BNI’s Image Baggage

We have heard the denial of the Director of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) regarding the allegation that the security agency is covering up in the case of the murder of JB Danquah-Adu, Member of Parliament (MP) for Abuakwa North in the Eastern Region.

He doubtlessly knows about the high profile nature of the case and how therefore members of the public are following every twist and turn of it. With the BNI involvement in the case and the subsequent alterations of an earlier statement by Daniel Asiedu, the suspected killer currently on trial, many found the twist rather rich: it expectedly prompted further scrutiny in the court of public opinion. In the absence of a BNI explanation, an assortment of theories made the rounds, adding to the already unfavourable image of the security agency. It is good, therefore, that Pius Awelinga has spoken.

While we congratulate him on opening up to the public whose taxes keep the machinery of state of which the BNI is a part going, we only hope that it is the truth and only the truth that he is spewing: he sounds like a gentleman and so we might not dispute his position immediately unless we have fresh grounds to do so as the days elapse.

The agency he heads is critical in the management of security in the country – its roots traceable to the Special Branch which the colonial authorities introduced into our law enforcement system to deal with matters which went beyond ordinary crime –   and therefore require special management as its original nomenclature implies.

Perhaps there was sense in making it an appendage of the police at the time, given the manner in which politicians at the helm have manipulated it into putting it almost permanently on the spotlight.

Today, rightly or wrongly, it is regarded as a tool for the harassment of opponents of the ruling political establishment. It is regrettable that subsequent politicians have sought to use it as a tool of intimidation, reducing its image from what should be a respectable organisation manned by educated professionals to the wing of the ruling party.

Pius Awelinga, by this denial, is perhaps serving notice of his readiness to explain issues to his compatriots when these suffer confusion in the minds of the citizenry.

There are cases which can best be handled by the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) yet these have been deliberately moved to the BNI: that the JB Danquah-Adu case has been returned to the police with startling revelations is ample evidence of this assertion.

The BNI must work on its image. No organisation can survive a despicable public image when, like the BNI, it is a public body mandated to serve the interest of the nation and not the ruling party or government. It is not in the interest of the country for the security agency under review to be put on the footing of Hitler’s Gestapo.

No director of the BNI would like to be remembered as a villain without a dose of sympathy for human life and therefore ready to do the dirty bidding of megalomaniac citizens at the throttle of government.

Source: Editorial/Daily Guide