The Director-General of Research and Planning, DCOP Mr. Gabriel Prince Waabu, made remarks on Tuesday claiming the Police Service would be the primary provider of security for the 2024 elections. The Ghana Police Service (GPS) has referred to this as “an unfortunate statement.”
The Service also released a disclaimer to distance itself from DCOP Waabu’s assertions and apologized to the Ghana Armed Forces for the remarks.
DCOP Waabu participated in a panel discussion on Monday, February 19, 2024, at the opening of Elections Headquarters, a JoyNews program for the in-depth coverage of the general elections in 2024. Waabu mentioned that the Ghana Police Service had gained a lot of experience from policing previous elections, specifically mentioning the GPS’s exclusive monitoring of the NDC and NPP internal primaries.
Waabu highlighted the primaries’ peaceful nature and contrasted it with the pockets of violence that occurred during Election 2020, which was overseen by the combined security agencies.
He implied that the military might not have any involvement at all and that the police would use those lessons to develop strategies and guarantee incident-free elections in 2024.
However, the Police Service has disowned this viewpoint in a statement, saying it does not represent the position of the Service.
However, the Police Service has disowned this viewpoint in a statement, saying it does not represent the position of the Service.
“We want to state that under the National Elections Security Taskforce Architecture, the Ghana Police Service works with all other security services including the Ghana Armed Forces to ensure peace, security, law, and order, before, during, and after elections.
“The approach to the 2024 General elections will be no different,” said the statement issued by the police.
Check out the full statement below:
Watch the interview below:
