The Executive Director of the West Africa Centre for Counter-Extremism, Mutaru Mumuni Muqthar, has cautioned that recruitment bribery and political interference in security service enlistment pose a serious threat to national security.
Speaking on Prime News on ABC News GH on Thursday, February 13, he commended the Interior Minister, Muntaka Mubarak, for setting up a committee to investigate the recruitment process.
“The fact that the minister has decided to set up a committee now to look into it must be met with a lot of support to ensure that we sanitize the space,” he stated.
Mr. Muqthar lamented the increasing cases of alleged bribery in security recruitment, stressing that the politicization of the process has eroded professionalism.
“It is no news that our security space has been hugely politicized, to the extent that recruitment is influenced by political parties,” he said.
He added that some officers reportedly pay for their enlistment, compromising the quality of personnel within the service.
“There are quite a good number of them in there who are not qualified or fit enough to step within the security service,” he warned.
Referencing past recruitment scandals and instances of police officers engaging in criminal activities such as armed robbery, Mr. Muqthar urged urgent reforms.
“We’ve seen situations where they cannot even write a report,” he noted.
He emphasized that security institutions require a rigorous and merit-based recruitment process to fulfill their mandate effectively.
He, therefore, called for public support for the minister’s initiative, describing the formation of the 7-member investigative committee as a necessary step toward restoring integrity in security service recruitment.
