Arms seizure: 'Mahama must declare state of emergency'

A Political and Security Analyst, Ibard Ibrahim, has called on President John Dramani Mahama to declare a state of emergency over the recent arrest of a large cache of arms in the Ashanti and Volta Regions of the country.

Doing so, he said, will help the West African nation to attract the needed help from the international community to enable it protect its entry points in a more sophisticated manner.

“It wouldn’t be farfetched to declare a state of emergency. If the President declares a state of emergency, our security agencies will have extraordinary powers. Interpol will share much more information with us. The international community will realize that there is a red alert in the country. And so, when they have any piece of information about the potential movement of terrorists or arms, they will not keep that information to themselves.

“Once that declaration is made, I think that the country will have much more economic ramification in that you get much more assistance from the international community to be able to protect your borders well,” he noted.

Mr. Ibrahim made this observation when he appeared on GH Today on Wednesday to share his views on the proliferation of arms in Ghana.

His comment comes in the wake of the arrest of a large cache of arms and ammunition in less than a month in different locations across the country.

A vehicle with over one million packs of short cartridges or bullets were impounded by customs officials at the Aflao border in the Volta region on Monday.

According to officials, the same vehicle has made about six entries into Ghana per the records, and it is feared the same items were being cart into the country from either Nigeria or Togo.

This arrest comes few weeks after the Manhyia Divisional Police Command in the Ashanti region retrieved guns with ammunition from a house at Alabar, a suburb of Kumasi.

The guns included AK47 and machine guns.

According to media reports, the Police upon a tip off stormed the house and arrested the individuals in charge of the weapons.

The successive seizures of the large numbers of arms have heightened fears among the public that the weapons were being imported into the country by some powerful persons to destabilize the country should the 2016 election not go in their favour.

Based on this, Mr. Ibrahim, who is also a Peace Ambassador for the 2016 elections, believes that now is the time for the President to declare a state of emergency and call on the international community for assistance.

“We need a robust move to cleanse the system from these weapons,” he added.