How Rawlings armed this journalist and secretly made him his bodyguard

A former correspondent at the Osu Castle, working closely with the late former president, Jerry John Rawlings, Teye Kitcher, has disclosed circumstances under which he was armed with a pistol.

He stated that being a journalist who was embedded in the security detail of the president at the time, the safety of everyone around him became paramount.

He was therefore trained and armed with the use of a sidearm, which he said, he kept on him any time he went to the Castle for any kind of business.

There were points, he added, that he was left alone with the president indoor, while the official bodyguards of the president were outside the room, making him the only armed person around the president.

“We were all part of the security. I bore my sidearm every time I went to the Castle, even as a journalist, because if he was not safe, then I was not safe either. Whenever there was a gathering indoors, his bodyguards would be outside, and I would be the only armed person inside.

“I was not alone. There were other colleagues of mine like that and we were trained on how to use them. We were walking and working with a soldier, who does everything like a soldier and you had to follow suit,” he revealed.

He also spoke about instances when he had to serve as the ‘civilian soldier’ he was, exercising his training for the role, beyond merely being the journalist he was around the former president.

“So, I was a civilian soldier. I wouldn’t sit back and allow you to harm him; I wouldn’t because I was trained to make sure you wouldn’t. People coming to see the president were screened before coming in but you can never tell what is in the mind of people so there were things that I was trained to look out for,” he explained further.

Teye Kitcher, who until his retirement, worked at the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), was speaking to a journalist, Solomon Mensah, on his YouTube channel, Aniwaba, about his experiences working with the former statesman.

Jerry John Rawlings died at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital at the age of 73 on November 12, 2020, after a short illness. He was buried on January 27, 2021, at the new Military Cemetary in Accra.