Police must uncover, uproot illegal weapons network in Ghana – Festus Aboagye

Security Analyst, Col (rtd) Festus Aboagye, has said part of an ongoing process to investigate the illegal importation of over 400 pistols and thousands of ammunitions into the country, recently, must also focus on the network that supplies the weapons.

Speaking to GhanaWeb on the seizure of some pistols at the Tema Port last week, Mr Aboagye said while the ongoing investigation to arrest the importers is a step in the right direction, a more exhaustive investigation should focus on the network of illegal arms dealers whose activities pose a major threat to Ghana’s security.

“Part of the investigation should not be to ascertain who brought in the weapons illegally but try and establish whether this is a network that has been operating in this manner over time. Because if we don’t dismantle the network…they will find new clients here,” he told GhanaWeb on Monday, October 12, 2020.

Col (rtd) Festus Aboagye, who is currently a teaching consultant at the Kofi Annan International Peace Keeping Training Centre (KAIPTC), said after studying the widely publicised police report on the bust, it is clear that the weapons were uncovered because there was a break in the illegal network of weapons dealers in Ghana.

“I suspect strongly that this thing [seizure of the pistols and ammunition] came out because there was a break in that network. Either the technician who should have been on duty was not there and the one who was there in this instance was very scrupulous and probably decided that they will not listen to anybody,” he said.

The recent weapons bust by the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) on Friday, October 9, 2020, adds to several instances of illegal importation of arms into the country.

In the latest incident, state authorities impounded a consignment that contained 436 pistols and over one thousand ammunitions illegally imported from Turkey. They were concealed in the consignment of personal effects.

They are said to belong to one Felix Wallace, who has since been arrested by the marine police.

Another bust was made in 2015 when a notorious arms dealer from Burkina Faso was arrested in Ghana after police found weapons capable of shooting down an aircraft in his bedroom.



The 72-year-old man was detained in the Ashanti Region capital, Kumasi, along with four other people suspected of buying weapons.

The suspected arms dealer confessed to smuggling in arms from Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, and Niger.

Recounting some of these major arrests, Festus Aboagye, said Ghana risks plunging into a major state of insecurity if the channels of illegal arms proliferation is not destroyed.

He said a good way to fight the importation of arms into Ghana and uproot the hidden network will be to have layers of security within the GRA system.

“The one sitting behind the machine, reading the scanning results [of the contents of containers for instance] must not be the final person who says ‘I didn’t see anything in this container’. There must be a certain mechanism to certify that the report being generated by this technician is accurate. And that the technician has not been corrupted to pass a certain container that should not be passed,” he admonished.

A 2014 report on illegal arms in Ghana reveals there are at least two million such illegal weapons in the country.