The Regional Operations Commander during the Ayawaso West Wuogon by-elections has confessed to the Short Commission his men “were not sharp” in carrying out their duties on the day.

Superintendent Kwesi Ofori told the three-member Commission set up to investigate acts of violence in the by election that it was improper for his men to see “strange movement” by men from the national security and yet fail to report to their superiors.

“Under normal circumstances such movement should be reported,” he told the Commission, conceding also that failure by officers of the National Security to inform the police about their operations on the ground on the day of the by-election created a problem of command and control.

Masked Men

Close to 60 well built men, some of the masked and armed, dressed in national security attires were seen patrolling parts of the constituency during the by-election claiming they were there on a mission to foil acts of terror by some unnamed persons.

In branded SWAT police vehicles the men clashed with persons they claimed were vigilante group members of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) at the precincts of the residence of the parliamentary candidate of the NDC, Delali Brempong.

Some of the men were later accused of firing indiscriminately at innocent citizens and left at least eight people injured, some seriously.

Two others were also captured in a video assaulting a Member of Parliament for Prampram, Sam George.

The NDC accused the government of using state sponsored violence to terrorize innocent citizens in order to win elections. They subsequently pulled out of the election, which was won by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) candidate, Lydia Alhassan.

Read More: Profile of Members of the Ayawaso West Wuogon Commission of Inquiry

Emile Short Commission of Inquiry

The violent scenes on the 31 January by elections became a subject of national uproar forcing the president to institute a national inquiry into the matter.

Top officials of the National Security including the National Security Minister and Coordinator have all appeared before the Emile Short Commission of Inquiry to give their testimony.

The Director of Operations at the National Security, Colonel Michael Opoku in justifying the presence of his men said they had picked up intelligence some men were stockpiling arms in the constituency in a bid to cause mayhem.

They were there to foil that attack, he justified.

It appeared however that those officials of the national security did not inform personnel of the police service who had direct responsibility in election security.

When he took his turn at the Commission, the Regional Operations Commander on the day of the election said for effective policing, the mere presence of the SWAT team should have prompted his men to be on the alert and to have informed their superiors but that did not happen.

When a member of the Commission Prof Henrietta Mensah Bonsu asked him if his men “were security conscious” on the day, Supt Kwasi Ofori responded, “they were not sharp enough.”

He revealed that the national security is at the topmost level of the security architecture and has every right to intervene if it thought the security of the nation would be compromised at any point.

While his team anticipated terror attacks, snatching of ballot boxes in their operational order, they had no idea the likely presence of the team from national security, a situation he said would have been avoided if there had been better coordination among all the security forces on the day of the election.