The Quiet Risk: Why Ghana Needs Evidence-Based Violence Prevention

Ghana is often regarded as a pillar of stability in West Africa. However, beneath this reputation lies a growing fragility. UNDP’s vulnerability assessment on the threats of violent extremism and radicalization in Ghana’s five northern regions underscores a clear reality: stability today does not guarantee immunity tomorrow. The findings underscore a critical truth: preventing violent extremism is not only a security necessity but also a developmental imperative.

This commentary critically re-examines the systemic weaknesses identified in the study, the evidence that must be acknowledged, and the strategies available for sustaining peace and resilience without succumbing to politicization or alarmism.

1. The Dual Reality of Ghana's Security Narrative

At the national level, Ghana's security narrative emphasizes external threats-such as cross-border infiltration from the Sahel, porous borders, and the spread of extremism. In contrast, local communities primarily focus on internal socio-economic pressures, exclusion, and unresolved conflicts, which they perceive as the true drivers of vulnerability. This discrepancy is significant. When national policies prioritize border security while local realities demand socio-economic support, the system risks addressing one issue while inadvertently exacerbating another.

2. Evidence of Deepening Structural Vulnerabilities

Youth Exclusion as a Persistent Warning Signal

The survey undertaken as part of the report highlights a troubling trend: 41% of respondents are youth, with 36% to 49% of youth in certain regions within northern Ghana facing unemployment, many of whom express a complete disconnection from state institutions. Disturbingly, 3-8% reported direct recruitment attempts into radical groups during their schooling years, a significant statistic in any national security context.

Education as the Strongest Predictor of Radicalization

Regression analysis based on the field data clearly indicates that:

Having no formal education is the most significant predictor of vulnerability to radicalization, surpassing social (social exclusion; weak trust in state institutions; identity conflicts) or economic (Youth unemployment; poverty; livelihood insecurity) factors. 

This insight is not merely a data point; it should fundamentally inform programming strategies.

Normalization of Insecurity

Across all five northern regions of Ghana, survey respondents describe their challenges-conflicts, marginalization, porous borders, and youth disillusionment-as "everyday realities." This normalization represents one of the report's most concerning findings. A society that normalizes insecurity becomes increasingly susceptible to extremist narratives.

3. Border Dynamics: A Development and Security Paradox

Despite heightened operations along the northern border, there are over 80 unofficial crossing points, vast unpatrolled areas, and smuggling routes that serve as essential lifelines for border communities. Communities report a trend of "foreign humanitarian actors" providing social services such as boreholes and religious facilities construction-efforts that foster goodwill but may conceal ulterior motives. Residents approach these interactions with caution, often characterizing them as "testing the waters." The takeaway is clear: border security must be intertwined with community trust and economic alternatives.

4. Shifting Social Incentives: From Constructive to Destructive

The transition from constructive incentives (education, livelihoods, community cohesion) to destructive ones (grievances, exclusion, conflict exploitation, misinformation) is gradual, driven by unemployment, political polarization, inter-religious tensions, and local conflicts. Once constructive incentives deteriorate, extremist narratives can swiftly fill the void.

5. A Critical Yet Constructive View: Addressing Systemic Struggles

Without assigning blame, the evidence points to systemic deficiencies that require candid recognition:

 (a) Fragmented early-warning and information pathways

Communities remain largely unaware of prominent national campaigns such as "See Something, Say Something," despite its visibility at the policy level.

(b) Insufficient state presence in high-risk areas

From education to border management, data consistently highlights gaps in state capacity-gaps that non-state actors can exploit.

(c) Youth "Camps" emerging as informal recruitment hubs

Often perceived as benign entertainment venues, these spaces are transforming into informal channels for mobilization and influence.

(d) Ongoing duplication of efforts

Communities frequently report "too many initiatives, too little change," indicating a pressing need for integrated programming rather than parallel efforts.

6. A Solutions-Oriented Path Forward

A critical examination of Ghana's response to violent extremism leads to one clear conclusion: Ghana requires a comprehensive, whole-of-society approach that aligns security vigilance with investments in human development.

 1. Youth Empowerment as a Frontline Defense

• Expand support for livelihoods, entrepreneurship, and social protection, particularly targeting out-of-school and unemployed youth.
• Combine economic inclusion with mentoring, coaching, leadership training, and psychosocial support systems.

2. Border Security Reform - Community First

• Integrate the Border Security (BOSEC) into the national security framework.
• Equip border posts with modern monitoring technology and enhance cross-border information sharing.
• Institutionalize community-led early warning systems and establish safe reporting channels at all levels and formalize their relationship with early response systems.

3. Deepen Social Cohesion Infrastructure

• Strengthen existing architecture of peace (National and Regional Peace Councils, religious councils, and customary institutions) as "peace engines."
• Promote intra and inter-faith and inter and inter-ethnic dialogue in communities identified as hotspots.

4. Counter Online Radicalization

• Establish public-private partnerships with digital platforms for content moderation, data sharing, and targeted women and youth-focused awareness initiatives.

5. Operationalize the National Framework for P/CVE - Beyond Paper

• Transform policy into tangible, funded, locally grounded interventions.
• Enhance the management of small arms and light weapons (SALW) stockpiles and disrupt illegal supply chains.

 The Vulnerability Assessment on the Threats of Violent Extremism and Radicalization in Northern Regions of Ghana report clearly warns that vulnerability in Ghana's northern corridors is escalating more rapidly than resilience is being developed. Communities, particularly the youth, are increasingly expressing their frustration and disillusionment. However, the report also highlights that Ghana still has a vital window of opportunity. A prevention agenda grounded in evidence, inclusivity, and local ownership can reverse this trend. Achieving this will require careful pacing, integration, and a willingness to confront systemic blind spots with humility and determination. Ghana must transform the insights from this study into actionable, sustained, community-driven change in order to maintain its stability as an asset in the sub-region.

Former BNI Boss Exposes How State Keeps Getting Surprised

There is a scene that plays out in the highest offices of the most powerful governments in the world every single morning. The President of the United States sits down, usually before 8am, and reads what is called the President’s Daily Brief. It is not a newspaper. It is not a summary of last night’s news neither is it a summary of incidents that happened the day before. It is a classified intelligence document, carefully written, carefully assessed, carefully delivered giving the most powerful person on earth insight on what is happening in the world that he does not yet know, what is developing that could affect America’s interests, and what his intelligence community thinks it means.

The CIA, the NSA, the DIA, the FBI’s intelligence arm, and a dozen other agencies have spent the preceding twenty-four hours collecting, analysing, and arguing about what goes into that document. Analysts have stress-tested their conclusions. Senior officers have pushed back on assessments they find too confident or not confident enough. The whole apparatus would have been working, through the night if necessary, so that when the President opens that briefing book, he is not guessing. He is reading the best available assessed judgment the state of America can produce about the world as it actually is.

Now ask yourself a simple question. How many African Presidents including Ghana’s get the benefit of serious intelligence analytic support towards decisions and governance?

Intelligence is Not James Bond or Jason Bourne

Before we go further, let us get something out of the way. When most people hear the word intelligence, they think of spies in dark clothing, intercepted phone calls, surveillance operations, and safe houses. That world exists. But it is not the world that makes the difference in governance. The thing that makes the difference, the thing that separates governments that make good decisions under pressure from governments that are perpetually surprised by events is analysis. Rigorous, disciplined, honest analytical work done by people with high mental agility, clinically selected, trained to think clearly about complex problems and write about them in plain language for decision-makers who do not have time for ambiguity.

Sherman Kent, the American historian who essentially invented modern intelligence analysis, said it decades ago: intelligence is knowledge. Not secrets. The business of collecting information, making sense of it, and delivering that sense to the people who need to act on it.

That is the business Ghana and many African states have never quite managed to take seriously.

What Intelligence Analysis Actually Looks Like When It Works

Let’s consider what happened in the lead-up to the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden. The operation itself; the helicopters, the Navy SEALs, the compound in Abbottabad, is the part that gets dramatized in films. What does not get dramatized is the years of analytical work that preceded it. CIA analysts piecing together fragments of intelligence from multiple sources over multiple years. Building a picture, slowly and painstakingly, of a courier network. Assessing, with explicit acknowledgment of their uncertainty, that the compound in Abbottabad was probably bin Laden’s location. Presenting that assessment to President Obama with honest confidence levels, not certainty, because certainty was not available, but structured analytical judgment that gave the President enough to make a decision.

Obama made the call. The operation succeeded. But the decision that made the operation possible was not made in the Situation Room on the night of the raid. It was made, in analytical terms, over years of disciplined intelligence work that gave a President real option instead of guesses.

Again, consider a less dramatic but equally instructive example. When COVID-19 was still being called a novel pneumonia cluster in Wuhan in late 2019, intelligence services in the United States and elsewhere were already beginning to produce assessments about what it might become. Not because they had a crystal ball. Because they had analysts whose job was to watch for exactly that kind of emerging biological threat, to track the early signals before they became headlines, and to tell political leadership what was coming while there was still time to prepare. Some governments listened and got ahead of it. Others waited for the news cycle to tell them what their intelligence services were already trying to say. Did we wait for the news cycle in Ghana and rest of Africa?

What It Looks Like When It Does Not Work and What That Costs

Here is a question that should bother us in West Africa and every Ghanaian more than it does. When Boko Haram went from a fringe religious group in north eastern Nigeria to a force that controlled territory the size of Belgium, killed tens of thousands of people, and displaced more than two million, at what point did Nigeria’s political leadership receive an intelligence assessment saying this movement is becoming dangerous and here is what dangerous looks like in five years?

The answer, from everything the public record shows, is: not early enough. Not in a form that compelled action. Not delivered to political consumers who had been trained to read intelligence assessments and respond to them. Nigeria had security agencies. It did not have, in the functional sense, an intelligence service producing the kind of forward-looking analytical work that would have given its government real options before Boko Haram became a crisis that no one could ignore.

By the time it became impossible to ignore, the options had narrowed from prevention to containment. From cheap to catastrophically expensive. From a governance problem to a humanitarian disaster.

West African states including Ghana watched that happen across our eastern border. Did we draw any institutional lessons from it?

The Sahelian Threat and What We Are Not Seeing

Today, Burkina Faso is effectively partitioned. The Malian state controls less of Mali than it did ten years ago. Jihadist groups that started in the Saharan north have pushed through central Mali, through Burkina Faso, and are pressing into the coastal states. Northern Côte d’Ivoire has seen attacks. Northern Togo has seen attacks. Northern Benin has seen attacks.

The map of this expansion, if you draw it honestly, has a direction. And that direction does not stop at Ghana’s border out of respect for our stability or our democracy or our warm relationship with the herdsmen passing through our northern regions. It stops, or does not stop, based on the conditions it finds. The grievances available to exploit. The ungoverned spaces available to occupy. The recruitment networks available to activate.

A functioning intelligence community would be producing regular assessed judgments on exactly this question. Not newspaper summaries. Not randomly collected situation reports on incidents that have already occurred. Analytical assessments of where the expansion is heading, what indicators would tell us the calculus is changing, and what for instance Ghana’s specific vulnerabilities are, the open northern border, the youth unemployment, the ethnic and kinship networks that cross into Burkina Faso in both directions.

Is that work being done? Is it reaching the people who need it? Is it shaping decisions about where to deploy resources, what relationships to build, and what early warning architecture to construct? We may not have enough time on our hand.

The Argument Some People Make and Why It Does Not Hold

There is a view, heard often enough within policy circles in Accra and beyond in West Africa, that intelligence analysis is a luxury of wealthy states; that the CIA and MI6 and Mossad can afford elaborate analytical architectures because they have the budgets for them, and we should focus on the basics first. This argument has the causality exactly backwards.

Rwanda in 1994 did not have a functioning intelligence service capable of seeing what was coming. The result was one of the worst genocides of the twentieth century, a country destroyed in a hundred days, and a reconstruction cost in lives, in institutional capacity, in economic development foregone, that dwarfs any conceivable investment in analytical intelligence. Rwanda rebuilt. And one of the first things the post-genocide leadership did was invest seriously in intelligence capability, not because they had suddenly become wealthy, but because they had learned, in the most terrible possible way, what it costs not to see.

Singapore is not a large country. It does not have oil wealth or a vast defence budget. What it has is a government that decided, from independence, that a small country in a complex neighbourhood cannot afford not to know what is coming. Singapore built a horizon-scanning analytical architecture (RAHS) that is now studied by intelligence services around the world. It did not do this because it was rich. It became what it is, in part, because it did this.

Analytical intelligence is not a luxury of good governance. It is a precondition of it.

What the Difference Would Feel Like in Ghana

Imagine a Ghana in which the President, before making the decision to commit security resources to the northern border, receives an assessed intelligence brief telling him what the Intelligence community’s analytical units have determined about the current state of extremist network activity in the three northern regions; where recruitment is happening, which communities are most vulnerable, what indicators of escalation the community is currently tracking, and what the assessment of risk over the next twelve months is.

Imagine a Ghana in which the decision about how to respond to the annual flooding of Accra is informed by an intelligence picture not of flooding locations and effects but of the corruption network behind illegal building approvals, the officials, the developers, the financial flows, the political connections so that enforcement is targeted, evidence-based, and resistant to the selective pressure that has historically spared the well-connected.

Imagine a Ghana in which a future pandemic is not first understood through CNN but through an early analytical warning produced by an intelligence analytical community that has been watching the biological threat environment the way the CIA watches geopolitical risk.

None of that requires a CIA budget. It requires analytical seriousness, the decision that this kind of knowledge matters, that the people who produce it deserve to be selected carefully beyond partisanship, trained properly, and listened to honestly, and that the political consumer at the top of the system is going to read what they produce and take it seriously.

That decision has not yet been made in Ghana and many African states in the sustained, structural way that would produce results.

The Question Worth Sitting With

The United States does not start its President’s morning with a classified intelligence brief because it is a superpower. It became and remains a superpower, in part, because it decided early that governing well requires knowing what you are governing in and invested, consistently and seriously, in building the institutional machinery to provide that knowledge.

Ghana governs one of West Africa’s most stable and democratic countries. It sits in one of the continent’s most complex and rapidly changing security environments. It faces threats that are not hypothetical; they are documented, directional, and approaching. The question is not whether Ghana can afford to think seriously about intelligence analysis. The question is whether Ghana can afford not to.

What if someone had told the President before it happened? That is the question an intelligence service exists to make unnecessary.

The author, Nana Attobrah Quaicoe is an Intelligence and National Security Analyst, a former Director General of the Bureau of National Intelligence (2022-2025) and writes on national security and intelligence reforms, risk, integrity assessment and institutional governance in the Ghanaian context.

Former BNI Boss: We Know Everything, We See Nothing

 When I was leading the Bureau of National Intelligence, I had a habit of dropping a thick folder of field reports on the desk in front of an officer; pages of accounts from across the country, incidents recorded, events described, and situations noted and ask one question: what does this tell us about six to twelve months from now? The silence was always the answer.

From my readings and experience of intelligence practice and professionals in the sub region, forward looking insight has not been how we looked at things. From the colonial to post-colonial periods, intelligence services in Sub Saharan Africa have trained people for decades, to record what had already happened. Someone in the field filed a report. Someone at headquarters collated it. Someone above them summarized it and sent it up the chain.

At the top, a decision-maker received a neat document telling them, with reasonable accuracy, what had gone on across the country over the past week or month. Thorough. Organized. And in the most important sense, undirected at a stated national security priority, usually after the facts because by the time it landed on the desk, the moment for doing something about it had already passed.

But Intelligence for National Security is not about what happened. It is about what is likely going to happen with a stated degree of confidence. And confusing those two things is not a minor operational hiccup. It is a fundamental failure of purpose.

The Colonial Inheritance Nobody Wants to Talk About

The Intelligence architecture operating today in many African countries was never designed to create an integrated analytical picture of a complex problem. It was designed to watch and report. The colonial security apparatus it grew from had one job: monitor the population, record dissent, track movements, and send the information upward to administrators who would decide what to do with it. It was a surveillance and filing machine, oriented entirely toward control, entirely backward-looking.

That machine did not shut down at independence. It was renamed, re-staffed, and redirected but the bones stayed the same. Watch. Record. Report. Generations of officers were formed inside that orientation. The culture hardened around it. And so, decades later, the dominant output of intelligence services is still what it has always been: the incident diary. The narrative of events. The careful, detailed, utterly retrospective description of what occurred.

That is not intelligence work. That is filing. And no matter how meticulously you file things, it does not protect the country from what may be coming.

Two Kinds of Intelligence — and Why Mixing Them Up Is Dangerous

Here is something that needs to be said plainly, because the confusion around it explains a great deal. There are two fundamentally different kinds of intelligence, and they are not the same job.

The first is law enforcement, criminal and police intelligence. It looks backward, deliberately and appropriately. Its job is to solve crimes, identify who did what, build an evidence chain that will hold up in court, and support prosecution. The detective taking statements, the forensic analyst processing a scene, the police intelligence officer building a case file all doing criminal intelligence. The consumer at the end of the line is a judge or a jury. The product has to meet a legal standard. The question it answers is: what happened, who did it, and can we prove it?

The second is national security intelligence; in Ghana, what the RD, NSB, DI and BNI are actually mandated to produce. It looks forward, deliberately and necessarily. Its job is to collect information on stated national security priorities and developing situations, analyse it rigorously, and deliver assessed judgment to political decision-makers to enhance decision making. The consumer is the President, the National Security Council, the minister facing a decision at 7 am with incomplete information and no time to wait. The product does not need to be admissible in court. It needs to be honest, well-reasoned, and timely. The question it answers is: what is developing, how confident are we, and what does the decision-maker need to know within the time?

These two types of intelligence require different training, different methods, different institutional cultures, and they produce completely different outputs. Building a national intelligence service around the methods and mindset of the first, when its mandate requires the second, is not a minor administrative mistake. It is a structural failure. And it is exactly what many intelligence services in Africa have been doing.

The Intelligence services in Ghana for instance have operated, for most of their existence, closer to a criminal intelligence model than a national security intelligence one. Its officers have been formed in a culture that rewards the collection and recording of incidents over the analysis of trends. Its relationship with political leadership has been one of reporting rather than advising, transmitting information rather than delivering judgment.

The result is a national intelligence service doing a different job with considerable effort.

What Forward-Looking Intelligence Actually Looks Like

A criminal intelligence report tells you three men were arrested near the northern border with materials linked to extremist financing. Full stop. Case file opened.

A national security intelligence assessment tells you something different. It says that over the past eighteen months, a pattern of incidents in this corridor, combined with recruitment activity in three specific communities, the documented movement of a known logistics facilitator across the border four times in six weeks, and a shift in communication patterns among persons of interest in two northern districts suggests that an operational cell is in the early stages of establishment. Here are the indicators that would confirm that assessment. Here are the indicators that would challenge it. Here is what you should be watching for over the next sixty days.

The first document records a fact. The second produces something you can act on. The first tells you something happened. The second tells you something is happening, gives you a window while the window is still open, and tells you exactly what to watch for.

A government receiving only the first is a government that is always reacting. A government receiving the second has real options to pre-empt, disrupt, redirect resources, or at minimum get ahead of the situation before it becomes unmanageable. Over time, the difference between those two governments is not academic. It is the difference between security and chronic exposure.

Where Ghana Actually Stands

The threat environment Ghana is operating in right now is not the one from thirty years ago. The intelligence posture has not kept pace, and that gap is becoming dangerous.

Galamsey has stopped being an environmental or enforcement problem and become a full-scale organized crime problem with arms dimensions, foreign financing, chieftaincy connections, political protection, and money laundering of significant scale. These networks cannot be disrupted by incident reports. They need to be mapped analytically, understood as the sophisticated organizations they are, in their full structure and their vulnerabilities before any enforcement action amounts to more than a press conference.

The Sahelian threat is no longer distant. Burkina Faso is effectively partitioned. Northern Côte d’Ivoire, Togo, and Benin have all seen attacks. The groups behind this expansion have strategy, financing, recruitment systems, and a southward territorial logic that has not reversed once in over a decade. Ghana’s northern border is long, porous, and overlaps with ethnic and kinship networks reaching deep into Burkina Faso. The conditions that preceded attacks elsewhere exist here in measurable form. What does not exist, in any demonstrable way, is a sustained analytical picture of how this threat is evolving and what our specific vulnerabilities are.

Add organized crime, cybercrime networks operating openly from Accra, human trafficking, and drug transhipment through Ghanaian ports, and you have a threat landscape that incident diaries cannot begin to address.

A state navigating all of that on field reports and collated summaries is not just under-resourced. It is structurally blind.

What Has to Change — Starting With the Analyst Leadership and Direction

The shift from incident diary to real intelligence analysis is not a technology problem or even primarily a budget problem. It is an orientation problem. And the most consequential single appointment in fixing that orientation is the analyst leadership and doctrine.

In Ghana’s current culture, the chief analyst is largely understood as a senior administrator, someone who manages report flow, keeps the memoranda moving, and ensures the chain functions. That is not a chief analyst. That is a chief clerk with a more impressive title.

A real chief analyst is the intellectual leader of the analytical function. They must be formally trained in structured analytical techniques; how to build an argument from incomplete evidence, how to surface and test the assumptions buried in every assessment, how to run alternative analysis that forces the team to consider what they might be getting wrong, and how to communicate confidence levels honestly so that the decision-maker can tell the difference between solid ground and educated inference. These are not natural instincts. They are professional skills that have to be taught, not by people who have not practised or only exposed to the same narrow old ways of doing things.

The chief analyst role must be one who reads, seriously, widely, and continuously. Not just the classified reporting coming through the department, but academic literature on the threats being assessed, the history of comparable environments, the political economy of the region, the methodological literature of the analytical profession. James Mattis made reading a condition of advancement for his military officers because no single career can provide the full range of experience the work demands. The same logic applies here. The analyst who reads only internal reports is an analyst whose mental library is too narrow for the job.

The chief analyst must also engage outside the institution’s walls, with researchers, civil society, subject matter experts in economics, public health, climate science, and all the disciplines that illuminate what intelligence collection alone cannot reach. Ghana’s present intelligence culture treats this kind of external engagement with suspicion which must change. That instinct has it exactly backwards. A department sealed off from the external knowledge community is a department that is slowly losing its ability to make sense of the world it is supposed to be assessing.

And the chief analyst must be able to brief. Not summarise. Stand in front of the most senior decision-makers in the country, deliver a judgment clearly, hold the position under political pressure without flinching, and walk out having genuinely advanced the principal’s understanding. That is the job on the supply side. There are fundamental changes that must happen from the demand side as well that will be discussed later.

The incident diary tells you the house is on fire. The intelligence assessment tells you the wiring was faulty three years ago and shows you which rooms are next.

Ghana needs the second document. It is currently getting the first.

The author, Nana Attobrah Quaicoe is an Intelligence and National Security Analyst, a former Director General of the Bureau of National Intelligence (2022-2025) and writes on national security and intelligence reforms, risk, integrity assessment and institutional governance in the Ghanaian context.

Soldier Interdicted Over Tiktok Comment

 A serving member of the Ghana Armed Forces has reportedly been interdicted and subjected to military disciplinary proceedings over a comment she allegedly posted on TikTok, sparking criticism from a former soldier who has questioned the fairness of the process.

The criticism was directed at the Commanding Officer of the 5th Battalion of Infantry (5BN), Lieutenant Colonel Prosper Sapey Adablah, who is accused of presiding over a summary trial that resulted in the female staff sergeant receiving a severe reprimand.

In a video circulating on social media, the former soldier claimed the disciplinary process was flawed, alleging that no independent witness appeared before the summary trial to testify either for or against the accused.

“How do you try a soldier without a witness? In 2026, you charge a soldier and put her on trial, yet there was no witness to testify against or for her,” he said.

According to him, the only witness listed during the proceedings was the military police investigator who handled the case, arguing that an investigator should not serve as a witness since the charge was based on his own report.

He further questioned who the complainant in the matter was and maintained that the soldier’s alleged offence amounted only to posting a comment on TikTok rather than sharing images or videos in military uniform or exposing military installations.

The former soldier contrasted the disciplinary action with what he described as widespread use of social media by other serving personnel, alleging that some soldiers post videos in uniform, conduct live TikTok broadcasts while on duty, and share military-related content without facing similar sanctions.

He claimed the punishment amounted to selective enforcement of military regulations and described the severe reprimand as a sanction that could negatively affect the soldier’s service record and future career progression.

The former serviceman also alleged that senior officers were behind the disciplinary action, although he did not provide evidence to support the claim.

The Ghana Armed Forces has not publicly commented on the allegations or disclosed the circumstances surrounding the disciplinary action against the soldier.

CJ Under Fire! …Over ‘Old Man Agenda’ Remarks

 Chief Justice Paul Baffoe-Bonnie’s comments during a visit to the Minerals Income Investment Fund (MIIF) have raised questions about the political neutrality expected of judicial officers under the Code of Conduct for Judges and Magistrates.

Speaking at MIIF, the Chief Justice referred to President John Dramani Mahama as the “old man” and described the President’s agenda as one that would benefit the country.

“The old man’s agenda is an agenda that will benefit the nation and we cannot say that we are the best in the land,” he said.

He further stated that President Mahama’s decision to appoint an individual to the position demonstrated the confidence the President had in that person.

“If the old man has said that you are the best person out of the 30 million in the land, then it means he has a lot of confidence in you,” the Chief Justice said.

He subsequently urged officials to support the President’s agenda.

“We should do everything to make sure that his agenda succeeds,” he added.

The comments are being juxtaposed with Rule 6 of the Code of Conduct for Judges and Magistrates, which deals with political and quasi-political activity.

The rule states that “a judge should refrain from political activity inappropriate to his judicial office.”

Under the section on political conduct in general, the Code provides that, notwithstanding Article 55(2) of the 1992 Constitution, a judge or a candidate for appointment to judicial office should not act as a leader or hold office in a political organization, publicly endorse or oppose another candidate for political office, make speeches on behalf of a political organization, or attend political gatherings.

The Chief Justice’s remarks have nevertheless drawn attention because of his direct reference to the President’s agenda and his call for officials to do everything possible to ensure its success.

The comments come in the wake of the Chief Justice’s engagements with state institutions, including MIIF and the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), as part of his interactions with public institutions.

The development has consequently sparked debate over whether such public expressions of support for the agenda of a sitting President are consistent with the standards of political neutrality required of judicial office holders.

UNIPASS Edges Out GCNet, West Blue Consulting

As we went to press, information reaching us indicate that the Ministry of Trade and Industry has sealed a 10-year sole sourced deal with Ghana Link Network Services Ltd to embark on a single window trade facilitation project at the country’s ports.

The deal comes at a time when two existing companies, consisting of GCNet and West Blue have an existing deal with government to deliver similar products in ensuring that the nation does not lose revenue at the ports.

It is also surprising when they are already concerns over duplication among the two pioneer companies, GCNet and West Blue.

Tight lipped MOTI sources indicated that the oncoming company is billed to begin rolling out its programmes, when little or no consultations with stakeholders have been held.

Additionally, DAYBREAK learnt, there was no competitive bidding in the hurriedly-contrived deal.

Recently, the media reported that the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) has given indication the double window platform at the ports will continue to exist until such a time that operators become absolutely conversant with the single window platform being handled by West Blue Consulting.
According to the GPHA, the co-existence of the operations of the Ghana Community Network Services Limited (GCNet) and West Blue Consulting at the ports is due to the slow pace of adoption of the single window platform provided by West Blue Consulting.
Speaking to Citi Business News on the issue, the Terminal Supervisor at the GPHA, Emmanuel Ashaley Neequaye argued that it may take some time for a complete takeover by West Blue Consulting.
“We have become more useful to the GCNet system, we are now trying to incorporate the West Blue system and it is a separate platform and I think people have not gotten used to that platform very well so they all rely on the GCNet platform,”
“They do but not on the larger scale like the GCNet system. I think that eventually the GCNet would fade out for West Blue to come in but people have not gotten used to it. It also has to do with the problem that is often associated with the GCNet system,” he added.
The apparent duplication of roles by West Blue and GCNet despite the collapse of all activities by the Destination Inspection Companies in 2015, has been viewed as contributing to the excessive delays at the ports.
The Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has also bemoaned the development and called for an immediate resolution.
Mr. Ashaley Neequaye also expressed worry at the persistent technical breakdowns with GCNet’s system which accumulates the workloads due to delays.
He is however confident that the seeming confusion over the existence of the two platforms should cease with an eventual phasing out of GCNet’s operations.
“Unfortunately, the problem that is currently facing us is the frequent breakdown in the network. So sometime it holds down our activities for two to four hours and that is the problem that we are facing currently with the GCNet system,” he remarked.
Mr. Neequaye who was speaking at the sidelines of of a workshop on challenges for multilateral trading system – Perspectives from West Africa further intimated,
“The problem is a technical one and with the interconnectivity, the systems go off whenever the weather gets bad. This has been there since the inception of GCNet. Sometimes when the weather gets clear, it will work normal for about two months, but when it is raining, it goes off, when it’s stormy too same challenge. At other times too you wouldn’t be able to determine what the problem is.”
In another report, Freight Forwarders in the country had blamed the duplication of works at the Tema Port on the activities of West Blue Consulting and GCNet.
According to them, there appears to be some tension between the two companies tasked to provide validation services and help in the implementation of the Single Window Project.
Appealing to the Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia to help address the issue, the President of the Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders (GIFF) Mr. Kwabena Ofosu-Appiah stated at conference in Accra that the turf war is getting unhealthy for revenue mobilization.
“Why should two traders buying from the same source on the same conveyance be handed two contrasting outcomes, this does not build well for compliance, it forces those who want to be compliant to go out fishing,” he pointed out.
Mr. Ofosu-Appiah explained that “there are two major IT solution providers– that is West Blue and GCNet. The fact that they have two different terms of reference known under different conditions deliver a problem.
He stated that the conflict between the two companies emanate from the sector ministries that supervise them.
“The mandate of West Blue Consulting is from the Finance Ministry through GRA while that of GCNet is under Trade Ministry. The government of Ghana is the ultimate client but the truth of the matter is that there is always tension between the two anytime they must cooperate to deliver a seamless solution for the larger course,” he narrated.
Citing some examples, Mr. Ofosu-Appiah said that there have many instances where the activities of one company had been usurped and given to the other.
“A case in point was when the IBF module was plugged off from GCNet platform to the Ghana Trading Hub that is the Pre-arrival Assessment Reporting Systems (PAARS). Another classic case is the call of manifest onto PAARS platform creating anxiety within GCNet which used to have the manifest”.
“The two scenarios justify a turf war, because one can only survive if their bargaining powers are intact. But while they are at it trade facilitation as well as port efficiency suffers with its attendant cost,” he warned.
Mr. Ofosu-Appiah made the assertions in the presence of stakeholders and the Vice President, Dr. Bawumia.