Senior Vice-President of IMANI Ghana, Kofi Bentil says National Security had no business in the La Pleasure Beach demolition, and that the exercise cannot be justified as a national security matter.
Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile on Saturday, October 3, Mr Bentil said the dispute behind the demolition was a local one that should have been left to the district assembly and the courts.
“This is not a national security issue. Never. It can never be justified as a national security issue,” he said.
Deputy Chief of Staff Stan Dogbe has said the demolition, which took place on Friday, October 2, followed a request from the Labadi Beach Hotel and was supervised by National Security.
Mr Bentil rejected that reasoning, insisting the matter was one for the district assembly to solve and a law court to determine.
“A private hotel, which was a later addition to the beach, coming to meet the people there, cannot say you should destroy everything there. One, it cannot be a national security issue. And the hotel doesn’t control national security.
“Two, the hotel does not have the right to say that because Polo Club is on my property, destroy everybody’s property. And if the hotel asks national security to do so, they should not do it. So there is no justification,” he stressed.
What National Security should focus on
Mr Bentil said the country’s security attention is going to the wrong places, naming galamsey and drug trafficking as the real national security problems.
“If you’re talking about national security and what we should be spending our money doing, our time doing, we are losing the fight against galamsey. But we’ve already lost. You have a situation where this international drug thing is tarnishing our image all over the place. That’s a national security issue,” he said.
He also pointed to Agbogbloshie, which he said is rated as one of the 10 most polluted places on earth, as another matter National Security should be dealing with.
“If you Google, you will find Agbogbloshie is rated as one of the 10 most polluted places on earth because of the electronic waste disposal they’ve been doing there. That is a national security problem.”
In his view, a dispute between a hotel and one small enclave should not take up that kind of attention.
“The dispute between a hotel and one small enclave has led to what you are seeing on the screen. Something which supports the livelihoods of thousands of people has been reduced to rubble. Who is running this town?”
Movable items’ destruction
The programme’s host, Samson Lardy Anyenini, said traders he had listened to told of a woman who went in to bring out a sewing machine but was stopped and chased away, after which the machine was run over.
He said others with fridges and soft drinks were also not given the chance to take them out.
Reacting to this, Mr Bentil was firm that destroying movable property was wrong in any case.
“You never have to destroy a person’s movable items when they are willing to take it away. You never,” he said.
He described the destruction of movable items as deliberate.
“Even movable items that could have been salvaged, umbrellas, chairs, fridges were destroyed. That is malice aforethought,” he said.
Tourism and the beach’s growth
Mr Bentil said tourism is the biggest industry in La and its surrounding areas, and the state should be working with the people who depend on it.
“Tourism is an industry by itself. And that is what these people live on. You can organise them, you can work with them on it,” he said.
He added: “Nobody planned it. … It is not perfect, but if ordinary Ghanaians have scratched themselves to put something like this up, what you do is help them. We could have gone and made it better. What we have definitely done is not to make it better.”
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