The National Security Coordinator, COP Dr Osman Alhassan Abdul Razak, has warned that political vigilantism in Ghana has evolved from informal party youth mobilisation into organised groups capable of threatening the country’s electoral processes and national security.
Speaking on Tuesday at an Election Watch Ghana dialogue on vigilantism, he said what began as youth mobilisation for party visibility has, over successive election cycles, developed into structured groups with uniforms, command hierarchies and, in some cases, weapons.
COP Abdul Razak traced the origins of political vigilantism to the 1950s, when informal party task forces gradually evolved into groups implicated in election-related violence. “What began as a wonderful act of youth mobilisation for party visibility gradually degenerated into election-related violence that directly challenged state security by intimidating opponents and disrupting election processes,” he said.
He argued that election-related violence should not be treated merely as a law-and-order matter, cautioning that it risks eroding public confidence in elections, weakening trust in state institutions, undermining investor confidence and threatening the social cohesion on which Ghana’s democratic development depends.
He also pointed to the 1992 Constitution, which vests authority to organise and deploy state security forces exclusively in the state, warning that groups performing security functions outside this framework undermine lawful state authority.
On the Vigilantism and Related Offences Act, 2019 (Act 999), COP Abdul Razak said the law was a timely response to public concern, civil society advocacy and incidents of violence linked to political vigilantism. He clarified that its purpose was not to dissolve party youth groups outright but to prohibit the creation, organisation, recruitment, training, arming, funding and support of vigilante groups engaged in political activity.
The Chronicle finds this assessment deeply troubling, though it takes some comfort in the fact that the national security establishment has publicly named the problem rather than allowed it to fester unacknowledged.
Vigilantism has long been a subject of public concern in Ghana, and incidents involving party-affiliated groups confronting state institutions, including the widely reported 2017 storming of a state facility in Kumasi by members of a group linked to a governing party, remain fresh in public memory, even where full accountability for such episodes has yet to be secured.
We do not need to speculate to recognise that vigilantism, left unchecked, poses a serious risk to the Fourth Republic. Nor does The Chronicle absolve the state of its own responsibility: chronic youth unemployment creates the conditions in which such groups are recruited, and successive governments have been slow to close that door. This is not sympathy for lawlessness, it is an acknowledgment that grievance and desperation are what vigilante networks exploit.
The Chronicle is particularly troubled that individuals associated with vigilante activity have reportedly sought positions within state security services and, in some cases, political office. Persons with such associations occupying positions of authority raises legitimate questions about accountability and the impartiality of state institutions are questions that deserve scrutiny rather than silence.
Ghana already has the legal tools to address this; what has been lacking is consistent enforcement. The Chronicle urges that the Vigilantism and Related Offences Act be enforced in full, and applied not only to foot soldiers who carry out violence, but to the politicians and financiers who sponsor or benefit from vigilante groups.
Security agencies must be insulated from partisan interference, with the Police Service allowed to operate independently of party direction and institutional safeguards strengthened, including consideration of reforms to how senior security appointments are made, to protect impartial law enforcement.
Oversight bodies such as the National Commission for Civic Education and the National Peace Council should be adequately resourced for sustained public education, while government must confront the underlying economic drivers, particularly youth unemployment, that make vigilante recruitment possible in the first place. Above all, the patronage networks that tie access to state resources and jobs to party allegiance must be dismantled.
The Chronicle urges the national security establishment to pursue this matter without fear or favour, and to ensure that any politician found to be sponsoring vigilante activity faces the full consequences of the law. A young democracy cannot be permitted to bend to armed party factions. The Fourth Republic must be defended deliberately, lawfully and without compromise.
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