PRESIDENT MAHAMA BEARS DIRECT RESPONSIBILITY FOR EL-WAK STADIUM GAF RECRUITMENT STAMPEDE
PRESIDENT MAHAMA BEARS DIRECT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE EL-WAK STADIUM GAF RECRUITMENT STAMPEDE.
BY MARTIN A. B. K. AMIDU
The Wednesday 12 November 2025 El Wak Sports Stadium stampede which resulted in the needless death of six female compatriots with 12 other citizen-electors in fairly critical conditions in hospitals during the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) recruitment exercise was self-inflicted, avoidable, and the result of an executive leadership implementing policies centred on the glorification of the ego of a President than the interest of the common good in a democracy under the 1992 Constitution. The direct responsibility for the sad fate of all dead and maimed citizens searching for the minimum means of subsistence which the Constitution promised to every citizen without discrimination stop with the President as the Commander-in-Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces.
The seriousness of the mess caused by President Mahama, and the Military High Command was captured in an update provided in Parliament by the confidant of the President, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson, the Minister of Finance and Acting Minister of Defence where he was reported on 13 November 2025 to have “disclosed that as of yesterday, thirty-four (34) casualties had been recorded, including six (6) confirmed deaths. Five (5) individuals remain in critical condition at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), twelve (12) are in fairly critical condition, while the rest are stable and under observation.”
As part of the promised reset agenda of the President, the GAF and other law enforcement agencies intended to professionally serve the civic population were in short order reorganized and weaponized at critical high command levels to be at the service of the executive authority for its political agenda towards the next elections. The results of the political intrusion into the professional and command structure of security establishments based on a criterion of loyalty to political party affiliation instead of hallowed organizational security standards and doctrine informing efficient command and control of the GAF is what we saw happen at the El Wak and Kumasi recruitment exercises.
The explanation attributed to a preliminary investigation for the avoidable deaths and injuries at the recruitment that shifted blame and responsibility to the desperate youth seeking a minimum means of living insults the reasoning of ordinary citizens and expresses no remorse and shows the insensitivity of the government that summoned them to that venue where they met their untimely deaths and injuries. I could feel the pain of the bereaved and injured families when I read the reported explanation online that:
“Preliminary investigations indicate that the stampede was triggered by an unexpected surge of applicants who breached security protocols and rushed into the gates ahead of the scheduled screening. This sudden movement led to chaos and multiple casualties.”
President Mahama himself, speaking in the Twi language repeated a similar explanation the same day in Kumasi on the mournful day while launching the “Nkoko Nkitinkitin Programmme” as part of his electoral campaign promise and used the occasion to justify and take credit as usual for his messianic decision to conduct the GAF recruitment exercise in regional capitals as though this was the first time GAF recruitments were taking place in regional capitals.
The GAF has organized recruitments in regional capitals under other regimes including the NDC without ever experiencing the needless deaths and injuries that occurred during this month’s recruitment exercise. Just go back to memory lane and you will find examples of recruitments from the regions purposefully organized to ensure diversity in the recruitment process.
The location of the EL Wak barracks and stadium has made it a notorious venue for surges of applicants during GAF recruitments over the years but the experience of the senior command structure ensured that what happened on Wednesday 12 November 2025 never happened there previously. I have not heard of a stampede there in which even one person died. Strategic and tactical planning is the hallmark of any efficient army and of the GAF in particular over the years. The fact that the road running from the 37 Military Hospital roundabout through the busy Lands Commission offices road, El Wak stadium, on to Burma Camp and beyond with the junctions branching to the Kotoka International Airport and Cantonments respectively are ordinary heavy human and vehicular traffic areas are indisputable. Who does not know that the space between the El Wak Stadium and the adjacent road to Burma Camp is too small to accommodate large numbers of applicants for cadet and other ranks recruitment on the same day?
With the number of applicants involved in the recruitment exercise in Accra, commonsense would have alerted any patriotic and professional organizers that the El Wak Stadium alone as the point of congregation was likely to result in fatalities and injuries. Consequently, deficient leadership in the government and the GAF in poorly planning the recruitment exercise for the number of applicants required to report to the El Wak Stadium resulting in the death of citizens and injury to others must frontally be admitted and not wished away in attribution to a surge of applicants at the venue. I doubt whether this catastrophe would have happened if President Mahama with his gang of uncritical worshipping sycophants did not rush into compulsorily retiring senior one-star generals from his chosen level upwards to make room for his preferred lower ranked one-star generals of political loyalists for purposes of weaponizing security for partisan politics instead of the national good.
The President should have taken personal responsibility for the catastrophe at the El Wak Stadium and apologized to the nation instead of spinning away as usual and trying to pass blame to victims who had no control over the venue and planning of the recruitment exercise that led to the avoidable incident there. The Minister responsible for the sector should also have apologized and taken the bow by now for supervising the mess as should the Military High Command under whose watch it happened.
President John Mahama would do himself much good for the history books if he stopped self praise and basking in the incessant sycophancy and the adulation being heaped upon him by his underlings and opportunist members of the public seeking appointments and financial empowerment. This is not the first recruitment exercise into the public services being organized by the security sector and every honest person who has served the nation with integrity knows and will admit that the appearance of meritorious recruitment is a sham behind which party soldiers, police, fire service, immigration service, prison service and indeed public service recruitments are conducted.
I will give two examples to illustrate the fact that these recruitments are usually a smokescreen behind which the security services engage in protocol recruitments in which the political elite are allocated quotas of number of people to submit quietly for the real recruitment behind the curtain. I was the Minister for the Interior and the Minister responsible for Security and Intelligence in 2010 when a number of recruitments were undertaken by agencies under the Ministry of the Interior. I was presented with my quota to submit the names and the resumes of those I wished to help recruit into the security establishment. The acting Chief Director who worked under me then and the heads of the agencies will confirm that I refused to submit any name for any of the recruitment exercises. My reason was simple. What happens to those who have no connections to facilitate protocol enlistment? More importantly, if as Minister of the Interior the security heads working to me succeeded in enticing me to submit a list of my preferred nominees for recruitment, I would be in no position to ensure that they did not fill the place with their preferred nominees for recruitment regardless of merit.
Before this incident, the Ministry of Youth and Sports was undertaking a recruitment exercise by the NYEP touted to be based only on merit as the 12 November 2025 GAF recruitment. The Ministry of the Interior shared the same premises with the Ministry of Youth and Sports. My secretary walked in to inform me that there were two gentlemen from the Ministry of Youth and Sports wishing to see me. Their mission was to present me with my quota for each of the modules of employment which had been advertised for qualified applicants. I was to submit the names of my candidates and also ask them to apply as a matter of formality. I invited the Acting Chief Director to listen to them and asked him to walk them out of my office.
I am speaking out because of the spinning surrounding the fight against corruption and looting while the very vices are the norm behind the scenes with leaders spinning to the public that the recruitments are on merit as President Mahama told the audience in Twi at the launching of the “Nkoko Nkitinkitin Programmme” on 12 November 2025. The problem is that like the placement exercises into Senior Secondary Schools this year, patriotic citizens and the media know that year in year out these recruitment and placement exercises have been the opportunities for corruption and looting but do not have the nerves to expose the perpetrators of the canker.
The choice of 12 November 2025 for the GAF recruitment exercise by an NDC Government is particularly worrying for me because it is a solemn anniversary of the passing of the founder of the NDC and the greatest President under the Fourth Republic Constitution, 1992 – Jerry John Rawlings of blessed memory. John Dramani Mahama and his loyal GAF high command have succeeded in debasing the day and denuding its significance for the NDC and the nation as a solemn day of remembrance of Jerry John Rawlings. I know that 12 November is not a public holiday. But if indeed John Mahama and the NDC respected and intended to eulogise the memory of the founder of the NDC, and the founder and the first President of the Fourth Republic, 12 November should not have been chosen for the GAF recruitment exercise. I can understand that one may not like the idea of 4 June 1979 or the 31 December 1981 due to the contestable reasons chronicled evidentially in My First Coup D’etat. What beats my understanding is how any person claiming to be committed to the NDC would fail or refuse to accept and honour the place of Jerry John Rawlings within the NDC and governance under the 1992 Constitution.
How any caring government can sincerely be holding a state funeral for the spouse of Jerry John Rawlings on 28 November 2025 after sacrificing six healthy citizens for vain glorious pride of recruitments from regional capitals on the anniversary of his death should be anybody’s guess.
Nothing will come out of any investigation into the catastrophe at the El Wak Stadium on Wednesday 12 November 2025 as the appointing authorities will be judges in their own cause. The crocodile tears being shed and emissaries being sent to the bereaved and injured families are all media spins without sincere remorse. Can you imagine how these avoidable deaths and injuries would have been handled if the deceased and injured were part of the political elite from the government as happened in the recent past? But the electorate is just a disposable necessity for elections to be forgotten and appealed to at the next electoral cycle. Otherwise, how do we explain the hundreds of dead in Bawku and its environs, Gbenyiri and its environs in the President’s own region, Sampa in the Bono Region and the use of the military and police in a legally discredited drag net law enforcement operation in what has become known as the Hwidiem, Kenyasi, and Goaso Operations by Citi Newsroom which includes Dawen in which over 300 youthful citizens presumed innocent were randomly brutalized and arrested without just cause and reminiscent of similar brutalities and arrests of citizens in others regions of the country as part of the reset agenda since 7 January 2025.
As I was about finalizing this discourse for publication I saw a news report with the source as Myjoyonline of “14 November 2025 3:07pm” on the subject: “El-Wak Stampede: Gov’t to offer automatic slots for family members of killed potential recruits.” I cross checked from 3 News which also had published a similar news written by one Laud Nartey with the subject matter: “Fatal military recruitment: Government to recruit one person each from the 6 bereaved families – Brogya Genfi” to make sure what I was reading was true.
The Government and the Military High Command were silently admitting their guilt for the poor organization of the GAF recruitment exercise at the EL Wak Sports Stadium without any exhibition of humility by the President, the Acting Minister for Defence and the Chief of Defence Staff in taking personal responsibility and apologizing firstly to the bereaved families and to Ghanaians for the gross negligence that attended the organization that saw the avoidable death of the our six compatriots, and the injured others. In a show of impunity and abuse of power the governments rather sent a delegation to bribe the families of the deceased with promises of assisting in the burial of their loved ones and announced that one person from the family of each of the girls who died during the stampede in the military recruitment exercise on Wednesday at El‑Wak Stadium will be recruited into the army. Myjoyonline and 3News reported that Brogya Gemfi, the Deputy Minister for Defence, on a visit to one of the bereaved families at Eyan Maim in the Central Region on Friday, 14 November 2025 said, inter alia, that:
“Due to what happened, the recruitment in Accra has been suspended by the President, so that we will ensure that measures are put in place to avoid a repeat of such incidents....The President has sent us to inform you that the State will stand with the families in the burial and funeral arrangements for the families. The President has also asked us to inform you that all those who wanted to wear the military uniform but died in the process, their families should present a replacement for those people to be absorbed into the military. So, the authorities representing the government in the region will engage you in that regard for the family to decide on who can be enrolled into the military,”
The government’s impunity lies in the fact that President Mahama thinks that the value of the six Ghanaian citizens lost through the negligence of his government at El Wak Sports Stadium on 12 November 2025 can be quantified in a protocol replacement recruitment for each of them. Even before each of the dead could be identified and their respective families informed of their death, the insensitive and negligent government is flaunting the power to “stand with the families in the burial and funeral arrangements for the families” as though the government can cause the death of citizens as a matter of right and pay off its culpability with funds from the public purse to which the bereaved families also contribute. That is clearly also an abused of power embedded in the absence of a show of humility in such mournful moments by an elected government in any democracy under the rule of law where sovereignty resides in the people.
CONCLUSIONS
President Mahama needs to show leadership as a servant of the sovereign people under the 1992 Constitution by being humble to take personal responsibility for the catastrophe at the El Wak Sports Stadium that resulted in the avoidable deaths of six elector compatriots, and apologize to the affected families and the nation instead of spinning away as usual and trying to pass blame to the victims who had no control over the venue and planning of the recruitment exercise that led to the avoidable incident there. The Acting Minister for Defence who slept on the job should also have apologized and taken the bow by now for supervising the mess as should the Military High Command under whose watch it happened.
The government has finally shown that despite the touted meritorious nature of the GAF recruitment exercises in the regional capitals, protocol recruits are still possible for the political elite behind the curtains as the Presidential order for replacement protocol allocation to the bereaved families confirms what is just the tip of the iceberg of recruitment exercises into the security services as I witnessed as the Minister for the Interior in 2010. The government needs to be transparent and accountable to the electorate and stop media propaganda of half truths as an instrument of governance. Stop abusing the intelligence of Ghanaians!
Martin A. B. K. Amidu
14 November 2025.