the business of the state. If the idea is to give the central part of Accra, the capital city where most of these bungalows are situated, there must be guidelines on how those houses in prime areas are to be re-allocated. The guidelines should spell out those companies or individuals who qualify to acquire these houses. The least to qualify are senior public servants, political office holders and their agents who have direct control of the allocation process. In the absence of publicly debated modalities, it is not surprising that the exercise has run into difficulties sometimes with embarrassing consequences. Take the case of the High Court judge who woke up one morning to see intruders demanding he vacates the official bungalow allocated to him a few weeks earlier because the property had been sold to them as far back as 2007. Strangely, this was not known to the authorities at the Judicial Service who went ahead to do the allocation. Even if there should be a change of policy so far as accommodating senior civil servants are concerned, one group of people who should be spared are judges. By the peculiar nature of their work, judges deserve maximu protection from the state. To subject judges to accommodation problems means making an already difficult and stressful work extraordinarily difficult. There are many individuals and corporate institutions that would be more than willing to accommodate a judge but that would be at a great cost to the dispensation of justice. It is not for nothing that even the social life of judges are restricted to ensure that they do not become too familiar with certain people so as to influence their decisions. Rather than evicting judges and other judicial staff from their bungalows, it would be more prudent to pull down those colonial buildings on vast expanses of land and build more apartments to accommodate more judges who are being employed in the expanding judicial system. Judges, like medical doctors, by necessity must be as close to their duty points as possible. This is not a luxury but a reality that must not be subjected to any debate. It is not too late to go back and make amends where it is clearly established that there has been an official mistake. Our judges must have roofs over their heads. They must live in secure environment insulated from criminal gangs that could exploit their vulnerability for criminal gains. fokofi@yahoo.co.uk kofiakordor.blogspot.com

The motorway craters

THE vehicle ahead kept zigzagging in a manner which kept me wondering what might have influenced the driver to indulge in those dangerous antics so early in the morning. Then it came my turn and I realised rather too late that the driver was not joking but only responding to the nature of the road which was putting his driving skills to severe test. Many motorists are familiar with the potholes that dot most of our roads. In the dry season, they stare at you in open defiance, while in the rainy season they become ponds or mini lakes. The Accra-Tema Motorway, one of the legacies of Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the Founder of the nation, is of a peculiar design and built. It is perhaps the only road in the country built of concrete and iron rods. Any crack on it, therefore, goes beyond an ordinary pothole and could be best described as a crater. The jugged edges of the craters are obvious, sometimes with exposed rods, and any careless manoeuvring which lands a vehicle in any of the craters could spell doom. Many vehicles have suffered accidents either trying to avoid those craters or landing in them at high speed. The Motorway, which in the past was the pride the nation and about the safest road in the country, has become one of the most dangerous, recording accidents on a daily basis. Efforts to seal these craters bear very little fruit, as the materials used are not compatible with the hard concrete. Using bitumen to seal those craters does not offer the necessary result. The Motorway is like a worn-out floor carpet which does not make driving a pleasant experience. Apart from that, there are no inner and outer markings to guide motorists, especially in the night, so it is not strange that every now and then serious accidents occur, with loss of human lives. The Motorway aside, it is time we seriously considered giving some of the roads in the national capital a facelift. The road from La which runs through the capital to the Kwame Nkrumah Circle is not something some of us feel proud about. The same could be said of the road from the Castle Junction through the Beach Road, along which could be found the La Palm Royal Beach Hotel, the Labadi Beach Hotel, the First Infantry Brigade Headquarters, the Military Academy and Training School (MATS), the Armed Forces Command and Staff College and the Kofi Annan Peacekeeping and Training Centre. Work on the stretch between Teshie and MATS is too slow for comfort. These are very important national institutions that must not be left enveloped in dust or splashed in mud. The report we had last week about the portion of the road between Nsawam and Suhum on the Accra-Kumasi highway was not a pleasant one. The road linking Accra, the national capital, to Kumasi, our second largest city, should be given every priority it deserves. As it is, we may have to take the advice of a Burkinabe truck driver who got caught in the heavy traffic jam on the above stretch last Friday which obstructed movement for hours. Suleiman Iddrisu, 38, who spent hours in the jam, remarked, “If we are serious as a country at boosting economic activities and business, the government needs to give priority to the early execution of this important road.” fokofi@yahoo.co.uk kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Mining assuming dangerous proportions

Mining for minerals has been going on in Ghana for decades. In fact, the record shows that the then Ashanti Goldfields Corporation (AGC) started operating its Obuasi Mine, which is believed to have some of the world’s largest gold deposits, in 1897. The Obuasi Mine is also among the 10 largest in the world. In 2004, the AGC merged with AngloGold to become AngloGold Ashanti, the world’s second largest gold producer. Other minerals that have been mined extensively in the country are diamond, bauxite and manganese. Under normal circumstances, judging from the volume of minerals taken out of this country since colonial times, Ghana should have been brimming with mineral wealth just like South Africa. But, alas, this is not the case and the search for wealth from the bowels of the earth continues. If in the past only a few well-established mining companies operated in the country under appropriately defined rules and regulations, today the sector has become a free range where mining activities are going on in a lawless and careless manner. There are many factors that have contributed to this state of affairs. First, mining has not brought any visible improvement to the lives of the local people nor the physical development of the communities. Rather, mineral wealth has largely remained the monopoly of the shareholders in Europe, the United States and a few chiefs and local politicians who feast on the crumbs that fall from the table of the millionaires cocooned in the comfort of the major cities of the world. Obuasi, for example, has nothing to show for its accolade as one of the richest gold mines in the world. Meanwhile, Obuasi has made millionaires out of many Europeans, while the local people only enjoy the luxury of being identified with the precious metal while not benefiting from its wealth. Having waited impatiently in vain for decades for the gold wealth to spread and cover them, the local people, mostly the unemployed youth, have decided to go to the depths themselves to take what they could get, damn the risk and legal consequences. In the past, galamsey, as illegal mining is known among the populace, was restricted to a few concessions in the Obuasi area and was carried out discreetly, not with the flagrant impunity we see today. Unfortunately, galamsey is now the norm, not the illegal and clandestine vocation it was years ago. It may still remain illegal, but the spread, the numbers involved and the sophisticated equipment deployed in the business have clothed it with a garb of normality. Those colonialists who were quick to name our coastline the Gold Coast will be astonished to hear that the whole land mass of Ghana is pregnant with gold, from the beaches to the Savanna grassland of the north. First, our governments thought they could flash the galamsey operators from business. When that failed, they introduced a scheme to register and license the small-scale miners, so that their operations could be regulated and supervised, which was a good idea. Strangely, the small-scale miners have refused to operate within the rules and are now operating everywhere, anyhow. Mining generally has its environmental challenges, whether operating legally or otherwise. The obvious ones are forest degradation, water and noise pollution and the destruction of farmlands and crops. At least, while the major mining companies put in efforts to minimise the side effects of their operations, the illegal operators have no such plans and the result is the environmental degradation being experienced all over the country. The local people are beginning to take the law into their own hands to protect their heritage and the country will head for a major civil strife if care is not taken to deal decisively with the menace. A few examples will suffice. About a month ago, the people of Akyem Saaman in the Eastern Region rose up against the operations of the Kibi Goldfield Limited/Solar Mining Group. The residents blamed the mining firm for polluting their source of drinking water — the River Birim, the River Akusu and the River Anoma. They also complained of the removal of the vegetation cover along the banks of the said rivers, resulting in siltation and sedimentation during rainfall, and also the destruction of their cocoa farms through mining activities. Not even a visit by Mr Victor Smith, the Eastern Regional Minister, to calm nerves could satisfy the residents. What it means is that there is potential threat to peace, and this has dangerous consequences. Things were more violent at Gbane in the Talensi-Nabdam District in the Upper West Region where there was a violent confrontation between the youth of the community and workers of Shaanxi Mining Company Limited, a subsidiary of the China Gold Resources Group Company Limited. Four of the Chinese were said to be seriously injured in that confrontation, while mining equipment belonging to the firm was vandalised. The case of the people was that 527 of their compatriots who are farmers had been displaced, while 3,000 economic trees, mostly shea nut trees, had been destroyed. Illegal mining operations are no longer just a threat to the environment but also a breeding ground for hooligans who are prepared to confront lawful authority or even fight among themselves over territory. A case in point was the clash at Tutuka, an Obuasi suburb, among rival galamsey operators which left many of them seriously wounded. A new phenomenon which has muddied the already polluted waters is the arrival of Chinese experts in illegal mining. They do not operate with shovels, pickaxes and pans but deploy bulldozers and other heavy machinery. It appears they operate at the fringes of the law and it seems the police have been compromised and, therefore, cannot do anything. They are not only on the spree, leaving destruction in their path, but also invading the concessions of the mining companies. The latest reports have it that some of these illegal Chinese miners have invaded the concessions of AngloGold Ashanti at Kwanwireso, near Obuasi. Some of them are said to be heavily armed and could cause havoc to anyone trying to destabilise them. fokofi@yahoo.co.uk kofiakordor.blogspot.com

And Mubarak wept

On Saturday, June 2, 2012, Hosni Mubarak, former President of Egypt, was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the killing of demonstrators in last year’s uprising which toppled his government. It was a pity seeing Mubarak brought to court on a stretcher throughout his trial. Old age and poor health were manifestly evident and one could guess the mental turmoil Mubarak was going through as he listened to the charges made against him. Court officials were not moved a bit. They handed down a life sentence to the former strong man and even this did not satisfy many Egyptians who were calling for a death penalty. According to media reports, Mubarak cried when he was put on a helicopter destined for a prison hospital on the outskirts of Cairo. He was said to have cried in protest and resisted leaving the helicopter, insisting he should be sent to a facility where he spent most of his time in relative luxury during his trial. After about two hours or so, Mubarak caved in and finally left the helicopter to begin his life sentence, that is if there is any life left in him. There are many who would cry if they should find themselves in Mubarak’s position. From the monarch of all that he surveyed; a man who for 29 years ruled one of the most powerful and influential countries in the Arab world without opposition to be reduced to an ordinary convict, -- from GLORY to IGNOMINY – and you cannot blame Mubarak for shedding copious tears like a baby. But should Mubarak blame anybody for this shameful end to his life? Mubarak came to power on October 14, 1981 when he succeeded President Anwar Sadat who was shot and killed at a military parade on October 6, 1981, which was seen as the work of radicals who saw his peace agreement with Israel in 1979 as a betrayal. Mubarak who was Vice President at the time took over and quickly consolidated his hold on power. Throughout his rule, Egypt was under emergency law (Law No. 162 of 1958), which was briefly lifted in 1980/81, and re-imposed after the assassination of Sadat. The emergency law cleared the path for Mubarak against any opposition because police powers were extended, constitutional rights suspended, censorship legalised and the government had the right to arrest and detain individuals for any period of time and for no reason. By a restriction in the Egyptian Constitution, only the People’s Assembly nominates presidential candidates for endorsement in a referendum. Mubarak, therefore, had no challenger to his high office until in 2005, when the first multi-candidate presidential elections were held. Even that one came with a casualty when Ayman Nour, the man who contested Mubarak and challenged the election results was arrested, tried and convicted for forgery and jailed five years. It became obvious that Mubarak could not be removed from political office through any constitutional means so opposition became clandestine. He survived several assassination attempts including a deadly one in June 1995 when he was in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, for an Organisation of African Unity (OAU) summit. Before the Arab Spring which toppled him, it was widely rumoured that Mubarak was grooming Gamal, one of his sons to succeed him, copying from General Gnansigbe Eyadema of Togo and Omar Bongo of Gabon. When the protests began in January 2011, Mubarak was caught on the wrong foot and his reaction was slow. As the protests persisted and intensified, he started giving concessions which came too late. First, he declared he was no longer going to contest after September, 2011. Then he said he was not going beyond 2011 when the next election was due. He also promised constitutional reforms and gave the assurance that his son will not succeed him as was being speculated. Mubarak’s fate entered another phase when his Vice President, Omar Suleiman, announced that Mubarak had resigned from office and handed over to the military. Maybe he miscalculated the currents of the people’s power, otherwise he could have chosen the path of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the Tunisian leader who was the first casualty of the Arab Spring, who quickly opted for exile and escaped the wrath of the protesters. If Mubarak thought the military would protect him, he was wrong. At 82, Mubarak should have been relaxing coolly at a beach resort with his grandchildren but here he is in jail with no sympathy from the people he had ruled for 29 years. He was not as lucky as other dictators like General Eyadema and Omar Bongo who died in office. Even Col Muamar Gaddafi and Gen Mobutu died nobler deaths, because they did not suffer the embarrassment of imprisonment. Those who are still hanging onto power through fair or foul means must learn from Mubarak’s experience and revise their notes. I hope good old Robert Mugabe and Gen Omar Al-Bashir and the rest are listening. fokofi@yahoo.co.uk kofiakordor.blogspot.com

Turning tragic history to advantage

THE Jews have a tragic past. They call it the Holocaust. It was the time when the murderous persecution of the Jews by the Nazis got to its peak. From 1933 onwards, there were isolated cases of violence, sometimes resulting in death among the Jews in Germany and other places with German influence. A German doctor, Josef Mengale, was notorious for using Jews, including children, for his medical research. On November 7, 1938, a German diplomat, Ernst von Roth, was assassinated in Paris by Herschel Grunspan, a Jew. That unfortunate incident was used as a pretext to launch full-scale physical onslaught against Jews in Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus and Lithuania. In December 1939, during the Second World War, mass extermination of Jews by gas was introduced. Mass killing centres in concentration camps were built in parts of occupied Poland, including, Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Jasenovac, Majdanek, Maly Trostenets, Sobibor and Treblinka. By the time the mass murder, euphemistically described as the Final Solution, came to a halt after the end of the Second World War, an estimated six million European Jews had been killed. Before the Holocaust which was visited on Jews, another monstrosity had taken place between the 16th and 19th centuries. That involved the purchase and transportation of Africans to North and South America to work as slaves on cotton, sugar, tobacco and cocoa plantations and rice fields for their masters. Some worked in the mines, while others cut timber for the construction of ships. The lucky ones worked as house servants. Since these slaves became the properties of their owners, they were treated like other goods and sold as such on open markets. Conservative estimates indicate that Africa lost over 12 million strong and energetic members of its population in what became known as the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Slavery, which some scholars prefer to describe as the African Holocaust or the Holocaust of Enslavement, did not only deprive the continent of its human resource also but stripped Africans of their identity and self-esteem and reduced them to mere objects who are still trying hard, with very little success, to rediscover their true selves. While the two holocausts remain two of history’s most human tragedies, the victims have reacted differently and that is the subject of this article. The Jews came out of the Holocaust of 1939-45 with one resolve — to never again succumb to the enemy, suffer such humiliation or put their fate in the hands of other people. It is this resolve, call it a vow, which is serving as the heartbeat pumping blood into the Jewish system. From a small population of about 300,000 when the Jewish State was created in 1948, the population of Israel, which became the home of Jews after the war, has gone up to over seven million. This is because more Jews in the Diaspora are encouraged to return home, while those in foreign lands continue to support the Homeland with anything, including cash, political support and military accoutrements, which has made that small country one of the most powerful nations in the world. Israel has remained defiant against strong world opinion by maintaining occupation of Palestinian lands and building new settlements by the day. You may condemn the Israelis for swimming against the tide of international opinion, but you cannot blame them because they know their history. They know they may not have a third chance if they should slip back into subservience and are, therefore, prepared to challenge and disregard UN resolutions if that will keep them together as one. So while the Jews came out of the Holocaust tightly united and determined not to suffer any form of annihilation again, Africans emerged from the Holocaust of Enlargement and landed in the Holocaust of Colonialisation. For over 200 years, the African continent was cut into pieces and shared among European powers, including France, Great Britain, Germany and Belgium. Any hope that Africa would come out of slavery with a strong resolve to avoid the humiliation of the past crumbled under colonialism. Africa lost its human resource and dignity under slavery, lost its land and natural resources under colonialism but, worst of all, lost its mental independence. In spite of slavery and colonialism, Africa could still have restored itself to its natural glory. It remains one of the most endowed continents on earth. It still has the human resource, both on the continent and in the Diaspora, to harness for development. Africa emerged from colonialism not united solidly to rebuild itself and restore respectability as others had done. In spite of the formation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which spearheaded the liberation struggle, and the African Union (AU), which succeeded it, Africa has largely remained fragmented along colonial lines. Africa can only rebuild itself if it can learn one valuable lesson from Israel — together we stand, divided we perish. Like the Jews, Africans should realise by now that their destiny lies in their own hands and, therefore, they have to chart an independent path, even if that should run parallel to that of the rest of the world to achieve this. It is easy to know who is encroaching on your land or who is trying to dispossess you of your physical property. Political independence is only an attempt to regain physical possession of colonial occupation. Unfortunately, the continent is yet to recover from mental slavery which the two holocausts — slavery and colonialism — have inflicted on the continent. China shocked the world when, on the blind side of the rest, set its development agenda and stormed out of backwardness and poverty to the amazement of those who had declared that country a back-water case. Today, the West can whimper about human rights but the Chinese know their own survival and economic progress lie in the hands of China. Africa must begin to think in similar way. Even the slave outposts, which yesterday were centres of humiliation, could be developed as tourist attractions to recoup from the same Europeans who yesterday gained from our human labour. The excitement with which some of our leaders announce the signing of loan agreements gives some of us the feeling that they are now imbued with nationalistic fervor and are not in a hurry to cut themselves free from the apron strings of the slave and colonial masters. There is nothing exciting about a country such as Ghana chasing foreign loans everywhere when everything is here for the taking. It is time we said enough is enough. Slavery bled the continent of its rich human resource which went to build the industrial empires in America and Europe, while colonialism provided the cheap raw materials for industrial Europe. These two evils did not come by accident. Under the guise of foreign aid and international trade, a third calamity is going to befall Africa unless we learn from the first and second and resolve not to be an appendage of a foreign power again, no matter the form it takes. fokofi@yahoo.co.uk kofiakordor.blogspot.com

A piece of shoddy job

Last week, one of the dailies carried a story about the arrest of a Nigerian-registered vehicle carrying fake Ghanaian currency notes in GH¢20 denominations amounting to GH¢1.096.240.00. According to the report, the police, upon tip-off, trailed the vehicle until the driver went to park at a hotel at Ada and left for an unknown place. The story said after waiting overnight in vain for the return of the driver, the police drove the vehicle with registration number GH409-LND to the police headquarters in Accra while still looking for the driver. The question is, why were the police in haste to drive away the vehicle? The world is for those who have the patience to wait and in crime investigation you need a lot of patience and tact to achieve your objective. What happens if no one shows up to claim ownership of the vehicle? What happens if someone surfaces to report of the loss of his vehicle and deny knowledge of the fake currency, since it was allegedly found in the vehicle in his absence? It should be obvious that the police have bungled an otherwise useful operation because they have failed to exhibit one of the cardinal principles of a good predator – patience. If members of the anti-armed robbery squad of the Ghana Police Service knew they could not wait long enough to effect the arrest of the driver, why didn’t they arrest the suspect anywhere along the road from Aflao and Ada? Very often, the police are in haste to announce a successful operation when in fact the reverse is the case. In this particular case, the police could have withdrawn the physical presence at the hotel while patiently maintaining strict surveillance on the vehicle to see what happens next. It could take hours, days, weeks or even months but surely the driver or any other person will surface after mistakenly believing that the police have lost interest in the vehicle. Second, no lives were at risk so there was no need for haste in this case. Sometimes in their haste, the police only succeed in arresting the “Aplanke” and not the master. This has been seen in many drug cases where small couriers are paraded as big catches while the barons escape justice. Perhaps we need to cultivate the professional expertise of others who have the patience to wait until their prey surfaces. The arrest and prosecution of Eric Amoateng, a former Member of Parliament for Nkoranza North, is a case in point. Amoateng had earlier forwarded seven boxes of pottery to Newark Liberty International Airport from London which were found to contain 136 pounds of heroin with a street value of $6 million. The US security monitored Amoateng and his accomplice, one Nii Okai Adjei, when they arrived in that country, took delivery of the goods and sent them to a self-storage facility at Staten Island. The security officials did not rush. They waited until the following day, when Amoateng showed to collect the goods, before he was arrested. Amoateng was convicted on drug charges and jailed 10 years on December 15, 2007. About a year or so ago, the police claimed they had arrested a dressmaker who had been designing and sewing special dresses for drug couriers. What was to be gained in that arrest, if the police could not do a more meticulous work by arresting the customers of the dressmaker? As recent as April, this year, officials of the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) arrested a Moroccan woman, Fatima Elouardi, at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA), with 2.7 kilogrammes of what was suspected to be cocaine. This woman is known to be working for Youssef Salloum which is no secret to the security agencies. But again they were very enthusiastic in arresting the agent and allowed the main man to escape arrest because of pure carelessness. Our security agencies had earlier been given intelligence information about the movement of the Moroccan woman and her cargo. They could have done a better job by monitoring her movement when she arrived at KIA and continue to do so until she clears her luggage and deliver it to her contractor before making an arrest. But as stated earlier, NACOB officials were overzealous and like in similar cases jumped the gun by arresting the courier and left the baron off the hook. Some of these blunders are so amateurish that some people are casting doubts on the integrity of some of our security agents. Events which preceded Fatima’s arrival and arrest at the KIA on April 5, 2012, clearly indicate that Salloum her accomplice was to meet her at the airport and possibly collect the luggage. So why should our security agents give Fatima that hint that she was being monitored? Is there anyone within the security apparatus who might have warned Salloum about the trap in wait for him? These are not just operational failures but smack of collaboration with the enemy by some unknown people within the set-up, more so, when it was revealed that Salloum had a narrow escape in another drug case a year or so earlier. As it is now, the country might have lost another opportunity to get to the bottom of the drug business which is spreading its tentacles on the west coast of the continent. In the same vein, the anti-armed robbery squad may have a long wait in their hands looking for the gang that had brought in fake currency to dilute our financial regime, something that could have been avoided with a more professional approach to duty. fokofi@yahoo.co.uk kofiakordor.blogspot.com