Director in-charge of Good Governance, Justice and Peace, Directorate of the Navrongo-Bolgatanga Catholic Diocesan Development Organisation (NABOCADO), Joseph Bangu, has admonished leaders of various communities to proactively respond to terrorism and violent extremism.
“Community leaders always engage with the people and it will be easier for them to identify any stranger for monitoring so the programme will help build the resilience of the communities to create an interface between them and the security agents,” he noted.
Mr Bangu made the admonition at a workshop to build capacities of leaders of various communities in the Garu and Tempane district as part of the measures to detect and report early warning signals of terrorism and violent extremism.
The programme which was organised by the Good Governance, Justice and Peace Directorate was funded by the European Union through Coginta Ghana, a non-governmental organisation, took the participants through early signals, prevention, capacity building of local level structures on early warning signals and response to activities of extremists and terrorists.
Mr Bangu indicated that realising that civilian-security interface was important builds trust so they were able to give information because early warning signals could only be picked from civilians and traditional authorities needed to mobilise, educate, create awareness and sensitise their people as a joint responsibility.
Superintendent of Police Daniel Yaro, District Police Commander in-charge of Garu and Tempane, urged the citizenry to volunteer information on suspicious activities and characters in their communities to the security agencies to help fight crime and threats of terrorism and violent extremism.
According to him, their support and assistance would enable the agencies to preserve prevailing peace, unity, harmony, cohesion and security towards sustainable progress, growth and development.
“Threats of terrorism and violent extremism against Ghana are real, especially within communities bordering Burkina Faso and Togo that have experienced some attacks in recent times hence, Ghana has to be on its guard and the Police and other security services work with information made available to them and I advise communities to be wary of threats and report any strange activity for swift action.
“The threats are real and some of them may be here because Burkina Faso and Togo are close by and we need to be vigilant, open our eyes and expose them before they attack us,” Superintendent Yaro stressed.
