The new IGP of Ghana: Congratulations – with Advice and Your Challenge to Society

The recent postings of the long impressive CV of the new Inspector General of Police (IGP) on the GLU Forum, needs a comment. On behalf of the Ghana Leadership Union (GLU), I offer our congratulations.

This is the longest achievement CV I have seen and propagated on social media for a while now. The impact of a police Chief, though, for society, is how the services he manages impacts crime rates and not necessarily what he did to impact the lives of police personnel.

For long some of us had notes from the 1960s, that our police deserved good treatment including housing and good benefits. However, we must state openly that statistics on police corruption has not been seen to indicate the drop in corruption among the police.

In 2010 a letter I wrote to President Mills seems to have been taken seriously and the late President within weeks proposed and eventually had police salaries raised by a decent percentage jump.

This raise did not seem to influence the perception of the rate of police corruption and service to communities. Not to be personal, but in my home of East Legon I have personally made calls to the police in the night and been told they did not have vehicles. The police also do not seem to want to take notes, based on a personal experience in 2018.

Ghanaian public officials deserve fair treatment and I think the police was for long time not treated well because of the lower level of education requirements the colonial masters left us and continued after Independence.

I have been to some of the Caribbean Islands and studied and asked questions and it appears Ghana police service as also our whole Governmental and administrative systems could use some lessons from our brothers who were isolated from some of our cultures by misfortune of the ugly slave trade!

Barbados and Dominica as example, have Economic GDP per Capita (a good way of measuring standard of living), show these nations have beaten African nations by some 3-5 times. Barbados is about 15,000 ranges while Ghana’s GDP/Capita is 5,300 ranges.
It will shock some to know that black people can manage their own nations and with far less natural resources as we have!

It all starts with DISCIPLINE and the Ghana Police Service is one place to start. I am impressed with a young man who enters the police and completes his O and A levels and able to continue to University to become a Chartered Accountant and obtain a PhD. Right on brother!
I congratulate the new IGP, but would advise Dr. George Akuffo Dampere to try and challenge himself and measure success by improvement of discipline in society with the help of the Ghana police! Why? Because honestly some of us are not impressed with the Ghana police service! Not yet!

By Kwaku A. Danso
President- Ghana Leadership Union

Oct. 8, 2021