Fraud and Security Consultant, Richard Kumadoe, has urged the government to urgently take steps to address the issues raised in the report by the West African Centre for Counter-Extremism (WACCE).
WACCE in its report highlighted that Ghana’s political stability may be disrupted, in the wake of terrorism in the Sahel and other domestic challenges such as youth unemployment.
Reacting to the report, Mr. Kumadoe noted that government must properly conduct a risk assessment of current chieftaincy issues which the report has outlined as a pre-existing condition for terrorist attacks and quickly resolve them.
“There are chieftaincy issues from South to West and I think we should begin to engage the House of Chiefs in a proper dialogue manner…there are various degrees of chieftaincy issues. We might need to quantify them to do a proper risk assessment of them and where there are emergency cases of a threat that could trigger some of these things, we can look at it and address them,” he said in an interview on The Pulse, Monday.
The report further stated that the pervasive youth unemployment rate of about 59% is one of the biggest risks for an extremist attack on the country.
Mr. Kumadoe, therefore implored government to mobilise resources to create employment for the youth to salvage the socio-economic threat of terrorist attacks in Ghana.
“Once they are unemployed, they become vulnerable to recruitment by any of these terrorist groups…It’s a shared responsibility and it’s a core function the National Security must take seriously, particularly when it comes to the negative effects of unemployment and the tendency of our youth joining criminal gangs and behaving awkwardly for which terrorism and coup d’état and many of the security threats could be part of it,” he noted.
He added, “Let’s consider this report and let National Security and Police look at it. The areas they want to do something about immediately, let them work at it…our borders are shaky and we will need to wake up to our responsibility.”
