Editorial: Nunoo Mensah & Gbevlo Lartey Must Watch This

Last Saturday, a group of hoodlums claiming to be National Security operatives undertook an operation at the Nkrumah flats, Lartebiokoshie, Accra, during which they forcibly evicted a number of persons living in those flats. In the course of the said illegal and forcible evictions of some of the occupants of the apartments, the hoodlums resorted to violence and other untoward measures which cannot be accepted in any civilized society. The hoodlums claimed they are from National Security and acting on the instructions of National Security. GO contends that if there is any evidence or proof that any persons are illegally occupying government property, there are steps that can and ought to be taken in evicting them. The first in these steps is for a letter demanding their eviction within a reasonable period to be served individually on such persons. If after the said letter(s) the persons are still in occupation, the next step to take is to institute court action against the persons. We say so because it is only a court that can evict any person be he or she a tenant who had overstayed his or her welcome, a squatter or trespasser. It is never a mark of a decent society that even landlords can resort to the use of force to evict tenants. Since last Saturday�s Nkrumah Flats illegal evictions, Ghanaians have not heard the National Security apparatus distance itself from the shameful and illegal conduct of the hoodlums who carried out the evictions. GO thinks that the loud silence of National Security on the issue of whether or not the hoodlums in forcibly and illegally evicting the said occupants of the Nkrumah Flats did so on the authority of National Security leaves a lot to be desired. GO wants to give National Security co-ordinator, Brig. Gen. Joseph Nunoo Mensah and Lt. Col. Larry Gbevlo Lartey, National Security Advisor and National Security co-ordinator respectively, the benefit of the doubt as to whether the hoodlums were acting on the authority of that outfit. However, we wish to point out that the issue of evicting occupants of a government property like Nkrumah Flats cannot be a national security Advisor and National Security concern under any guise. In the name of national security all kinds of abuses of human rights and other breaches of the very sanctity of national security are being allowed to go unchecked. We maintain that national security is a very relevant part of our national existence and should not be cheapened by cadres and apologists of any government as we have witnessed under the 10-month old Mills administration. Those who are in charge of our national security today ought to know that there are more serious issues at Bawku, Yendi and pockets of potential flares all over among several other considerations, which ought to engage their attention for quick and lasting solutions and not what those hoodlums are using the name of national security for. What was undertaken at Nkrumah Flats, assuming there was a genuine basis for it could easily have been done within the law by the Ministry of Works and Housing and not national security operatives. Those hoodlums who think that Ghana is back to its solid revolutionary past where impunity, rather than rule of law was the norm ought to rethink.