When the Law of the Streets confronted the Men in Uniform!

By Jimmy Aglah

Once upon a time in the Republic of Uncommon Sense, the rule of law went on a brief holiday, leaving behind two gentlemen to look after the Republic. One was a minister of state, armed with the authority of government and the confidence of an elected representative. The other was a military officer, armed with the authority of the Ghana Armed Forces and, presumably, the confidence that comes with commanding men who carry rifles.

Unfortunately, nobody appeared to have informed either gentleman where his authority ended and the other’s began.

The resulting encounter was a magnificent demonstration of what happens when two institutions of the Republic meet at a roadside without first agreeing on which chapter of the Constitution they are operating under.

At the centre of this national drama was Samuel Nartey George, Minister for Communication, Digital Technology and Innovations, who had temporarily exchanged the complicated business of digital transformation for the more immediate challenge of transforming military behaviour in his Ningo-Prampram constituency.

The minister was furious. And judging by the allegations he made, he had reasons to be.

Soldiers had allegedly seized tipper trucks, brutalised residents and conducted themselves in a manner that suggested the difference between a military operation and a highway robbery was becoming increasingly difficult to explain to the ordinary taxpayer.

There were even allegations that police officers had been threatened with weapons. If true, this would represent a remarkable development in our national security architecture. The police, whose constitutional responsibility includes maintaining law and order, would apparently require protection from soldiers who had arrived to maintain another variety of law and order.

In the Republic of Uncommon Sense, such arrangements are not entirely unusual. We have perfected the art of creating institutions to supervise institutions, only to discover that the supervisors occasionally need supervision themselves.

But Sam George was not prepared to supervise this particular situation from the comfort of an air-conditioned office.

He confronted the military officer, Lieutenant Albert Goh, and proceeded to deliver what might generously be described as an unscheduled lecture in military accountability, constitutional responsibility and the consequences of irritating an elected representative.

At one point, the minister reportedly described the soldiers’ conduct in terms associated with armed robbery and demanded the officer’s dismissal.

Then came the statement that elevated an otherwise local confrontation into a national philosophical debate.

The minister invoked the law of the streets.

Now, this was a fascinating constitutional innovation.

For decades, Ghanaian lawyers have wasted precious time studying the 1992 Constitution, Acts of Parliament, legislative instruments and judicial precedents. Law students have spent sleepless nights memorising provisions that ordinary citizens struggle to understand.

Yet here was a senior government official introducing an entirely new branch of jurisprudence in broad daylight.

The Law of the Streets!

Nobody knew when Parliament had passed it, whether the President had assented to it or whether copies were available at the Assembly Press. But from the confidence with which it was invoked, one suspected it had been in force for some time, awaiting a suitable military officer on whom to test its provisions.

The beauty of this new law was its simplicity. Unlike conventional legislation, it required no parliamentary debate, no committee hearings and no publication in the Gazette. Its enforcement mechanism appeared to depend entirely on how angry the person invoking it had become.

One could almost imagine the bewilderment of the military officer.

He had probably received instructions from his superiors before embarking on the operation. Whether those instructions authorised everything allegedly done was another matter requiring investigation. But nowhere in his military training, one suspects, had he encountered a minister threatening consequences under a legal framework administered by the streets.

And yet the minister’s anger raised a serious question that the Republic could not conveniently dismiss.

What exactly were armed soldiers doing in an operation involving tipper trucks and sand-winning activities? Under whose authority were the vehicles allegedly seized? What offences had their owners committed? And if police officers were indeed threatened, had the Republic reached the extraordinary stage where one security institution could intimidate another while both claimed to be enforcing the law?

These were not small questions.

A soldier’s uniform is not a certificate of exemption from the Constitution. Neither is a rifle an alternative to a court order. If the allegations against the soldiers are established, those responsible must face the appropriate consequences.

But there was another little difficulty.

A minister’s appointment letter is equally not a licence to establish a parallel judicial system at the roadside.

The Republic cannot complain that soldiers have exceeded their authority and then applaud a minister for appearing to exceed his own. Otherwise, we shall eventually arrive at the absurd situation where every public official carries a personal interpretation of the law, to be activated whenever his blood pressure rises.

The police will enforce the criminal law. Soldiers will enforce military instructions. Ministers will enforce the law of the streets. And ordinary citizens, caught between these competing jurisdictions, will be left wondering which authority to obey before somebody decides they are obstructing justice.

Fortunately, the controversy eventually travelled from the roadside to the conference room.

Sam George met the Defence Minister and the military high command, where the temperature of the discussion appears to have dropped considerably. The minister clarified that his remarks were not intended as an attack on the Ghana Armed Forces as an institution, while the military leadership reportedly undertook to investigate the incident.

This was reassuring.

Apparently, the Republic still possessed functioning institutions capable of resolving disputes without consulting the law of the streets.

But the meeting also exposed one of our enduring national habits. We are very enthusiastic about institutional authority when exercising it and remarkably sensitive about institutional respect when somebody else challenges us.

The military deserves respect, certainly. Its officers and men perform difficult duties in the service of the Republic. But respect cannot become a protective umbrella under which alleged misconduct is sheltered from scrutiny.

Equally, ministers deserve respect for the offices they occupy. But public office demands restraint precisely when anger seems most justified. The higher one climbs the ladder of authority, the less freedom one should have to turn personal indignation into public threats.

A Ghanaian proverb reminds us that when two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.

In this particular contest, however, the grass had already allegedly lost its tipper trucks before the elephants began arguing about constitutional authority.

And that is the tragedy beneath the comedy.

Somewhere in Ningo-Prampram are ordinary citizens whose livelihoods may have been disrupted. They are not interested in whether a minister can outshout a lieutenant or whether a lieutenant can outstare a minister. They want to know whether their rights were violated, whether their property was lawfully handled and whether anybody will be held accountable.

Those questions deserve answers, not merely a reconciliation photograph and a promise to investigate.

The Republic must therefore resist the temptation to turn this episode into another contest of personalities. The central issue is not whether Sam George is brave or abrasive, or whether the military officer was sufficiently respectful to a minister.

It is whether the law applies equally to the man carrying the rifle, the man carrying the ministerial title and the ordinary citizen carrying the burden of their decisions.

For if the allegations against the soldiers are true, the Republic has a military accountability problem. And if ministers believe they can remedy such problems by invoking the law of the streets, we have acquired an additional constitutional problem.

One cannot extinguish a fire by pouring petrol on it and then demand applause for displaying concern about fire safety.

Perhaps the Attorney-General should now commission a comprehensive review of this newly discovered Law of the Streets, just to establish its relationship with the 1992 Constitution.

Until then, the citizens of the Republic of Uncommon Sense would be well advised to travel with three essential documents: their national identity card, their driver’s licence and a certified copy of whichever law happens to be in force on the particular street they are using.

Because in a country where soldiers allegedly seize trucks, ministers threaten street justice and everybody claims to be defending the rule of law, the ordinary citizen faces one increasingly difficult question:

If those entrusted with enforcing the law cannot agree on what the law is, who exactly is supposed to obey it?