The Minister of Interior, Ambrose Dery has emphasized his confidence in the Inspector General of Police (IGP) saying he’s happy with the Police Chief’s performance.
According to the Minister, the government does not have any plans to remove Dr. George Akuffo-Dampare as the IGP.
The Minister’s comment follows the circulation of a leaked tape in which a Commissioner of Police who identifies himself as Mensah is heard in a conversation with a politician who describes himself as a former Northern Regional Chair of the governing NPP, plotting the removal of IGP, Dr. George Akuffo Dampare over fears he will be too firm in the 2024 elections.
The Police Commissioner who is said to be retiring is heard telling the politician that the IGP is too firm and will not allow machinations in next year’s polls if he is not removed.
He further notes that the nature of security the IGP provided during the Assin North by election shows he will not allow any rigging in the polls.
“This IGP won’t help us. He won’t, he wants everything to be done fairly and we don’t win elections that way. If we don’t remove him we can’t break the 8, in politics we need machinations and this IGP won’t allow that,” the Police Commissioner is heard saying.
He also stated that the President has refused to listen to his appeals to replace the IGP with him.
“The President is not listening; I have been telling him. Even if they don’t want to give me the job, they should give it to another person but they don’t want to listen.”
But the Interior Minister in an interview with EIB Network’s Parliamentary Correspondent, Ibrahim Alhassan stated that the tape must be ignored with the contempt that it deserves.
“There is no plot to remove anybody. As far as I am concerned, he’s doing a very good job. What the President made clear right back as far as the 2016 manifesto was that there was a fear syndrome in Ghana and part of the fear syndrome was that people thought we had a security system that favoured a particular class of people. People in office were too big to be touched and there the tenets of the rule of law that we are equal before the law was not tenable and we also had issue of professionalism with the police that we were not training people adequately and not equipping them. That’s what we set out to deal with and therefore as far as I am concerned, we’ve made a lot of progress along that line.
“We have a police system that is professional that will arrest you whether you are MP or Minister when you commit an offence you are arrested and dealt with. Above all, they will arrest you are a policeman or Policewoman.”
Source: Kasapafmonline.com/102.5FM
