A security analyst, Emmanuel Kotin, has described the clash between the military and the police in Accra‘s Central Business District on Monday afternoon as a serious security breach.
The incident began when military officers in an official military vehicle reportedly chased and attacked a plain-clothes police officer on a motorcycle following an alleged traffic infraction by the police officer.
Despite several pleas from the police officer and identifying himself as an Inspector to deter the attack, the soldiers continued to beat him.
Kotin believes that it is high time the military focused on its core mission, adding that “for the military to be involved in internal security lately is a larger problem and a threat to our democracy.”
In Ghana, the police are in charge of internal security while the military is in charge of external security, though the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces can assign other roles to the military.
According to an eyewitness who spoke to citinewsroom.com, the police officer went to the Accra Central Police Station to report the incident afterwards. Some police officers on duty armed themselves and pursued the soldiers, arresting one of them in the process.
The soldiers called for reinforcement in an attempt to rescue their colleague, but they were stiffly resisted by the police until some senior officers managed to quell the tensions.
Traders were shocked to see personnel from the country’s topmost security agencies engage in open combat and verbally and physically assault each other.
