President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo
At the back of rising crime rates in some specific areas of the country, security analyst Adam Bonaa has called on President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to consider the background of persons he is going to nominate to head the various Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies across the country.
In an interview with GhanaWeb, Mr Bonaa stated that MMDCEs by virtue of their position as Chairmen of the various Security Councils play a pivotal role in ensuring safety and security. Thus nominating people with a background in security will help them effectively coordinate security activities in their jurisdictions.
“I am calling on the President of the republic to maybe for the first time consider people who have security background to head if not all of them; then some of the various MMDAs so that we would have a situation where when they are chairing the various District and Municipal Security Council meetings, they would know what to put across in terms of policy. Unfortunately, in the past, some of them who had been appointed simply did not have any knowledge in security at all and that has not worked well for us,” he said.
He cited specific locations including the Ashanti Region and areas around Kasoa in the Central Region as prime areas for criminal activities that demand the supervision of MMDCEs who are vexed in security matters to control the upsurge.
“If we can deal with crimes in some of these locations by getting people who are security-minded to lead the charge, I think that will help. If not, then I don’t know where we heading towards.”
Going forward, Mr Bonaa also called for a conscious national effort in training and retraining MMDCEs on security matters and crime management.
Among other benefits, he stated that such an act will go a long way to contribute to effective coordination between security heads and policymakers in the various MMDAs.
“If that is done crime levels would drop because there are times when you have the Regional Police Commander, or the District Police Commander and the District Chief Executive or the Municipal Chief Executive all singing from different books; whiles the DCE is talking about ‘we are seeing how to deal with it,’ the Police Commander will also be saying that ‘we don’t have the logistics to deal with it,” he added.