What is national Security – Part two

Darrel Oko Sankah

This is a continuation and final part of my big question about what constitutes national security and who/what determines a threat to national security.

One other very popular journalist who is reputed for his daring reports on issues of national security, Raymond Archer, rightly pointed out that first of all it was wrong for the uniformed security officers to assume, much more made suggestive statements to the effect that wearing the tag journalist meant one needed uniformed security officers to tutor them on what national security was all about.

He named a number of journalists who were retired uniformed officers and others who had done high level courses in security intelligence but do not go about flaunting their security credentials.

Indeed he stated that national security went beyond what the uniformed security officers are trained to do. He mentioned that issues like food security, corruption, unemployment, abuse of public office among other things had serious national security implications even though they are not specifically under the purview of the uniformed security officers.

Raymond also pointed out to Col. Nibo who quoted President Nixon to support his assessment of what damage journalists are doing to national security that it was unfortunate for him to have used a failed president’s opinion about the media as food for thought for Ghanaian journalists.

It is no secret that President Nixon hated the media and did everything to stifle them but he could not.

Interestingly when Raymond was making his submission, NMC Chairman who was also Chair for the occasion made a failed attempt to gag him.

That was and is still worrying because in the same manner he kept nodding his head in approval of the statement by the uniformed men, one would have expected the NMC Chairman, who also belongs to the learned profession, to have made an intervention in defense of the media in the face of uniformed security officers’ attempt to blame the media for failed security situations in the country, when in fact the media only reports the issues as they happen.

He did not do that, and when Raymond tried to do that he rather attempted to gag him, as if to say “shut up and listen to the uniformed men because they know about national security and you don’t.”

But that was not all, another of the high table occupants, Ms Adwoa Yeboah Afari, who happened to be the recent past GJA President, spontaneously dissociated herself from Raymond’s attempt to paraphrase a statement she was supposed to have made just to buttress a point he was making.

Obviously there was what someone called a “silent antagonism” against Raymond because of his reputation for blowing the alarm on many issues of national security and corrupt top state officials. One did not need to look into the crystal ball to tell that those at the high table did not like Raymond and it was probably for people like him that EFG organized the charade.

But Raymond was not perturbed, he went ahead in his usually calm, level headedness and clarity of thought and speech to point out clearly that anytime the uniformed men failed in their job, they conveniently turned round and blamed journalists for their failure.

He gave examples of a Chief of Defense Staff (CDS) being epileptic and that information being hidden for over 20 years within the military. The question is, which is a threat to national security - that the country had an epileptic for a CDS and that information having been hidden for decades or that a journalist reported it?

In the big democracies that we claim to be learning from, the health of top public officials is a matter of public concern and of national security. But in this case national security is not the hiding of the information from the public but rather ensuring that the top officials are in the first place healthy and fit to occupy those top positions.

There was also the question of media reports about acquisition of military equipment. Raymond questioned whether the threat lied in the fact that the issue had gone public or whether it lied in the fact that some persons within the military indulged themselves in some underhand deals during the process of acquiring the equipment.

In other words between the journalists who reported the underhand deals and in the process made it public that the military was acquiring some equipment and those who tried to rip off the country of millions of dollars in the name of acquiring military equipment, whose action constitutes a threat to national security.

This bring me to Mr. Boakye Danquah Boadi, Supervising Chief Editor of Ghana’s only news agency, who told the military officers to issue proper instructions to their men when they send them our.

He narrated an incident that happened during the last NPP national delegates congress at Legon when a gun-wielding military man prevent a GNA vehicle entry into the congress area because the vehicle did not have an NPP sticker. Obviously the military man did not understand the security implications of a media houses vehicle bearing a political party’s sticker.

I have a couple of questions myself – when a national security officer speaks rudely to a journalist and the journalists replies in the same manner and gets arrested and punished by the security officer, how does the law view it in terms of national security – is it the security officer whose orientation is that of being rude and impolite to civilians as a show of his authority who is a threat to national security, or the journalist who dared to talk back in the same manner.

Again when a police officer refuses entry to a journalist into a press conference on grounds that the journalist did not have accreditation, when in fact the police officer was sufficiently aware that the journalist needed to collect the accreditation at one side of the same conference venue before entering another side for the conference and yet refused to let him enter because the journalist did not say “I am here for accreditation”, which of the two is a threat to national security.

The orientation of that police man is that of showing people where the power lies. Instead of helping the journalist and saying something like “please when you enter go to this side for your accreditation and then you can go to the other side for the press conference”, he chose to refuse him entry. Between the two of them who is a threat to national security.

Shouldn’t the uniformed men be concentrating on re-orienting their staff to offer better security service to the people who pay them and for whom they wear the uniform, rather than thinking of tutoring journalists on what national security is?

The recruiting of persons who have no knowledge whatsoever in national security into he national security apparatus is the problem, not the journalist who report on issues of national security.

Well, obviously my article did not answer the question as to what national security really is because I am not in the position to answer that question. But I am not alone, even the framers of the 1992 Constitution and the uniformed security officers themselves who claim to have what it takes to teach journalists what national security is all about, do not have a definition for national security.

I guest national security is such a subjective phenomenon I can only say that when it comes to national security, “your view point depends on your point of view.”