According to the CDD, this call is in line with the recommendations of the Ayawaso West Wuogon Commission headed by Justice Emile Short.
The unit has come under public scrutiny again after the alleged assault of Citi FM’s Caleb Kudah earlier this week.
In an interview on Citi FM, the Director of Advocacy and Policy Engagement at the CDD-Ghana, Kojo Asante, said there is the need to completely review the country’s National Security apparatus.
According to Mr. Asante, the actions of the security agency are not in tandem with the 1992 constitution of the country.
“For me, on the back of the Ayawaso report, I think we need to come back to the conversation around the reform of National Security. Moreover, we just passed a new National Security Act, and we need to look at the behaviour, the culture and the rest. This idea of the operatives of National Security going here and there doing police [work] and all that is something that the State needs to look at very carefully.”
“I don’t think that is what the constitution prescribes, but this is what the practice has evolved to be, and it must be looked at carefully.”
However, the National Security Ministry has commenced internal investigations into the matter.
According to a statement signed by Chief Director Lt. Col. Ababio Serebour (rtd), it “takes, with all seriousness, the allegations of manhandling” made by Citi FM journalists Caleb Kudah and Zoe Abu-Baidoo during their interrogation by operatives of the outfit for taking videos of a no-photography zone.
“The ministry has, therefore, initiated investigations into the said allegations”, the statement said.
The statement also assured the public that the “appropriate actions shall be taken if the allegations are found to be true”.