EDITORIAL: National Security Under Threat

On Tuesday night The Accra Mail received a telephone call from far away United States of America.

It was from a highly distraught father, whose daughter had been robbed earlier in the evening by armed robbers.

The father was extremely disturbed because the robbery took place in the full glare of passers by and bystanders. Nobody bothered to lift a finger to assist the poor young lady, not even when she was screaming for help. The robbers made away with her money, which she was carrying in her bag to go and buy some books. The young lady is a student studying law. When the father put in the call to The Accra Mail, she was holding on, on another line, totally traumatised.

The highly charged father wanted to talk to someone in charge, but was not successful, hence the call to The Accra Mail.

The scene of the crime was not in America, but in Ghana's capital city of Accra! Around, of all places, Makola.

The lady has a famous surname: Kotey. Her father, Richard Kotey has one of the best known voices in Ghanaian broadcasting and has been with the Voice of America (VOA), this past decade and a half.

Young Ms. Kotey's predicament is the predicament facing the country. After highly successful elections last year, in which Ghana earned the respect of the world, armed robbers have decided to spoil the fun. Armed robbery has now become a growth industry, and almost on a daily basis brazen armed robberies are being recorded. This is a phenomenon quite unknown to the proverbial God-fearing Ghanaians.

We are compelled to arrive at one conclusion: the armed robbers have all of a sudden discovered that Ghanaians are easy prey and can therefore attack at will and get away with it.

Since Ghanaians have a copy cat mentality, the perpetrators are feeding on that. Provided you can gather the courage, you can pick up arms and join the "trade".

This creates serious security problems for the state. The government must come out with a robust programme to tackle this canker, for we are all agreed that we do not like coup d' ?tats so it will not be coups that will undermine the government, but these terrorist activities of armed robbers. The government must act swiftly to bring these armed robberies under control.