On this episode of the Contours podcast, host Tammy Palacios sits down with Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah, senior program manager for Ghana’s Center for Democratic Development. Through their talk, they hone in on the situation and challenges ahead of Ghana’s 2024 elections, including the Vigilantism Law, approaches to civic education, and how civil society groups can improve their effectiveness.
Tammy Palacios:
Good afternoon.
Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah:
Good afternoon, Tammy.
Tammy Palacios:
Welcome to the New Lines office. It’s great to see you again. We are speaking with Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah from Center for Democratic Development in Ghana. CDD is the home of the Afrobarometer that was so successful it flew on to be its own entity, and CDD does a lot of excellent election coverage, security, and local governance.
Mr. Aborampah Mensah here is actually the Security Sector Governance, and Local & Urban Governance Senior Programs Manager, so you have two desks. And you’ve come here as a fellow with the Wilson Center for their conference for the week, and before that you were at the African Union.
Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah:
Yes. I was with the African Union – with the election call team. That’s the advisory team, three of us, with the former president of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, as the Head of Mission who supported as the Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security of the African Union, Bankole (H.E. Amb. Bankole Adeoye).
So we had a successful mission, deployed about 65 observers from about 26 African countries. We had 35 females amongst us, and then 30 of us were males. Fortunately we have gone through the elections. And the beauty of it is that we were able to deploy to all the nine provinces in South Africa including the hottest seats of KwaZulu-Natal. Yes. So I just flew straight from there as a fellow of the Wilson Center to be part of the conference, which ended just this evening.
Tammy Palacios:
Wonderful. Well we’re so glad you could share some of your D.C. time with us here today. Speaking of elections, Ghana has elections coming up – general elections this December. CDD and yourself have worked hand-in-hand with a lot of policymakers in West Africa, in Ghana on peaceful and open transparent elections. I’d love to hear a little bit about that, but this conversation is going to extend past the peace and security of this year, 2024.
And we’re going to talk about what kinds of focuses policymakers should have for there to be a peaceful transition of power this year, but also peace and security in Ghana and in the rest of West Africa for the next five and 10 years. So we have a conversation ahead of us. We’re thrilled that you’re here to share your expertise, which is so valuable. So thank you for your time ahead of time.
Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah:
Thank you, Tammy. Thank you for having me here.
Tammy Palacios:
Of course. Talk to us about 2024 elections. We’ve been seeing some movement, obviously the Flintlock exercise went really well (May 2024). There are efforts to work with civil society and other important local actors to make sure that there are peaceful elections. What do you see that’s happening right now on the ground that is important for there to be peaceful elections?
Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah:
Tammy, I raise three basic issues to serve as an introduction to my discussions anytime this question is asked and for people to understand that Ghana even though has gone through several elections, which have gone unscathed. It doesn’t mean that the elections were 100% peaceful. In each of the elections there were recorded incidents for sake of diplomatic missions that were established underground. I don’t think we have had a peace process to hand over, and those issues still exist. And I take three issues as basic to weave into our discussions in general.
One is the fact that anytime a sitting president ends a second tenure, Ghana has four year tenure and the president can renew his tenure for another term. So a maximum of eight years in two tenures. But anytime a sitting government is ending his full term of the two years, there’s a natural tension that shadow the elections and the electoral process.
So when you look into the preparations of the opposition, the largest opposition in Ghana now, the National Democratic Congress, their preparations towards the 2020 elections, it’s not the same preparations they are making for 2024 because of course they knew they were not going to make any impacts in the 2020 elections. And if you have elections that has higher costs to do, you have to be strategic so that you don’t overuse your resources that’s where you think you don’t have the opportunity. So you wait for a year that you think you can make impact, then you put all your resources.
So this year the former president who is still vying for the position on behalf of the opposition party started his campaign right after 2020. We did not see that in the post-2016 elections. This is the third round national thought he’s going. He has already constituted his manifesto committees with subcommittees in charge of agriculture, in charge of security, all other things. This did not happen so quick in the preparations towards 2020 elections. He has launched what he calls the blueprints for Ghana’s developments. He never did that in 2020 elections.
I’m just bringing you this to see that they know the unwritten agreement that, “It’s my turn after the second term of a certain president is here.” What does that mean? It means it raises the tension that, “If I don’t win, then there means there’s machinations and manipulations throughout the process.”
And that comes in with my second grounded that if you see the kind of accusations against institutions in the country, discrediting every institution that has a hand in the management of the elections, the Electoral Commission is now the enemy of the opposition party. The security agencies are now the enemies of the security agency, even some civil society organizations. So it tells you the foundation in which the oppositions is preparing towards one goal, winning election in 2024. So that’s the first there.
Second danger is that over the years we’ve played soft on incidents that are recorded on elections and they degenerate into fresh attacks in future elections. So I say it’s not a hotspot, it’s a reprisal to undo the wrong done me. So if you say Asutifi North, Asutifi South, Bantama, what do we call it? [inaudible 00:06:51] Dumasua, are hotspots, they are not hotspots. They are communities, constituencies with bunch of people whose rights have been trampled upon in previous elections who seek the new elections to avenge the wrongs done them. And in post-2020, myself and WANEP, I say myself (CDD) – I say myself because I manage the Security desk.
And the West African Network for Peacebuilding wanted to see, “Let’s throw back all the previous incidents away. This 2020 elections, let’s see how the justice delivery system handles it.” So we mounted a project we call “Post-Election Accountability”. And because I knew I was going to do that, I set up a special desk to record every incident in the elections. So I was even laughing at the politicians when they were fighting among themselves. This one will say, “We recorded four deaths.” This one will say, “We recorded eight deaths.” And then the police service will say, “seven deaths.”
But I had a data of every person who died, when he died, what happened before his death and what have happened through the justice system. So I just did a press briefing and released the data. It was there that they were all buying into the fact that eight people died in the 2020 elections and I was able to show them when, what incident happened that led to their deaths. So then they all accepted the data. Otherwise, it was a banter between the opposition, MPP and DCC and the police service. So I had to come in with the data to clear the air.
Then we said, “We are going to track it.” First we went to each of the families of the dead people, sat down with them, recorded their feelings, Tammy, it was… That’s why I said we don’t have hotspots. We have frustrated people who have been wronged but have not had justice who want to use their own way to demand justice. So you could see the way some brothers of the dead people were talking, anger, frustration and prepared to do the worst, to also make sure that the suffering of their brother that led to his death is avenged. So that’s the strata we are establishing.
And so we did those things. We brought all the families together. Those people whose legs were amputated were part of the meeting. We brought the security CIDs together for them to engage, advise them so that we can tone down the anger. There were assurances in that meeting. In fact, we presented our report to the IGP, the Inspector General of Police of Ghana. He said following that he was going to do a press briefing every three months to update the nation of the status of the cases. This was 2022, I sit here today – not a single press briefing updating the nation of those incidents up to date.
So that is the scenario at which we’re go in what will happen to the families who lost their relatives, whose brothers are anger and the people who did the act are still moving around the communities, what will happen? What will happen to the wives and the children who saw their husbands and their fathers being shot at? What will be the issue with the remembrance – the happening of the elections? So that’s the second scenario: unattended incidents recorded in previous elections generates repressor attacks in coming elections. So that scenario is there. So to get out the tension for the fact that NDC wants to win, that tension.
And the third scenario is we have had two incidents. One, court case in 2013 after 2012 elections; second, court case after the 2020 elections. The first one was the MPP, the ruling party that took the case to court that they don’t accept the election results. The second one of the NDC, the current opposition party, that also took the results to court that they do accept it.
There was one common ruling that point you summarize the whole ruling. It says that elections are won at the polling centers. The Supreme Court of Ghana like any other Supreme court does not exist to overturn election results. What does that tell you? So I ask myself, “Will these people use the legal means again in case they don’t trust the elections results? If they don’t use the legal means, what will happen?”
So these are the three scenarios I paint before I start towards 2024, with what do we expect. In anticipation of these radicalizations and the use of militia, perhaps security to police elections in Ghana because of loss of trust of state institutions, the political parties will use what we call vigilantism.
And it became worse in 2019 by-election in Ayawaso West Wuogon constituency in Accra, where people actually attacked and beat members of Parliament who were there – where people’s legs were amputated. With a fear of that being entrenched the President asked Parliament to come up with specific law that will tackle vigilantes in Ghana.
Then he tasked National Peace Council, the peace architecture in the country with the constitutional background of Act 818 to foment peace in the country, to also find ways to mediate between the two leading political parties who have number of vigilante groups. So the MPP, fortunately I was a technical advisor to that committee.
We did two things. One, we developed code of conduct to guide the political parties and required behavior as far as using paramilitary is concerned. Two, we developed a roadmap through which they will follow to disband and dismantle their vigilante groups. Then the Parliament also developed Act 999 Vigilantism and Related Offenses Act of 2019.
When we’re developing the Act 999, what came up is that we have the Criminal Code of 1960, Act 28, which deals with all criminalities in the country. Why do we need a new act to fight just one crime? There’s some of us who analyze security who said that when you look into the old criminal code, it have very minimal sanctions. The sanction regimes in that code is not enough. There were a case where people forcefully invaded a judicial court in Kumasi and freed their people who have caused vigilante acts.
The highest sign that they could give them was 24 penalty units. One penalty unit in Ghana is 250 Ghana cedi, 250 Ghana is about $5 or so. So when you have such a sanction regime, even their girlfriends and their brothers can easily pay. So it doesn’t serve as deterrent enough to deter people from committing this act. So therefore we need the Vigilantism Act. And when you read the act, I was part of the people who drafted, commented, or gave input because it’s collating our views from the mediation group feed into that.
So in the mediation that was set up to mediate between NPP and DCC. We crafted a definition and we support it. So I said the Vigilantism definition is not a definition, it’s a classification of sources of violence that’s classified as vigilante acts. So we said just like counting number of activities that you do that will come into you committing vigilante acts. So broad enough that we ended by saying that by the use of a weapon or any instrument that can cause harm, you commit vigilante acts.
So when one even use pen on you, it’s a vigilante act. And the minimum sentence is five years. One can go for 10 years, for 15 years. Pathetically, since the law came into force, state prosecutors still prefer charges from the criminal code. They are not using the Vigilante Act. Therefore, motivation of coming up with new law is now useless.
I intentionally did voice when in 2020 we arrested a guy in Techiman constituency who snatched ballot box. And I was all over the media saying that we should use this as a scapegoat. Let’s prefer the charges from the Vigilantism Act so that… I knew he was going to go no less than five years. Unfortunately the charges profiled against him were from the criminal code and he paid just 500 Ghana cedis.
So this is the situation at which we go. So when the tension is high, people are going to use the vigilante groups because they don’t trust the trustful institutions who are backed by Afrobarometer data. The trust in police services is now below 50 percent. The trust in Electoral Commission is low.
And the worst thing of that, our intervening mechanisms, the National Peace Council is not trusted. The opposition has discredited even the Council of States, the eminent body that can be used as diplomatic for the diplomatic mission is discredited. Our own Kofi Annan who used to do some of this mission is not there. So in case these things get out of hand, we don’t have shock absorbers, we don’t have people revered enough in the system who can do diplomatic work who ensure that people calm nerves. So this is the picture at which you go to 2024 elections.
We just finished the voter registration, just voter registration. I don’t have the data, but more than 17 cases of incidents were recorded. Some of that involved the use of guns. So in the preparations into the elections, registrations and the voter transfer, which is ongoing, the balance was too much. And because of that, the Electoral Commission of Ghana issued a statement to ban political parties from observing the process.
But the opposition will say they are using that to steal the ballots and therefore the Electoral Commission came back again to allow them to go – warning that if anybody is seen as disturbing the process, not using the legal means to challenge, they’ll still go back to their other local parties to do that. So Tammy, this is the environment at which we enter 2024.
Tammy Palacios:
You say it so eloquently, it’s almost like you’ve been doing this for a while. I think there’s so much of what you just outlined for us that each deserves its own discussion. But I think for the purposes of this one, I want to dig into something you just said talking about, you had some really wonderful people get in a room and come up with a classification and work together to really craft a great law that’s not being used and that’s not the first example of that. You have other policies and strategies that are great on paper and unfortunately have not seen the implementation and the level of follow through that could make them truly make an impact and ensure that what that text is meant to do is actually coming to fruition.
So we have the Vigilante Act, we have the Accra Initiative, we have a bunch of policies that… and that’s the thing is that there are so many. So with all of the work that you’ve done with policymakers on elections and on security and on local governance and all of this, what are your favorites? If you could pick a couple of policies that you think are already passed that already exist and that just need a return of attention to, what would you pick?
Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah:
I would pick the Act 999, Vigilante Regulatory Offenses Act. Tammy, it cut across everything. Peace is the foundation for developments. Without peace there’s no developments. And these vigilantes have terrorized every system, every organization, everybody in the country to the extent that sometimes the security services themselves are afraid of them.
And my worry is that now it’s being extended to other fields. If we’re restricted to the elections, they will say, “Oh, at least in three years we’ll have some peace. So because election is just one time and when election is over, these people’s trade will go to rest and have our peace.”
But now they are being used to guard illegal mining activities. They are being used to protect illegally acquired lands. They are being used to protect people who do illegal lumbering in forest reserves. They are doing so many things, even in chieftaincy disturbances.
If so, the instrument of chiefs, there’s disagreements one faction go to rent them. So it has becomes almost an entrenched profession, that is the danger. So if you ask me to, among all the peace structures that we’ve established, the documents that we’ve developed, which one I should pick, I will pick the Vigilantism and Related Offenses Act.
And I was discussing with the advisor to the Minister for National Security, I think in charge of some of these things, Lieutenant-Colonel Timothy Ba-Taa-Banah, he’s a literal officer who has been attached to the national security [now Head of security at the Tema Port]. When I discussed with him, he said, “Now we want to review this. I don’t know why the prosecutors are not using it. So we need to have an engagement with them. There’s a case investigator, department of the police service, the prosecutors, the judges to see if there are any defects in the law, in the Acts. Then we correct it because we need this Act to stem the tide. Why they’re not using it, I’m not aware.”
So he says he wants to talk to the Minister for National Security to have some funding to review the document together with the people who are expected to apply it to see why they are not using it. Then we can see that. Because if you ask me now, I’m wondering why, “Why do we spend time and out of this background I’ve given that this is a threat?”
If we did not solve it it’s going to generate in something and now it’s escalating. It’s going beyond elections. I was doing a project on migration policy, trying to see the relationship between border security agencies and the community members in fighting crime. Whether they have cooperation, they agree with them.
I went to one of the border districts called Juaboso and the police commander took me around and showed me some of the ghettos that have been established in those areas. Juaboso is a typical village district. I was thinking the vigilantism was in the peri-urban areas to protect where land is expensive.
But now it’s escalated to the villages that when the police go to dismantle their ghetto, they form another one. What they do when the government task force against illegal mining is coming, they give them alerts. So those on site get the information that the task force is coming they run away.
If they give the alerts and you go still attacking them, then they’ll have to mobilize and go and defend them. That’s what they have been doing. So it’s gone beyond elections and that’s the danger we are going to deal with.
So if you ask me, my heart will go for the Vigilantism and Related Offenses, the Act 999 of 2019 and ask it to be enforced to be used so that I’ll say that if we have four or five cases and we’ll publicize them, people will see the effect of that Act. My office with the DIPD, the Danish Institute for Parties and Democracy, along the 2020 elections, translated the act into local languages.
Tammy Palacios:
That’s impressive.
Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah:
Yes, into three local languages.
Tammy Palacios:
And important.
Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah:
Yes. And we brought the youth wings of the political parties to train them and we designed… we use the act to design a Ludo game, a board game. We designed such a way that we had gun there, we had catalysts there, we have snake here. When you play the die and it touches on the gun, we go and pick the Act and translate to you what it means.
When you play the die and it touches on the snake, we go and pick the Act. So we use that as a play by using it to tell them that Act has severe sanctions that if you are not careful, you go into prison before you come, you cannot even recognize your children. That’s the contribution CDD- Ghana and DIPD tried to do.
In fact, we wanted to sustain it, but unfortunately the Danish Parties took over the management of that fund. So DIPD is no more. That’s where the project ended. But this is what we were doing because I was privy to the development of the code of conduct and the acts, it just came that I should conceptualize something that will make the education popularization of the acts common. And this approach is this what I used. So I think I’m passionate to see the Act being used. I’m not an enforcer. I’m just an observer.
Tammy Palacios:
A peaceful observer.
Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah:
Yeah.
Tammy Palacios:
A convincing peaceful observer though. You just mentioned part of what you were just explaining with the creation and the familiarizing of this act with young people, and I think that’s an important part of the security conversation and it’s part of the conversation that we had a couple years ago now when you guys hosted New Lines, which was very, very gracious of you. And CDD spoke about the importance of positive framing of young people and of not putting a negative security frame automatically on young people that are just young people.
There’s someone that commits an act and that deserves its own retribution or legal jurisprudence to follow. But if you are just a young person, there’s a way that they need to be brought into the conversation, right? And be part of the solution. What are your suggestions on how-
Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah:
I still stand by that. I always go to Afrobarometer because I’m part of the Afrobarometer advocacy group. They form a new branch of Afrobarometer called Data for Governance Alliance. So we have CDD Ghana, we have the Institute for Developmental studies from University of Nairobi, we have the Institute of Justice and Reconciliation from Cape Town, South Africa.
We formed the Data for Governance Alliance. Our task is to use the Afrobarometer data to engage the African Union national governments and the risk. Just before I came here, I’ve had invitations from the Pan-African Parliament to come and do presentations on the annual sessions in Midrand, South Africa on my thought on security.
And usually what I do is the communications team tease out the very important topics that lead to insecurity in Africa and I just present the data for them and they use that to start their discussions. So that’s what we do for all the organs, ECOSOC, Peace and Security Council, African Peer Review Mechanisms, the Pan-African Parliament, Children’s Commission, Human Rights Court, Human Rights Commission. We do all these things for them. That’s what we do.
So I still go and when you take Afrobarometer, youth voices are not heard. Don’t also forget when we analyze the use of technology to inform governance, youth always have the higher percentage. They are the group who use technology. It means when you don’t formally integrate their views in the traditional model system, there’ll be wrongly, I don’t know how to put it, coached through what they see on social media because they are always on social media. So the wrong narrative, the disinformation, misinformation, it’s what will feed into them and they’ll be nurtured along those lines.
So they need to be brought to the table. Their views need to be heard and we need to create that conduit of a platform so that the policy formulation, policy divisions, everything that we do, we do together with the youth. Not only the youth, the marginalized community, persons with disabilities, women. And I want to talk of marginalized community. I even involve marginalized, local towns that do not even have first-hand information. They are fed by third, fourth-hand information, which are almost adulterated.
So we need a consensus of all facets categories of people on the table so that we can hear. I always say that we have gone beyond and we have thrown away the processes of developing our constitution. When we are returning from the coup d’etats in 1992, you see the 1992 constitution was developed by the ordinary person. Former President Rawlings held forums for farmers, for fishermen, for school children, for old (the aged), for the villages. He had translators included in the Constitutional Development Committee who were translated to them, those who cannot even speak.
So when you look into Ghana’s constitution sometimes it gives you some practical sections to realize that here these constitutions were developed for the people, that this implementation is neglecting the people.
Tammy Palacios:
How do we fix that?
Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah:
We fix that part building using the principles of democracy, the principles of participation, the principles of inclusion. And you can have principles of participation and inclusion when the people understand the development process. So we need sensitization education that will preach to the people.
I was always telling them that we said we have had spoiled ballots, we have people – voter apathy. We don’t do education on electoral process. We do information sharing. If you tell me, “We are starting election from seven o’clock and close at five o’clock.” You’ve just given me information.
But if you tell me, “You should go and vote because you are going to choose the person who is going to determine your future for the next four years.” Then you are doing sensitization education. In Ghana we don’t do education, you give information. If you really want people to go along with what the country needs, then nationalism, be part of the process.
We need the people to understand through civic education why you need to be so. That’s what is lacking. So you can take the people along with us. I even recommended that this civic education they’ve taken up from the primary school, they should bring it back. In primary schools I was taught, “You shouldn’t throw dust away.” Now you see children eating and throwing into the gutters.
This civics education must come back. So we need to nurture habits. We don’t demand habits, we nurture habits. So the basic why, how we can get the people we can say we have created a plan. When you go to the local government, they say there should be town hall forums every quarter, how many times this assembly do it?
Even if they do the town hall meetings, the information preceding the meetings will not encourage people to go, “Why am I coming to the meeting?” So I always say that, “Carry me along. Let me understand why I should follow you. Let me understand why I should give my views to you.”
So in Ghana we don’t do education, we give information – and that should change. If you really want to get participation for people to know that, “I’m the youth, I’m the future of the country that’s going on. If I don’t get involved, it’ll get my time that I’ll not even have resource to manage a country.” If we paint this picture for people to know why they should be part of the process, they will actually commit to be part of the process.
Tammy Palacios:
I think what you just said right there, “Carry me along,” is a saying I’m going to apply to a lot of things because it’s important for delivering of information and bringing someone along with you and understanding to actually be an active participator in the civic process.
But it’s also important because we need to carry along all of the policymakers, all the practitioners, when we have data, we have analysis that says, “This is the right way to do things. This is how you’re going to prevent violent extremism. This is how you’re going to mitigate a quell of violent activity.”
So it’s so pertinent, it’s the, “Carry me along.” Because we can be the so staunchly behind our analysis. We understand more than anyone our data that we collect, but there’s a lot that needs to be done in bringing policymakers and practitioners and just the public along with understanding that data and analysis in a way that they’re going to be just as motivated by it – to implement it, right?
So we have talked about the 2024 elections. We’ve talked about vigilantism and the importance of carrying youth and really feeling responsible and accountable for their positive participation in these formal processes. But peace and security is something that is more than just 2024. If we’re looking at obviously the long term, the very long term, but the next five, the next 10 years, what should we be looking at? We’ve talked about these things. Ghana is just one part of a larger part of… West Africa is facing a lot of trials and tribulations.
So if we’re looking at democracy, we’re looking at how do we prevent the spread of these groups? I think something that you’ve touched on a few times in your comments that really spoke to me is the civilian experience and that being a way of understanding what needs to be done. Because the story is not just that of civilians being tempted by terrorists, a bundle of money and a bike. That happens sometimes.
There are other times that there’s a grievance and that is the motivator to violence. But there’s also just a story of someone is in a rural village and they have a choice to make of, “What is the best choice for my safety of myself and my livelihood?”
And I feel like that’s something that we don’t talk about a whole lot and it’s that representation. But what else? If you’re looking at more long-term sustainable solutions and you’re looking at the civilian experience, what can we do? What should we be looking at for the next five to 10 years to do better with that?
Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah:
I don’t know whether you plan with Oge on this choice [Oge Onubogu is the Director of Africa Programs at the Wilson Center]. So that’s what actually brought us here, reimagining the future of Africa. That was the topic that brought us here and I think it’s a whole mouthful topic because each and every African country now has its own headache, internal security challenges that need to be solved.
And we are facing a situation that I liken it to reincarnation of the late ’70s and the early ’80s. The same structures that were happening, the citizen frustration, complaint of poor service delivery. For example, South Africa, how we see as a U.S. in Africa, has half a low schedule for close to two years now. So now it become normal part of it, South Africa.
South Africa we know from ages is now fighting to sack foreigners because their citizens say there’s no job. I’m just using South Africa because it was the hope of Africa. My own country, Ghana that used to be the cradle of democracy is now disintegrating.
So each and every Africa… I was with my colleagues from Kenya and the climate impact on them when it’s raining so much so that people get engulfed and raise, their houses are destroyed when there’s drought is so much so that some places don’t even have rains to cultivate their things. So we are engulfed with multifaceted challenges internally.
We are not able to also deal with them because of weak structures of institutions and leadership. So you have Afrobarometer data that says that, “In the past 12 months my living condition has deteriorated.” Then you follow up with a question, “How do you foresee in the next year?” He say, “It’s going to be worse.” Then you ask them what are the challenges? Corruption becomes first.
“Do you have hope of the structures that your government is putting in place to deal with corruption?” They say, “Worse.” So negative, negative, negative, negative. Having say we are proud to say Africa has the largest youth. At that continent they will say it’s plus for labor, it’s good for work. But that’s not the same story for Africa.
You’ll pick 10 youth, seven of them don’t have jobs. You’ll pick 10 youth in the local communities, eight of them are drug addicts. You pick 10 youth in the northern border, eight of them have involved themselves while we were there in highway robbery. These are the youth we are nurturing and you say we have a future of a continent. We are proud of the increasing population of the youth.
Is youth going to be positive or negative? Are we going to have a youth killers or a youth presidents? It’s because of the system that’s around them. The system that does not release money for youth developments, the system that is so corrupt that they refuse to see the challenges that youth are facing.
So if you nurture such a system, what kind of caliber of youth are you nurturing? So we have our own challenges. You move… I was analyzing the data from South Africa and the story is that 10% of the population control 90% of the nation’s wealth. So much disparities between the rich and the poor.
So if people are taking guns and attacking you, I’m a democrat, so I can’t say they’re demanding a pound of fresh, but we are getting to that level. We are getting to the level that a member of parliament in his house in Accra, people entered and killed him and stole his money. We are getting to the level that one of our leaders, former… Busia, sounds was his house boy, he killed him and stole his money.
We are getting a situation that former vice president’s wife, Ammisah-Arthur, they invaded his house and stole his her money. That is the system we are getting because the people are trying to eat. Is that how they should eat? The system has cultivated that culture that we are following. That is not enough for us.
We don’t have institutions that will work to correct the system. Dysfunctional institutions. We have in our law, in our constitution, as many other African countries that before we assume position, public office, you need to declare your assets so that with time we can know the sources of your richness.
Nobody, not even the president has done it. It was just the newly elected Senegal president, the young man who has declared all his assets. But I was talking to foreign media and I told them, he himself alone declared the assets. It’s not enough. He’s going to work with ministers.
He needs to set example and ask followers to follow so that we know when you are coming, you had one poultry farm, you are paid $2,000. How can you afford 20 filling stations within one year in your office? Where did you get the money? That they don’t avail themselves for structures of accountability. So how do you enforce accountability?
And worse still, we are seeing more and more attack on civic voices. So in the Zimbabwe elections, the citizens election observers were arrested. So in Ghana a proud investigative journalist was killed. So in Ghana, a proud investigative journalist who does investigations of petroleum got lost because he was preparing a report that indicts people of high positions.
Tammy Palacios:
Building a case.
Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah:
Building a case. So we are more and more questioning civic voices so that there’ll be no strong activism to demand accountability. Of course, the policymakers themselves, the managers themselves will not willingly supply accountability. So you need a strong voice to demand and that’s the voice they are coercing.
Tammy Palacios:
Let’s talk about that, that shrinking civic space. Because you talk about the institutions, the strength of them, the trust of the civilians in those institutions and their government and that’s really core to a lot of this. So if you’re talking about prevention of violence that’s connected to politics or that’s connected to insecurity or lack of feeling like you have access or having access to services or being heard, it all falls down to civic spaces.
A large part of being that accountability, that transparency, that voice, that point of connection for the civilians with their government in a lot of Africa. There was a really good, I think the title of the report was actually Shrinking Civic Space written by a number of Nigerian civil society a few years ago. But there’s many other reports. And West Africa – Ghana has a pretty vibrant civil community, right? There are other countries – Benin, Togo have smaller civil communities, right?
Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah:
Never at Togo. Never at Togo. We were collecting data the first time I heard of that you need to present your instruments, your data collection instrument for scrutinization and you sign an MOU before you’re allowed to conduct the data. The guy never got the go-ahead. So we have to improvise a strategy that he comes to Ghana markets close to the border so that Togolese who come there will interview there.
Tammy Palacios:
Interesting.
Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah:
Interesting. So if I tell you that there’s continuous manipulation of the civic space, you understand what I’m talking about. So the leaders know what they’re doing and they have a way to ensure that you don’t have a say to rather publicize their negatives to the citizens – that is exactly what is happening.
So if you have all these things and you have a system that create work for few people and you go to some of the villages that you don’t see even see the presence of the government there, you don’t ask yourself whether we are sitting on timebomb, the extremists can buy into it.
And I was doing the projects and the immigration officer tells me that there’s no network service here. Then I ask myself, “If there’s attack, how does he call for reinforcements?” No intercom, nothing. He’s not allowed to hold gun, just recently that… I shared my blog post with you?
Tammy Palacios:
Yes.
Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah:
Yes. The imaginary border?
Tammy Palacios:
Yep.
Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah:
There was an act enforcing that migration officers on duty can use guns and they’re not allowed. So probably in the discussion of that blog post that I heard, the minister has authorized that if they do the special those in the remote border areas, go and see where they sleep, go and see the environment they operate.
And these are the people we are expecting to guard our borders, gracious. So that – the system, the fundamental internal structure themselves are weak. There’s no strong institutions to deal with them. There’s laxity in leadership to realize and deal with the situations and there are loopholes that any extremist activity can buy into.
So I always say that we sit on a time bomb, we sit on a time bomb. And it’s going to get worse because last two years that I attended a program in Togo. This formed something they called [foreign language 00:42:23] The council [inaudible 00:42:25] for a Francophone speaking countries. I saw this thing coming, the disintegration from a class, I saw it coming.
So I asked myself, Togo, Burkina Faso, Mali are part of the Accra Initiative. Why are they forming another same regional body, sub-regional body called [foreign language 00:42:43]? The guy said, “Oh, just to share information among the Francophone countries.” And now is the end we are seeing.
So the Accra Initiative itself may get to a point that even though they’ve said last two weeks that they are going to use Ghana ports, they are going to still collaborate to Ghana. They will do all the diplomatic work they do with Ghana, but I’m not sure.
Tammy Palacios:
There’s a lot to watch for.
Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah:
There’s a lot to watch for. So Tammy, that is the picture.
Tammy Palacios:
It’s an interesting picture. It’s a complex picture. The last part was a bleak picture, but I think, and just to really just make it clearer for anyone that’s listening to this episode, so the civic space, you have the killing of a humanitarian worker. That’s clear. Everyone understands that that is an infringement and it’s violence, right?
But there’s also those legal loopholes or just a simple not answering of an email. Someone needs a permit or someone needs to be registered or they’re trying to work within the system and there’s not responsiveness. So it almost sounds like there’s also just lackadaisical ways about the government engaging with the civilian space that is also part of the reason why there’s a shrinking civic space.
Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah:
It’s two ways I tell people that the kind of scrutiny researchers go through in other African countries does not happen in Ghana. You have all the freedom to conduct your research even when you invite politicians to the table to come and listen. But that one thing listening and one thing acting, that is the scenario we have in Ghana. One thing listening and one thing acting.
So we don’t have what we call it freedom to do, but beneath the popular freedom they showcase publicly that are undertones of some of these things that have been manipulated. That’s the whole thing. And if I say since Ahmed Suale was killed, we haven’t heard anything about our justice delivery system, the status of it.
Since the guy got lost on the seas because he was developing interesting case. We have not heard anything about that. Since the eight people who died in 2020 elections. Some of us have… I just told you the work we did with WANEP.
Tammy Palacios:
Yeah.
Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah:
Probably signing it, trying to force the system to deliver justice. We have not had anything. In fact, as a time that we got our funds ended in 2022 out of the case deaths, the eight deaths, only four have been processed and out of the four, two were in attorney general’s office for advice. The two had been sent to court. They had gone to court for almost eight times. They were all postponed.
Tammy Palacios:
This is since 2020?
Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah:
2020 elections to 2022. Because we entered in 2022, I have not had the opportunity to do the updates. What we’re doing is we had the district directors of national commission for civic advocacy cases sitting in the court every time the cases were called and they’ll further report to us. So as soon as the day is over, we have instant reports. And I was analyzing after every court case they were just postponing them. So we need to, fortunately WANEP is giving us another funding to start there.
So what I want to do is to go back to the families, take the status of the cases, do a national press briefing. Then I’ll start from there to track including these recorded cases on the registration exercise up to the end of the election to see if any action was taken. So we are going to put pressure from the demand side accountability level. And we’re always going to post questions to the inspector general of police and whoever is in there, just up to the judgments to see why the cases are delayed.
Tammy Palacios:
So from everything you’ve said, you’ve actually given a few really salient pieces of advice for civil society to be taken more seriously, right? You talked about data, you talked about follow through, returning back to something that you didn’t see an end that you’re happy with and what else? Advocacy? Working with youth, what can civil society do to be taken more seriously and to be heard? Yeah, taken seriously by ministries, by government.
Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah:
Policy uptake, all that we do. You’re touching on my passion. I’m passionate about that because I’m not seeing action. If Afrobarometer train over 50 people, deploy them to the field for three months, you know how much that costs?
Tammy Palacios:
How much?
Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah:
Tammy you’re a researcher yourself. It’s not easy. It’s not easy job.
Tammy Palacios:
It’s not. That’s a lot of work.
Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah:
This [inaudible 00:47:20] group project that I just deployed, just four people. When I finished everything, I have paid almost $4,000 just for the data collect for just this small one.
So if people go through all these things, sleepless nights, the field research assistants going beyond rivers, sometimes walking to get this data. We sit down to analyze and we present to you, “This is what your people say.” Feed it into your policy formulation and you throw it into the dust. That’s what we want. We want policy uptake. We want the realities to reflect in the reformation of your agenda, to reflect in the development of your policies, to reflect on the interventions that you do to see that improvements of your people are coming. That’s what we want.
We just don’t want to be talking, talking, talking. No, I want to see that, “Oh, as I said through that my policy brief, I realized actions were taken.” And in fact that policy brief was published in the Ghana Immigration Service and one newsletter. It was published in there. Then I saw the minister for interior who has been chair on [inaudible 00:48:24] saying on air that yes, he’s not authorized immigration officers on posts, not when you are in your house, at posts in the remote areas to start using the guns.
The question is, “Yes, you’ve gone one step forward. What about communication? If we are there under attack, how do we get you, because there are no services? Can you get them remote something communication tools, gadgets? Can we supplement them with some form of technology that can map out the history? Can we give a bit of infrastructure support the activities?”
So we just don’t want right… We just don’t want talk. We want to see that at least even if I do two policy briefs, one makes impact, I’ll be very happy. But if you do the data, you do the talk, what CDD-Ghana does best is positive engagements. We tease out the data. Sometimes people say that, “Your election reports are shallow.” No, I wouldn’t like to put up a report that would generate violence.
So if I see this report that highlights more issues that can generate violence, I would rather prefer to target the institution in charge. Briefs, you give the data to you, so you act on it. If it’s judiciary, I’d rather prefer to meet the judicial secretary. This is the report. This is what… Then you act upon it. That means inflaming passion, raising tension in the country.
That’s not what civil society is supposed to do. Know the issues that can create tension. Why don’t you approach that? There are issues… Meet the Electoral Commission. We present those 1, 4, 5 points that will think when it gets to the public, it’s going to cause commotion, so please just assist.
Then the rest that are just general, we publish it. But there are some things that we do as CDD, people are not aware. So if you think this data that I have is so dangerous, the paper I spoke to you about, they are going to publish, but they generate a table, a summary of some of the serious issues, security issues in the country, which I’m privy because I’m a member of the Land Boundary Technical Committee. I’m a member of Security Committee. If it comes out, they may think I’m using a data because of my closeness with the institution, security institution to publish a paper.
So I’ve asked them to take it away and just leave the refer for people to vote. That’s how civil society should behave and not you clashing heads that you know, this is election tension. You saw a ballot manipulation here. It’s the fault of the electoral temporary staff, the Electoral Commission doesn’t know. Why don’t you talk to the Electoral Commission to sack that person?
Then to already, the tension is there that the Electoral Commission is in bed with the ruling party manipulating it. So if that thing, they’ll say, “It’s CDD who said it. And it’s a credible institution. We are boycotting the election having done good.” There’s so many advocacy approaches that civil society must also do.
We believe that even when we have data, pre-election sampling to see citizens voting pattern, we release to the parties before we come out and publicize. We meet the MPP, the other parties that, “This is what the data is pointing to.” And there are several things that they’re saying because of that, they’re going to vote against you, work on it.
We go to MPP, we present to them before we publish the paper. So I’m interested to see that, yes, I’ve gone through all these trends, combed the villages. I have the data I’ve given to you, there’s action. That’s my interest. Not that civil society organizations are anti-government, no. Otherwise I wouldn’t work, if the country goes into coup. I can’t speak French. My neighbors are all French-speaking countries. Where do I go? We always want…
And my boss, former… Boadi has been saying that, that sometimes he sits back and think that all the democracy championing he’s been doing, he’s wasting his time because he’s not seeing action. He’s not seeing impact always when you go to meeting, that’s his problem. So he will end the meeting by saying, “So this data, how do we want it to make influence? Who do we give to?” So that are some of the questions that he asks us.
So sometime we have a targeted meeting with the subcommittees of parliament. Sometimes we do policy briefs and we put into the approaching hall, so they are the policy makers. So sometimes you ask me, what do we seek to do? That’s what we want to do. We seek to make sure that we have policy uptake from our briefing, policy briefs, our data we take to make influence to ensure that the loopholes that we identified there are targeted intervention to deal with them from the policy directors.
Tammy Palacios:
Mr. Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah, Senior Program Manager for Ghana Center for Democratic Development, I cannot thank you enough for your contributions to this discussion. And I think that you said it so simply, policy uptake. But what you’re really saying is data, influence, impact is positive change.
And I think how you very transparently outline for us that there are things that the policymakers need to do, but there are also things that the civil society needs to do. And that everyone is responsible and accountable for a positive, peaceful future.
And I think that’s a very important framing for this next year with the general elections in Ghana, but also for the next 10 years, the next 20 years. And I think that’s an excellent place to halt our conversation until next time.
Paul N.K. Aborampah Mensah:
Thank you, Tammy. Thank you so much for having me.
Tammy Palacios:
Always a pleasure. Thank you, sir.
For further information on programs mentioned in this podcast, visit:
Center for Democratic Development
Post Election Security Accountability Project
