Ghanaians, media failed kidnapped girls – Security Analyst

The Dean of Academic Affairs of the Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College (GAFCSC), Dr Vladimir Antwi Danso, has expressed his disappointment in how the media and general public handled the case of the three kidnapped Takoradi girls.

In an interview with GhanaWeb, Dr Danso explained that tackling security issues in a state requires both the media and general population working hand in hand with the police to achieve the maximum results.

“The security apparatus as you put it, or security structure is useless when the people of the nation themselves are useless. I qualify it in the sense that if the media doesn’t know how to handle such situations, if the population is not security conscious, if both the media and the population are not giving the police any leads, they are useless,” he said.

The Security Analyst further chastised the media for reporting on the issue as though dealing with such security cases were extremely easy.

The media, Dr Danso said, stampeded the police through interrogating questions like “Why? Why not? Why are you not telling us? Why are you not going to the family?” which in his view were not how police worked when it came to sensitive issues.

He indicated that, “The police don’t work that way, the remit of the police is not how you tell them what to do, they have a remit, constitutionally, their modus operandi, they can’t go beyond that”.

According to Dr Danso, the external pressure from the media to the police caused the police to prematurely make public statements to appease them, which did not turn out to be entirely true.

“At times they would have to come out with some information which turned out not to be the case. It’s like the media was asking as if it was so easy to get the kidnappers. No, its security matters. Mind you, the miscreants are always one step ahead of the established order in security matters.” He said.

The GAFCSC Dean said even developed countries such as the United States of America is not able to solve all the security challenges they face despite their high intelligence organizations, as such, Ghana’s case is not strange.

“How can great America have 19 well trained al-Qaida people hijack four American civilian planes without 16 intelligent groups in America catching them? They outwitted them, all they did was a post mortem,” he said.



Dr Danso blamed the Ghanaian social and housing structure as one of the factors encouraging the operations of perpetuators of crime, like kidnappers in the country.

“We leave our building unguarded, no permits, everybody is putting up any building anyhow, 10 years, it is still in the bush, and we are saying what? Even government buildings; one government comes in and abandon the project. Check round, the so called housing projects by the governments. Then when the miscreants hide there and do those things, then we say police,” he said.