A few weeks ago the World Bank gave Ghana and three of our coastal neighbors 450 million dollars to aid our preparedness for the fight against terrorism.
So flush with cash, the Ministry of National decided to bombard our airwaves that the terrorists are coming.
Not one educational programme was designed to educate the public on what terrorism is, and what kind of activity is terrorism-leaning.
They recruited 1000s of people quietly across the country in all communities and gave them motorbikes. They put them on a 1800 cedis a month salary.
They told them if they see anybody coming around mobilizing the youth, or sharing fliers or making any town hall meetings including for demonstrations, they should report it to them.
None of them weren trained on what terrorism is.
They designed flashy posters, including one with a Muslim woman in hijab on it. Never mind that Muslim women are facing a lot of stigma over their hijab already; and associations with terrorism will hurt them more. I digress but FixTheCountry Co-convenor Bashiratu Kamal-Muslim told me a story of how when they wanted to organize the #HijabIsAnIdentity demonstration, the police verbally abused them and told them that they won’t allow them to bring those Saudi Arabia things to Ghana.
The flashy posters had a toll free number 999. I got a hint from a contact at the national security headquarters that the number on the poster wasn’t operational. So I called the number and video’d myself, and encouraged everyone to do that. Not a single person across the country got any response. We all heard Jazz.
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Embarrassed by the incident, they put pressure on the call Centre they gave the contract to, to position people to pick the calls. Not a single call attendant has been trained.
The call center operators do not have any system that allows them to track where calls are coming from, or even access the map when the complainant doesn’t have a clue as to their geo location.
So when I called the next day, I asked the person, what does terrorism mean and what kind of activities qualify as terrorist related. He said “If you see something fishy, then you call us.” Again I recorded them.
At the same time I was making these calls, Government ministers were holding an event to discuss terrorism. They engaged Kofi Kinaata to come and perform for them. All from the World Bank money.
Today they have engaged Empress Gifty as the Ambassador of their fight against terrorism.
But don’t worry, even they didn’t pick a single call on that day I called, and we listened to Jazz, they released a statement saying they received 10,000 prank calls. No single media has asked how can a call you didn’t pick be determined as a prank call. Today, they were on radio saying Ghanaians kraa what kind of people are we, we need to fix ourselves.
Why are we so gullible as a culture?
Listen and listen well. My whole advocacy is to show you that Nkrumah’s Ghana has become a joke of a country & that your leaders are criminals parading as clowns. 🤡
If that offends you, you can prosecute me in a court where judges can be bribed with goats.
#GyimieRepublic