All over the world, fighting crime has never been a sole duty of government and institutions of law and order.
That is why those who claimed it was their divine duty to use politics as an excuse to blame government and the Ghana Police Service were told by equally vociferous Ghanaians to fix themselves first.
The truth, however, is that criminals and other social misfits are not bred in our woodlots and forests but in families, homes and communities before they gang up and start attacking us as if society owes them their comfort.
Timely caution
The advice and caution from our police chiefs are that our day-to-day activities like walking to the market, going to bed, driving out and back home as well as leaving home to the bank should all be conducted with a sense of security in mind.
Some forty or so years ago, criminals were a scarce breed because communities were tight, and one would usually find robbers coming from afar to commit crime. Even so, the risk was high. The victims were usually those in residential areas.
Today, courtesy of laws that say our privacy supersede community and state interests, there is no little obligation on one’s part to demand from a tenant what business he does before renting out a facility to him.
Even if he or she is polite to tell you anything, you may have no way of verifying. So we are now breeding all sorts of people even in the elite residential areas where neighbours want to stay anonymous and mind their own businesses.
Complementing police effort
Because the police cannot be everywhere or escort us to market or office or the bank, we are mandated, as responsible citizens, to be wise enough to realise that there are beasts out there, ready to take advantage of us.
Apart from small-scale muggers on our markets at Agbogbloshie, Makola, Keketia and Kaneshie, we have heard stories about traders moving into farm gates in the countryside being robbed or raped or both – all from these armed beasts.
In a dispensation in which social dynamics allow only the traditional ruler or the district assembly to make money from markets and lorry parks, or sale of lands lawfully under them, just anybody can buy land or rent space, and move around, secretly abusing the magnanimity extended to him – including creating slums in forests from where they attack innocent citizens.
So, we have hordes of bandits hiding in woodlots all over the highway from Kintampo into trading points in the sub-region, terrorising us.
Even from Potsin in the Central Region into other communities or the Western Region, the presence of such beasts hiding in woodlots is a normal sight and reality. Yet, the lands in question belong to traditional communities.
Being wise and cautious
As the police and civil society have advised us, it is time for citizens, regardless of one’s station in life, to be on the alert as far as humanly possible.
For those going to the bank to pick cash, the advice is the same, particularly when okada bikers are becoming enemies to our economic and industrial march.
Again, for those in cross-border trade, the advice is to wire money to the other end and move in groups to your point of activity.
That the police have assured us that they are ready to help us if we call on them is a piece of encouragement that we all need in organising ourselves to secure our homes, places of work, cash and environment.
That certainly leaves the police with maximum time and resources to chase the beasts and silence them.
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