Letter to the president-elect John Dramani Mahama.
Dear Sir,
I am a police officer currently stationed at the police Headquarters and it is my fervent prayer that this letter finds you and your household well.
Your excellency, as police officers, we have for the past three years lived under the leadership of a dictator, who is not only tyrannical but vindictive and petty. We have survived the rule of a murderous tyrant who has mastered the act of conmanship so well that he has succeeded through his many social media show offs and pretentious personality has earned him the nickname King Showboy. I am referring to no other person than the Inspector General of Police, Dr. George Akuffo Dampare.
Don’t get me wrong Your excellency. I was one of the many police officers who had high hopes and dreams when Dr. Dampare was appointed IGP. Little did we know that we would in the next three years be enduring the leadership of a selfish autocratic conman whose only aim is to project his fake personality to the public while ordering the killing of innocent Ghanaians behind the scenes. We have for the past three years endured a culture of silence due to the high handedness and petty nature of our IGP.
Your excellency, our IGP has handled the entire police service as his personal business often placing his friends who are unqualified above very dedicated and well seasoned seniors without any consideration of the laid down rules and procedures. These things aren’t made up to discredit him but factual and a true reflection of what most police officers have had to deal with for the past three years. To describe IGP Dr. George Akuffo Dampare as a wolf in sheep skin is to be charitable with words. He is worse than that. Your excellency, consider some of the reasons below why you cannot maintain the murderous conman as the IGP to continue his antics:
1. The IGP has reduced the entire police service to family and friends business arbitrarily nominating his cronnies within the service for multiple special recommendation promotion without recourse to the police service ACT (Act 350) and the CI 76. A solid example would be his close friend and associate C/Supt. Sylvester Asare. Your excellency, Sylvester Asare happens to be one of the many close friend Dr. Dampare has promoted without any merit or recourse to the regulations governing promotions in the GPS. When Dr. Dampare took office, Sylvester Asare was an ASP. Not long after he took office, without any merit whatsoever, the IGP recommended him to be promoted to the rank of DSP. Just about two months later, he again promoted him from DSP to the rank of Superintendent of police through the same special recommendation. Within the short period of just two years later, Sylvester Asare was again promoted from the rank of Supol to Chief Supol. This makes three special recommendation for one person by the same IGP within the short period of three years. This in my opinion and I dare say in the opinion of many officers an absolute abuse of power and processes.
2. There is also the case of now DSP/Mr. Adusei whom the IGP met as a sergeant point one when he took office. For no apparent reason and without any recourse to the rules, IGP Dr. Dampare within these three short years in the helm of affairs managed to promote Mr. Adusei from Sergeant to Inspector, Inspector to C/Inspector, C/Inspector to ASP and then recently to DSP all by special recommendation. Yes! You read right. Four special recommendations within the short period of three years. Of all the large numbers of ASPs in the Ghana Police Service, the IGP Dr. Dampare went out of his way to not only insult the Accra Regional Police Judicial Commander and poopooed on seniority but also created a whole unit called the Legal Protection Unit for DSP/Mr. Adusei and made him the commander. The question then should be why? Are these the only people doing the entire Ghana police service work? These people discussed above are just a few of his cronnies he has arbitrarily promoted. There are more such promotions.
3. IGP Dr. Dampare is the pettiest of all IGPs in the history of the Ghana Police Service. One is bound to receive punishment without any hearing or query if Dr. Dampare sees you near someone he considers an enemy. His level of pettiness drove him to transfer senior officers to various rural areas within the country whose only offence were that they escorted a fellow officer to a funeral; someone he considers an enemy.
4. Your excellency, IGP Dr. Dampare has since his assumption of office superintended over gross mismanagement of our police welfare funds and handled it like a cult. He has embezzled huge sums of the police welfare funds and refused to account to the contributors over the years. IGP Dr. Dampare has single handedly without any recourse to the contributors converted buses, buildings and other investments belonging to the PWS to poilce properties. All the fight for accountability regarding the welfare money was seen as a personal attack prompting him to heavily descend on whoever speaks about it with interdiction and or transfer. The case of D/Sgt Daniel Kwofie @ Ahanta currently before court is one of those. Your excellency, I assure you that you will find the reasons for instituting service enquiry against this vocal officer ludicrous and unbelievably petty.
5. When it comes to promotion of officers who are due to be promoted to the next rank, IGP Dr. Dampare only has to find a member he has grudges with to deny the entire course their promotion. He will work tirelessly to make sure he deprives them of their due promotion just because there is an individual member whose nose is out of shape in his views. The examples abound all over. As we speak, there are ACPs who have spent seven solid years on their rank and who have been denied promotion while their juniors who spent only two years on their ranks have been promoted over them to DCOPs with the empty and baseless excuse that they are regional commanders. Isn’t that ridiculous? Your excellency, you do not need to go far to find evidence of these thing I talk about. There is a barrage of civil suits currently pending before the courts while most of these officers have either died of heartbreak or retired miserably. A lot more are lacing their boots to go to court. Why should it be so? These actions by officers to assert their rights speak of a system so broken and personalised by one man such that one can only conclude that the IGP is a villain.
6. The IGP presents a very innocent, hardworking and truthful face to the media. In fact, his quest for public validation and positive personality has led him to recruit people with the soul purpose of projecting his public positive image. He has managed to convince the general public he was a good man and the perfect IGP by building bus stops and beautifying the police headquarters while giving execution orders to his murder squad to eliminate innocent civilians he perceived to be a threat to his leadership. The killing of five young men at Kokrobite and labeling them as armed robbers and violent criminals is one of those. This IGP has been involved in several extra judicial killings of innocent civilians in order to portray himself as fighting armed robbery. He has a murder squad who carry out his orders discreetly under the cover of darkness. IGP Dr. Dampare is the perfect definition of whitewashed tomb. He is a sardist who finds happiness in inflicting unimaginable pain on others to assert his superiority. He presents an innocent outlook to the public and will go any length to pay any amount to the media to paint a positive picture of him when in reality he is a tyrant terrorising police officers across the length and breath of this country. He has succeeded in building a huge facade of a great leader to the outside world while terrorising, vilifying, and breaking down the very soul of the ordinary police officer. Is this someone you think should be kept in office, your excellency?
7. Your excellency, the IGP Dr. Dampare whom the media and persons outside see as an angel is, in fact, a demon. He has recruited thousands of police police officers without any background checks. The entire process of recruitment has been shrouded in utmost secrecy under the guise of having external recruiters handle the process. This has resulted in the recruitment of unqualified party footsolders of politicians. Politicians have hijacked the recruitment process and have been given several slots to recruit hardened criminals into the service. His wife Anita Kpentey wielded so much power in recruiting people into the police service even though she is not currently resident in the country.
8. Your excellency, when it comes to training of police senior officers, he has shared several slots to politicians, businessmen and fraudsters who have succeeded in pushing undesirable characters into the police academy to become senior officers. Your excellency, I dare say that there are several senior officers who graduated within his tenure and have no ability to write their own names or communicate in the English language which is our medium of expression. It is an open secret that escorts who cannot read or write have become senior police officers through the slot sharing process for special recommendation. Remember Ekow Russel in the popular cocaine saga? Your excellency, I am glad to inform you that he is now a senior officer thanks to the slot sharing process even though he lacks reading and writing skills and the character necessary to command. He is not alone but there are hundreds of such senior officers churned out within Dr. Dampare’s tenure as IGP who could not even write their own names. All manner of persons found their way into the officer corps due to Dr. Dampare’s penchant to look good in the eyes of politicians, media practitioners, businessmen and fraudsters and to continue to perpetuate his power. Your excellency, it will interest you to know that some newly graduated ASPs paid as much as GHS 50,000.00 to have access to the academy. In fact, evidence points to the fact that C/Supt. Sylvester Asare had more than 50 slots he sold for GHS50,000.00 each.
9. Your excellency, as I write this letter, more than 700 police recruits are currently undergoing training in police depots across the country. How these large numbers were recruited remains a mystery because there hasn’t been any enlistment process in a long time. I can authoritatively tell you that no background checks have been carried out on any of these recruits in training and that has been the norm. This has been the reason for the large numbers of armed robbers and thieves, murderers who now have the backing of the uniform to ply their trade. Of course why should background check be carried out when they have paid so much for slots to be recruited?
10. Your excellency, I can go on and on and on. It’s a never ending acts of power drunkenness, abuse of process and power etc. If it’s not about IGP Dr. Dampare personally, then it’s not good. He is an attention seeker who will do anything to attract the media attention and praises when in reality he is a terrorist. The IGP is one against free speech. He has tried on several occasions to stifle free speech by his attempt to collapse police social media platforms without success.
11. Your excellency, if senior officers such as COP/Mr. Christian Tetteh Yohuno have been totally sidelined and reduced to nothing by this IGP Dr. Dampare using media men and social media commentators, secret recordings and character assassination, who are we the ordinary police men before him?
12. Your excellency, we the ordinary police officers have voted massively for you and your party to take us out of this abyss. We are in fact coming from a lot. All those outside who have all the positive things to say about our dictator IGP surely know nothing about his true character and what we have had to endure. They lack the knowledge of the pains and hurts most police officers have been through over these few years. After all, there is a saying that if the fish comes from the sea to say the whale is dead, who are you on land to discredit it?
13. The long and short of it all is that we, the men and women in the police service have been through a lot. We do not want to have anything whatsoever to do with IGP Dr. Dampare. If you insist on maintaining him, Mr. President elect, we the ordinary police officers will be left with no choice than to take laws into our own hands and force the attention seeking terrorist and dictator out of office. Our massive vote for you is a cry for help sir.
Yours in the service of mother Ghana,
C/Inspector Paulinus Gbordomegbor.
