Election security is a collective responsibility of all stakeholders, a retired Police officer and a one-time head of operations of the Police Service, ACP Benjamin Agordzo, has said.
He said the security of elections cannot be the duty of the police alone.
ACP Agordzo’s comments come at a time when the Police Service has dissociated itself from the comment made by DCOP Gabriel Prince Waabu regarding security for the 2024 general elections.
DCOP Waabu had indicated on Accra-based Joy FM that the military would be excluded from the security arrangement for the polls.
“We are not going to involve the military as it were, and it is going to be only the police, fire service, prisons, and then immigration service [that will provide security during the elections].
“It is our baby, it is the police baby, and we will invite our sister security services to assist in one way or the other,” he said.
But reacting to this in a statement the Police service said “The attention of the Ghana Police Service has been drawn to an unfortunate statement made by DCOP Mr Gabriel Prince Waabu during a panel discussion on JoyNews, on Monday 19th February 2024.
“The statements made by DCOP Mr Gabriel Prince Waabu concerning election security are unfounded and do not represent the position of the Ghana Police Service. We would therefore like to disassociate the Ghana Police Service completely from the statements and apologize to the Ghana Armed Forces. The conduct of the officer is being subjected to internal disciplinary processes of the Ghana Police Service. We want to state that under the National Elections Security Taskforce Architecture, The Ghana Police Service works with all other security services including the Ghana Armed Forces to ensure peace, security, law and order, before, during and after elections. The approach to the 2024 General elections will be no different.
“The Ghana Police Service wishes to appeal to the general public to continue to support us and other sister security agencies as we work together to deepen our democratic values during the 2024 elections and beyond.
Speaking on the News Central on TV3 Tuesday February 20, ACP Agorzo said “It is too emphatic a statement for anybody to say that the military will not be involved in the election. First of all, when it comes to election security management there are different roles, the police may be at the forefront, they may be at the polling stations, they may be at the constituency collation centers, they may be at the regional collation centers, they may even be deployed elsewhere but there are other duties like rapid reaction forces where they have to deal with patrols and other things.
“There are other people who may be at the borders to ensure that terrorists do not infiltrate during the period when the security forces are concentrating on the election.
“So when you look at the totality of all these, may be if [Waabu] had said something to the effect that the military will not be at the polling station, he may be right. If he had said something like the military may not be at the collation centers, he may be right but when he, makes certain emphatic statements that the military will not be involved in the election, that is a fallacy.”
He added “When he said ‘it is our baby’, election issues are not the bay of the police, election security is a collective responsibility. I have even advocated that when it comes to election security we must even have journalists there, we must have civil society, instead of just making it purely military.”
By Laud Nartey
