Security Is Not Just Guns; It Is Intelligence : Hon. Muntaka Educated MMDCEs On ACT 1168.
A high-level training programme on Ghana’s Security and Intelligence Agencies Act, 1168, has been held for Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) in the Western Region to sharpen their understanding of the law, their roles, and how to work with the security agencies to keep their districts safe.
Opening the programme, the Minister for the Interior and Member of Parliament for Asawase, Hon. Muntaka Mohammed-Mubarak, said security remains fundamental to national development.
He said that, as a government, it is clear that maintaining security requires more than responding to incidents after they occur. It requires effective leadership, timely intelligence, preventive action, and close cooperation among all the institutions responsible for protecting Ghana.
Hon. Muntaka told the MMDCEs that they are at the centre of the security architecture in their districts.
They serve as chairpersons of their District Security Councils (DISECs).
They work with the officers of the Police, the Fire Service, Immigration, and the Armed Forces, and none of them alone can solve the problem.
He used illegal mining, or galamsey, as a clear example of why enforcement alone will not work.
Illegal mining, he said, requires more than enforcement operations.
It requires the MMDCEs to step in and engage directly with the communities.
He acknowledged the difficulty of that work. He said he knows MMDCEs face insults every day from party executives and others whenever they try to make an effort to stop illegal mining.
But, he said, they have a responsibility, and they promised a reset. You cannot claim a reset and then want to let the status quo remain.
He explained that sometimes, when security personnel go to the communities, it is even the committee members in those communities who give illegal miners places to hide because they do not understand the effect of what the illegal miners are doing to them, their water, their farms, and their own future.
That is why, he said, the MMDCEs must engage the communities, explain the dangers, and get the communities themselves to help fight galamsey.
Addressing the training, Ghana’s National Security Coordinator, COP Abdul-Osman Razak, took the MMDCEs through the legal and operational framework of the Security and Intelligence Agencies Act, 1168.
COP Razak explained that Act 1168 clearly defines how Ghana’s security and intelligence agencies are structured, how they must operate, and how they must relate to one another and to civilian authorities such as the MMDCEs.
He stressed that under the Act, intelligence is not for show; it is for action.
The MMDCEs, as heads of DISEC, must ensure that intelligence received in their districts is properly assessed, properly shared, and properly acted upon, without leaking it or abusing it.
He warned that when intelligence is hoarded, when agencies compete instead of cooperating, or when Security Council decisions are taken but not followed up, threats grow—from galamsey, chieftaincy conflicts, land disputes, and criminal networks that cross district and regional boundaries.
COP Razak urged the MMDCEs to respect the chain of command, respect the mandate of each agency, and build trust with the security commanders in their districts. That trust, he said, is what makes early warning work.
Story by Nana Fynn@W/R.
