The Ghana Police Service (GPS) has disassociated itself from the pronouncement of DCOP Prince Gabriel Waabu who had earlier indicated that the military will not be part of providing security during the 2024 general election.
Describing the comment as unfounded and not representative of the position of the Police Service, the Police in a statement apologised to the Ghana Armed Forces and indicated the conduct of the officer is being subjected to internal disciplinary processes
“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,” the statement said.
DCOP Waabu had disclosed that the military will not participate in the 2024 election security operations.
According to him, the Ghana Police Service, alongside the Prisons Service, the Fire Service, and Immigration Service, will be the sole security agencies to ensure the smooth conduct of the elections.
“We are not maybe going to involve the military as it were in this year’s election. Whatever happened in 2020, a lesson has been learnt out of it,” DCOP Waabu stated on Joy News on Monday.
Dubbing the 2024 elections as ‘our baby’, the DCOP stressed the police’s primary role in election security, while acknowledging the value of collaboration with sister security services.
“The 2024 election is our baby. It is the police baby, but we work with our sister security to assist in one way or the other,” he explained.
According to him, the police force’s adept handling of past electoral events has provided valuable insights, laying a solid foundation for future operations.
“If you looked at 2023, the elections that we conducted, you can see that all were incident-free. This is the tactic and we have learnt out of it, we have taken notes out of it, and so we know where we are moving.
DCOP Waabu reassured that issues of the involvement of the military have been conclusively addressed by the Inspector General of Police George Akuffo Dampare.
According to him, the police chief, alongside the Police Operations Management Advisory Board (POMAB), has clarified the police’s primary responsibility for internal security matters, ensuring a streamlined approach for the 2024 elections.
“That situation has been sorted out by the Inspector General of Police with his POMAB members, and it’s a clear-cut issue that every internal issue is the police duty and that is for sure,” DCOP Waabu affirmed.
