Ghana must step up its security vigilance - WANEP

Mr. Justin Bayor, National Network Coordinator for the West Africa Network for

Peacebuilding (WANEP-Ghana), has warned Ghana to strengthen its security vigilance,

given some incidents that have been occurring lately which have the propensity to

throw the country into violence.

“As the elections draw closer and with what we are witnessing lately in Ghana, it is

vital that we increase our collective vigilance to ensure an incident free election

come December 7, 2012”, he said.

He explained that with the influx of ex-combatants from neighbouring Cote d'Ivoire

in Ghana and the proliferation of arms, the likelihood of politically motivated

youth violence, and dormant chieftaincy conflicts, all had the possibility of

plunging the country into instability.

Mr. Bayor raised these concerns in Tamale on Thursday during the opening ceremony of

a two-day training workshop for conflict monitors under the theme; “Developing

Ghana’s capacity for early warning”.

The training brought two representatives each from the ten regions of Ghana to be

trained to feed information on security concerns into the Early Warning system of

WANEP-Ghana aimed at alerting the nation about potential security threats, for

immediate prevention.

“With our western neighbor becoming suspicious of us and the undeniable fact of

ex-combatants in our midst, in the event that the elections become disputed, there

will be an opportunity for all these factors to cause mayhem in the country”, the

Coordinator said.

Mr. Bayor said in the pursuit of its mandate of working towards the prevention of

violence, WANEP had since 2008 been operating the Ghana Alert Project (GAP) which

had established the Ghana Early Warning System (EWS) which had also played a

tremendous part in averting numerous cases of violence in the country.

He urged the National Security Council not to treat information provided by

WANEP-Ghana as suspect information stressing that the organization will link the

Security Council through an SMS alert system in order for it to appreciate the

security challenges.

Mr. Chukwuemeka B. Eze, WANEP Director of Programmes indicated that though West

Africa had made positive strides in the area of democratization, post-conflict

recovery, peace-building and governance, especially in countries like Ghana, Sierra

Leone and Liberia, there was deep concern about the fragile nature of the modest

achievements.

He said the terrorist activities in the Sahel region, maritime insecurity in the

Gulf of Guinea, crime and drug trafficking, illegal oil bunkering and criminality in

the Niger Delta region, weapons proliferation and the resurgence of undemocratic

means to remain in power were all worrying phenomena.

He said the National Early Warning System (NEWS) concept of WANEP sought to provide

a platform for a broad-based participatory approach to conflict prevention and

mitigation in West Africa.

GNA