Bring the Ghana Police back to the streets!
The other week I travelled all the way from ACCRA to OUAGADOUGOU and back by bus, and what an experience it was! And I don’t mean the ramshackle STC bus (which replaced the advertised ‘air-con and video’ one) nor the antique one that took me back a week later to Kumasi.
No: I mean the many dozen waylayers or ‘collectors of customs’, as we call them in Nigeria. Not so gentle men and women in uniform, who have a tendency to stop buses and tros-tros every few miles on that long, long journey, making that journey even longer – in time.
Now, Ghana being Africa’s ‘Star State’, and very soon to celebrate 50 years of independence (with some 20 mio $ US already having been voted for the event!) I very soon came to the (self-)convincing conclusion: all these waylayers in uniform must be IMPOSTORS, since members of the Ghana Police Force would NEVER-EVER do that! Because they must be truly be ‘servants of the people’, i.e., servants of Ghana’s law-abiding citizens.
I therefore came to the conclusion – repeat – that those impostors took over the streets and highways of Ghana while the true and honest policemen and – women were all on training courses for ‘higher efficiency’.
I do, however, think that the Inspector-General is somehow over-doing that training effort: he should – at the very least - leave some of his men and women on the beat! Because otherwise both Ghanaian citizens and suspecting visitors might come to the conclusion that a hundred percent or so of the members of the police force are ... one hundred percent CORRUPT! Which just can’t be in Africa’s ‘Star State’!
If the Inspector-General doesn’t act promptly, visitors to Ghana might come to the conclusion that those policemen and - women are corrupt 24 hours a day – since my bus did travel deep into the night (but that’s an entirely different story, which I shall tell you in my next contribution).
So, please, Mr. Insector-General: do send some of your - surely honest! - boys and girls back to their beat on the street!
O.P.R. ONIH
Oh, by the way... the most hilarious experience was somewhere between Techiman and Kumasi, where a
new stretch of road was just being built. We had hardly passed the short single-lane construction stretch when we were immediately stopped AGAIN – and that right in the middle of the night by a female impostor in uniform - with a conspicuously out-strechted hand. I did, however, understand that poor woman: she must, after all, somehowfinance that (her) 5-er BMW parked safely under a tree!
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