The former National Security Minister, Francis Poku, has vehemently criticized the Vigilantism and Related Offences Act, 2019 (Act 999), arguing it is fundamentally unenforceable and irrelevant from its inception. He contends that the law, enacted as a direct response to the Ayawaso West Wuogon by-election violence, failed to address the root causes of political violence and was largely ignored by law enforcement agencies. Mr. Poku was a prominent member of the panel at the National Policy Dialogue on the topic: ‘Assessing the Implementation of the Vigilantism and Related Offences Act, 2019 (Act 999) and Its Implications for National Security and Democratic Governance.’
Organised by Election Watch Ghana at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC) in Teshie, Greater Accra, the panel comprised former security chiefs, academics, and governance experts. The six-year period since Act 999’s passage saw a significant assessment of its impact, with the government initially intending to implement a commission of inquiry and a new law without first addressing the underlying issues.
Mr. Poku asserted that Act 999’s provisions, particularly the mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years for forming or operating as a vigilante group and 15 to 25 years for the use of weapons, rendered the law practically impossible to enforce. He pointed to the ‘Prospective land litigants are taking the law into their own hands because they have no redress in the courts’ argument, further emphasizing the law’s inability to adequately address the challenges driving vigilantism.
Specifically, he highlighted the abuses of the interlocutory injunction system, stating that prospective land litigants are taking the law into their own hands because they have no redress in the courts. He proposed an expansion of the L.I. 157 provision on Private Security Organisations to allow retired military and police officers to establish regulated private security firms, relying on existing criminal laws under Act 29 and the Police Service Act to deal with violent groups. He also suggested that the government should focus on existing laws rather than enacting a new law to address vigilantism, citing the 2020 voter registration exercise and the 2020 general election as instances of failed opportunities to deal with the problem. Col Festus B. Aboagye, a retired security analyst, corroborated this, stating that the vigilantism problem existed because the state deliberately chose not to enforce existing laws, and not because there were no laws. He cited the 2020 voter registration exercise and the 2020 general election as instances of failed opportunities to deal with vigilantism, describing those instances as the most violent since independence, with incidents of shootings and deployment of unidentified armed men at registration and polling centres. He questioned why, from 2019 to 2026, perpetrators of those acts had not been found or prosecuted under Act 999, indicating that the police continued to charge suspects under the existing Criminal Offences Act rather than Act 999.
Furthermore, he attributed the non-enforcement to an unwritten agreement between the two major political parties to shield their affiliates when in power. He stated that the 2020 voter registration exercise and the 2020 general election, as well as the lack of a clear mechanism for addressing the issue, served as crucial evidence of the law’s failure to elicit meaningful action. He asserted that Col Aboagye’s analysis underscores that Act 999 had no effect a year after its enactment, suggesting a lack of commitment to implementing the law.
The panel discussion concluded with a reaffirmation of the government’s intention to simply establish a legal framework, rather than intending to address the underlying causes of vigilantism, and reiterated that the current situation did not reflect a genuine commitment to tackling the problem.
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Source: Graphic Online
