COVID 19 Lock-down brutalities: Orientation has been an issue for the military- Security Consultant

Fraud and Security Consultant, Richard Kumadoe has underscored the need to re-orient officers of the state security agencies, to better understand and react in a more humane and democratic manner, to the behaviors of civilians, especially in this COVID 19 crisis.

Videos, purported to have been shot on some military officers assaulting civilians who flouted the lockdown protocol, have gone viral- intimidating some Ghanaians.

But General Officer Commanding, Headquarters Command, Brigadier General A.Y Nsiah, at a press briefing organised by the Ministry of Information yesterday, on an update of the lockdown operation in the Greater Accra, Greater Kumasi, and Tema, disputed these claims of assault by officers on civilians.

Albeit, Mr. Kumadoe remarked that these occurrences need not be discounted or overlooked. He recounted that such incidents must be checked and that, he recommended, requires some orientation and training in modern-day democratic civilian-military engagement.

“Orientation has been an issue with the military and best practice in modern-day democracy, and democratic state in terms of the relationship between civilians and the security officers.

“Train them to match up best practices in a democratic state, and then again the willingness to serve. Sometimes they are angry with the system that you are bringing them to the street so when they see a civilian, they see the civilian as enemies. What they must understand is that we fighting a war, and it is with an enemy we cannot see but we know how the enemy operates. So we need to prepare our minds and soul to combat this enemy, to resolve this so that our country will be back to normalcy,” he prayed.

Mr Kumadoe blamed these unfortunate occurrences on politicians, saying;”when it comes to the training of our people, they play ostrich with it. They themselves become too political. They don’t take care of the men in uniform. Once you don’t train, you will have inefficiency in the street. And once you cut down the training cost, productivity will be low and that is what we are seeing in the street,” he added.