Author: Mensah Thompson
I am one person who finds no solace in another man’s fall, I believe in lessons rather than retribution and so are my principles that no amount of wrong would make them weary.
Publicly Dampare has been one of the best IGPs no doubt, his PR game was spot on, coupled with police visibility, traffic decongestions and quick response to public issues could easily almost fool anyone.
Indeed the face of the Police had changed under Dampare as IGP, but beneath the seath of a well orchestrated PR policing was a police service grasping for breath.
As a Civil Society activist for over ten good years I can boldly say that my worst and lowest moments were all under Dampare as IGP.
It just didn’t make sense until one day I bumped into a former IGP under Akufo-Addo (I will withhold name), we had met in a mutual friend’s house for lunch and when I was introduced to him he shouted “Ei small world”
Our host asked whether he knew me and he retorted “Do you know how many times I was asked to arrest this man when I was IGP?”
In his words they will call him from the Jubilee house almost every morning and asked him why he will sit down as an IGP and allow a small boy like me to be sitting on radio and on TV insulting President Akufo-Addo.
Sometimes they will come to my office he said, to exert more pressure and I will simply ask them to show me which crime in our laws he has committed and I will send my men to pick him up.
This was how he escaped the needless pressures from the seat of government to arrest a poor activist like me who was simply doing his job.
He ended by saying “you see I didn’t know you from anywhere then but if I had succumb to their pressures and arrested you how would I feel today seated here eating with you from the same bowl” I will leave the lessons there for readers but his confessions were quite profound…
I had been a very staunch critic of the President Akufo-Addo regime, right from the beginning of the government,I had worked under two previous IGPs before Dampare and never did I for once fear for my life or my freedom.
But this sense of safety for a loud mouth activist like me which had cemented Ghana’s place as truly democratic society in the eyes of the international community would soon be cut away when in August 2021, a certain Dampare emerged as an IGP.
I would within the period after Dampare became IGP, suffer attempted poisoning, a break into my home and be arrested for absolutely no offense under the criminal and other offenses laws of Ghana.
I was not alone, other activists and media practitioners alike would also suffer similar fates in the hands of the Ghana Police service under Dampare.
Then it dawned on me that there was absolutely no way what happened to us as activists or media practitioners between 2021 and 2024 could have happened without the direct knowledge, approval(either tacit/overt) of the overall boss the IGP.
It all began to make sense after all…
Later in 2023 I will meet Dampare at friends birthday party in my neighborhood, went to greet him and told him I live in this neighborhood and his response was “I know” shocking right?
The IGP knew where I lived, even some of my closest friends don’t even know where I live but the IGP knew where I lived as an activist.
Today amidst his removal and the jubilations among the rank and file of the Service, there are serious allegations popping up against him under his tenure, some as serious as extra-judicial killings. Then you remember “operatives abducting you in the middle of the night, operatives storming your bedroom, chloroforming you and ransacking your home whiles your lifeless body lays there.
You have no choice than to thank God for being alive today.
President Akufo-Addo’s tenure would go into history as the most dangerous regime for activists, anti-corruption crusaders and media practitioners in the fourth Republic, the situation was such bad that even Burkina Faso under military dictatorship was performing better than Ghana a democratic State in the Press Freedom rankings and the one person who made all this possible was IGP Dampare.
Akufo-Addo may have been a despot but his wing-man was definitely Dampare.
His era as IGP brought to an end a boisterous era of growth in Ghana’s democratic credentials, it is such a painful memory etched in the minds of all democracy lovers it will take some time to heal.
To say Dampare was his own nemesis would be an understatement.
IGP Tetteh Yohuno has a big responsibility than he can imagine, to instill trust, improve discipline and officer morale and to restore Ghana’s dwindling credentials as the hub of Press Freedom on the Continent.
May he succeed to the better of all.
Mensah Thompson
Executive Director, ASEPA
