There’s Not a Single Vigilante Group in Ghana – Lawyer Anyenini

Mr. Samson Lardy Anyenini

Journalist and legal practitioner, Samson Lardy Anyenini, has disabused the minds of many Ghanaians including civil society organisations, that there is not a single vigilante group currently in the country as many people have been made to believe.

According to him, many of the politically related or motivated violent disturbances being experienced by the nation since December 2016 till date are simply acts of hooliganism and lawlessness.   

“I am yet to identify a vigilante group in Ghana. I am unaware of one such vigilante group in Ghana. I hear every day particularly in the last 10 months or so after the elections and the usual things that characterize the immediate aftermath of elections where political party hooligans, lawless individuals who are emboldened by leaders who encourage them to do impunity. 

“The things that they have done that we continue to describe everyday as vigilantism. I have checked my definition of vigilantism, I can’t put them in any of the classes of definitions of vigilantism”, Mr. Anyenini said this when he delivered a lecture in Tamale on the topic: “Youth Vigilantism and Selective Justice in Ghana: A Threat to National Security” to mark the 15 anniversary celebration of NORSAAC.

The host of popular political talkshow programme, news file, on Accra based Joy 99.7 FM, continued his argument by saying “I insist we have no vigilante groups in Ghana. I can’t see one and I justify this saying: “Vigilantism generally and even particularly is defined to be involved parsons who have decided in a particular community or society to enforce law but without legal authority to do so.

“Persons who feel, that the laws in their community or in the country are being disobeyed and yet those who have been paid by the state, established by the state to enforce the law are refusing to enforce the law and therefore, they take it upon themselves to enforce the law”, he stressed. 

Mr. Anyenini further argued that, in many instances vigilante groups do a lot of good to the society or community in which they live except that they do not follow legal ways of doing so. “In fact, in a lot of instances vigilante groups may do a community a lot of good except that they do not have the legal backing to do the things they do. 

He however blames the creation, continuous existence and surge in the activities of vigilantism on politicians and political parties. “They are actively promoted by the people who swear an oath, swear on the constitution, swear on the Bible and Koran to do right with everybody and to uphold the constitution, these are the same people who turn around and encourage them to act with impunity and disobey the laws of Ghana.

“…when there was a lot of talk and criticism in the media, what eventually happened was a charade of an example where a party chairman was arrested under the instructions of persons who have no business instructing the police to do their work. And the police have been left very timid because when party persons are involved in this hooliganism, the police is unable to act because if they act in accordance with the law they will lose their jobs. They will be transferred. Punishment transfer” he stated. 

Dr Emmanuel Kwesi Aning

The Director, Academic Affairs and Research at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, Dr. Emmanuel Kwesi Aning, also agreed totally with the arguments of Lawyer Samson Lardy Anyenini.       

Delivering his lecture on the topic: “Curbing Youth Vigilantism in Ghana – a Panacea for Sustainable Democracy”, he said what Ghanaians are currently seeing among political party youth is organized criminality and hooliganism, and predicted that by 2020 either Islamic State or Al-Qaeda would have infiltrated it.

Contrary to official reports from the Libyan government that there were about 50 Ghanaians who were members of Islamic State, Dr. Aning said the figure could be more than that because the said report was an old one.       

“There is an army of the poor established by Islamic State, paid 1,200 to 2000 dollars every month with the view to inciting young people from this part of the world to join them”, he stated.

He said more than 40 percent of the country’s population is made of young adults and this is a cause for alarm because there is 60-70 percent chance that the country could experience violence especially when these groups of people are unemployed.

Established in 2002 as a youth focused and community centered organization mobilizing young people around issues of HIV/AIDS, NORSAAC expanded and sustained its interventions in the Northern part over the period.

In recent times, the organization has mobilized over 3000 young people to lead campaigns against exclusion of girls in school management and the mobilization of another set of 1000 girls in some communities to challenge injustices in those communities.

Additionally, over 300 young people have successfully gone through various skills development programmes through the support of the organization, some of which include mobile phone repairs, fashion design, welding, beads making, soap making and among others.

Going into the future, Executive Director of NORSAAC, Alhassan Mohammed Awal, said the organization is going to focus on gender and governance, sexual and reproductive health rights, education and livelihood.