• The security analyst says the minister also failed in his communication
• He urged the police to invite the minister to answer questions around the alleged payment of ransom to the kidnappers
Security analyst, Adam Bonaa, has suggested that the Ghana Police Service must invite and question the Western Regional Minister to bring some form of clarity to issues surrounding the staged pregnancy and abduction of Josephine Panyin Mensah.
Hours after Josephine Mensah was found at Axim following her disappearance on September 16, 2021, the Western Regional Minster in a radio interview revealed that preliminary investigations had established her nine-month-old pregnancy and purported kidnapping to be fake.
A personal assistant to the Minister in an interview, also disclosed that Mr Kwabena Okyere Darko gave out an amount of GHC3000 to be paid as ransom to the supposed abductors of Josephine when she went missing.
Speaking in an interview with GhanaWeb following the confession of Josephine and the decision by the police to charge her as a suspect, Adam Bonaa stated that the Minister’s utterances in the entire brouhaha took away the good work the security agencies put into the entire process.
“He jumped ahead of time and so in all this, it is the Regional Minister’s initial comment that marred the beauty of what the police had done because I know the police were on top of it. They had sent their crack team to the Western Region; over 40 personnel made up of men from different units had been sent there and therefore there was no point for him to come and speak knowing very well that he as the Regional Security Coordinating Council Chairman if he is not there the person who deputize him, is the Regional Police Commander.
“We would have all accepted this if the Regional Commander who is a professional, a technocrat would have spoken. But for him to jump ahead of time and say that he gave ransom, and knowing very well that you just don’t give ransom. The police would just not give ransom. They would use ransom as bait and for his aid to go ahead and say we gave ransom; I would ask that probably the police should go ahead and invite him for further interrogation to find out from him how the ransom was paid. Who was it paid to, which number was it paid to? We need to know all these. It would serve as a deterrent to other regional ministers and politicians who would want to jump ahead of the professional and make commentary that would undermine the security of this country,” he stated.
The security analyst thus reiterated his personal call for political officers such as Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives, as well as Regional Ministers to be given training on their role in security discharge ahead of their recruitment and subsequent chairing of the various security councils.
“If you look at the Western Region saga, if the regional minister had some amount of training, he would’ve known his position as the REGSEC boss you just don’t talk. As part of his training, he would have been thought that you don’t speak, your only chair the meetings and if the need be you advise or you take the advice of the security capos and then you brief the powers that be. But you don’t speak for any of the security agencies,” he emphasized.
Background of Josephine Mensah’s alleged kidnapping
Josephine was reported to the police as missing on September 16, with later reports indicating that some alleged kidnappers got in touch with her family to demand a ransom for her return.
She was found by a carpenter in Axim on Tuesday, September 21, 2021, and was said to be unable to speak from trauma.
She is reported to have requested a pen and a paper through which she communicated her ordeal to the people who found her.
According to a carpenter, who found her, a traumatized Josephine informed him through writing that she went into forced labour when the kidnappers grabbed her. He further stated that the baby died and was taken away from her.
Her family and security officers were later contacted and she was sent to a health facility at Axim for medical attention.
She is reported to have confessed during a police interrogation that she faked her pregnancy and kidnapping.
Further tests conducted by the police also proved that she was never pregnant.
Following her revelations, Josephine Mensah was detained at the Takoradi Regional Police Station as a suspect.
Security Analyst, Adam Bonaa