IGP APPOINTED ON TIGHT LEASH BY PRESIDENT MAHAMA - 12 NOV SECURITY BRUTALITIES
PRESIDENT MAHAMA APPOINTED YOHUNO IGP ON A TIGHT LEASH - REASONS FOR THE 12 NOVEMBER 2025 SECURITY BRUTALITIES.
BY MARTIN A. B. K. AMIDU
INTRODUCTION
The negative baggage of old age that he carried influenced his appointment as the head of the high command of the civilian law enforcement Ghana Police Service. President Mahama appointed Mr. Christian Tetteh Yohuno as the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) on 14 March 2025 because Yohonu carried a baggage that rendered him a good and perfect person he could easily put on tight leash as a mere puppet in the hands of the executive branch who takes instructions in the discharge of his operational and administrative responsibilities contrary to the demands of the 1992 Constitution.
President Mahama appointed Yohuno knowing very well that he had only a few months to his retirement on 27 December 2025 and would suffer the additional vulnerability of working in anticipation of a post-retirement contract which the President can legally offer or refuse him, and making him susceptible to acting unlawfully to please his puppet master to secure a post- retirement contract. In the case of the military high command, President Mahama sent far younger senior one-star generals who had age on their side as a positive on retirement in order to appoint younger one-star generals he could put on leash as his political poodles and achieve a semblance of the constitutionality of the appointments.
The baggage Mr. Yohuno brought with him to the office of the IGP explains his penchant for acceding to unlawful and unconstitutional orders and methods of civil law enforcement when dealing harshly with ordinary citizens suspected of crime on the one hand, and placidly with members of the political elite within or associated with the government on the other hand as the raids on innocent citizens in targeted communities in Ahafo, Ashanti, and the Volta Regions revealed by the interview he granted to the media on 14 November 2025. The reader who has not listened to IGP Yohuno’s media interaction and has time may do so from the Ghana Web YouTube video at: IGP alarmed by rising attacks on NAIMOS personnel amid anti-galamsey operations.
IGP Yohuno’s theme for explaining the rationale for the dawn special joint police and military invasion of the privacy and liberties of the communities they waged war against was “the indiscipline of the youth” who did not fear the police or the military. The words of Mr. Yohuno as reported and on video were that:
“We are living in a country where indiscipline is becoming very high; they have become emboldened in such a way that they don’t fear the police and the military. They feel that now they can confront us. But if we allow this thing to go on in this country, a time will come when there will be no one to protect any citizen.”
Mr Yohuno said it was for these reasons that the joint security personnel had launched a war against such miscreants who always want to break the law.
The media interaction exposed the fact that IGP Yohuno was only acting as President John Dramani Mahama’s poodle pretending to have ordered the joint police and military operations to brutalize and arrest hundreds of innocent citizens minding their own affairs at home at dawn on 12 November 2025. Contrary to Article 202 of the 1992 Constitution, vulnerable and post-retirement contract seeking Mr. Yohuno ceded his operational and administrative authority in domestic law enforcement to the National Security Coordinator, an ADC of President Mahama promoted twice between 7 January 2025 and July 2025 and still a serving Commissioner of Police (COP). Mr. Yohuno told the media that: “In response to the increasing attacks, the National Security Secretariat, led by the National Security Coordinator, in collaboration with the police and military, conducted a large-scale overnight operation across key communities.”
THE UNLAWFUL DISCRIMINATORY MILITARY AND POLICE BRUTALITIES AND ARRESTS NOT ORDERED BY THE GHANA POLICE SERVICE
The Brief Facts on the anti-galamsey operation by NAIMOS, the EPA, and the Ehi murders.
The first confrontation with the youth allegedly took place on 1 November 2025 at Bronikrom and Hwidiem communities in the Ahafo Region involving a team from the National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Secretariat (NAIMOS), the youth, and later the Hwidiem police personnel. The Members of Parliament for the Asutifi North and South Constituencies were alleged to have incited the youth against the NAIMOS team. The second confrontation occurred on 4 November 2025 at Ehi in the Volta Region between an alleged mob of youth and the Ehi police for refusing to hand over a suspected murderer for instance justice. The third confrontation occurred on 6 November 2025 at Dadwene, Obuasi and Anwona in the Ashanti Region between anti-galamsey staff of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from Accra and the youth of the community that led to a head-on collision near Kumasi when the EPA team was escaping from Dadwene and its environs in which accompanying journalists were injured.
The Bronikrom and Hwidiem incident led to the IGP, Christian Tetteh Yohuno, being reported in a press release to have directed the CID Headquarters to take over investigations into the attack while the MP for Asutifi North, who was alleged to have incited the mob to attack and obstruct the NAIMOS activities, was invited to assist in the police investigations. The Ehi police station incident led to directives to the Volta Regional Police Command which took over and started investigations into the murder and the subsequent mob attack on the Ehi Police Station on 4 November 2025. CCTV and other video footages of the Ehi police station attack were under review to identify and arrest all perpetrators involved to face prosecution. The EPA and Dadwene incident was also under police investigations by the Ashanti Regional Police command after the occurrence became public on Thursday 5 November 2025. The IGP’s operational and administrative directives were on each occasion consistent with his responsibilities as the head of the Ghana Police Service.
The necessity for joint military and police operation in domestic law enforcement did not, therefore, arise as part of the IGP’s constitutional responsibilities. But Ghanaians woke up on 12 November 2025 to news and videos of military and police brutalities and arrests of innocent citizens in the communities of affected regions. The IGP as head of domestic police duties had to explain the rationale behind the mayhem unleashed on citizens in the name of domestic police operations to give a semblance of compliance with the performance of the traditional functions of the police service in maintaining law and order nationwide under the 1992 Constitution.
The IGP in exercise of his operational and administrative mandate under Article 202 of the Constitution issued clear operational and administrative directives for the investigation of each of the incidents by the CID Head Office in Accra, the Ahafo, Volta, and Ashanti Regional Police Administrations as the case may be, immediately they each occurred and these were conveyed to the public by press releases by the Police Administration.
IGP Yohuno not responsible for military and police operations in Ahafo, Ashanti, and Volta
The IGP’s media interaction on 12 November 2025 was, therefore, to brief and explain to the nation the justifications for the simultaneous dawn police and military special operations targeting specific communities in the Ahafo, Ashanti, and the Volta Regions for which he had already issued operational and administrative directives for normal police investigations in each case.
It became clear from the IGP’s explanation to the media and the nation that the dawn special operations by the police and the military on 12 November 2025 were not intended to arrest persons caught in the act of committing crimes against the NAIMOS team in the Ahafo Region; the vandalism at the Ehi police station in the Volta Region: or the EPA team at Dadwene community near Obuasi or any persons reasonably suspected to have committed offences during those incidents. The Special police and military operations were conceived and planned to exact revenge against innocent members of those communities at large with the intention of brutalizing and arresting them for screening for any possible suspects, and not on account of the affected persons being reasonably suspected of the commission of any offence. Otherwise, police led intelligence based on the IGP’s directed investigations into the incidents by the CID Head Office in Accra, the Ahafo, Volta, and Ashanti police administrations negated the need for the targeted classified dawn special police and military operations.
The instructions given to the police and military personnel assembled in the Ahafo Regional capital on 12 November 2025 and reported by the media leaves no doubt that the operation was an intentional and deliberate decision to violate the fundamental rights and freedoms of citizens of the affected communities under the smokescreen of law enforcement approved by President Mahama to brutalize and arrest citizens.
Myjoyonline reported the opacity of the operation by quoting the commander of the men on the ground in the Ahafo Region saying, inter alia, as follows;
“We are going to undertake a special operation in the region. The locations will be disclosed as we go. All the IGP wants you to do is to be professional, firm, and robust, and to ensure you execute your task as briefed. Move in groups—there shouldn’t be any isolation,” Dr Gariba instructed during a pre-deployment briefing.
“This operation is very classified, so no personnel is supposed to be seen taking videos, pictures, or sending WhatsApp messages about what is going on. No one is expected to place a phone call disclosing locations or details of the operation.”
Simultaneously, on 12 November 2025 the police and the military swooped on the targeted communities in Ahafo, Volta, and Ashanti Regions, woke them from sleep, brutalized and arrested any male citizen they pleased to feed into their torture mill of unreliable police identification procedures called screening.
The reaction from the nation at daybreak when videos of the nationwide “classified” police and military brutalities and arrests became public, thanks to the internet, condemning the violation of the rights and freedoms of the affected male citizens was unfavourable to the government. The government’s reaction was to unleash its propaganda machine to deflect responsibility and thrust IGP Yohuno to conduct a media interaction on the theme of indiscipline in the Ghanaian society and the need to conduct the classified special police and military operations in those regions to protect the citizen as reasons for violating the rights of the citizen guaranteed by the 1992 Constitution.
In IGP Yohuno’s media interaction he confessed that he was not in charge of the deployments of military and police personnel in the Ashanti, Ahafo, and Volta Regions. He can be heard in the recorded Ghana Web YouTube video saying, inter alia, that:
“....So, from National Security level headed by the National Security coordinator, the police and the military has launched a serious war on these miscreants who want always to break the law and so simultaneously last night to this dawn we mount operations starting from this Hwidiem where they attacked the Naimos officials, so Hwidiem, Kenyasi and Goaso were the places where they moved this, where they mobilized the thugs to come and attack the police and the military at the station so we raided, we conducted that exercise and we had over 400 people arrested....” (Emphasis supplied).
One must appreciate the frankness and candour of IGP Yohuno in disclosing that he did not authorize or was not in command of the operations as demanded under Article 202(2) of the Constitution as head of the Police Service and who subject to the control and direction of the Police Council, is responsible for the operational control and administration of the Police Service. The Ghana Police Service is a disciplined public service and not a force as it used to be under colonial rule. Consequently, for the head of such a disciplined service to abdicate his responsibilities to the National Security Co-ordinator who is a member of the Police Service with the rank of Commissioner of Police (COP) demonstrates that the IGP has lost command and control of discipline in the Police Service, is indisciplined himself or has a self-serving reason to cede his constitutional mandate to a subordinate officer in the Police Service also serving as the National Security Coordinator.
Nobody should riposte that the National Security Coordinator who is a serving COP is on secondment to the National Security Secretariat as the National Security Coordinator, and because of that command and control of the Ghana Police Service is not affected when the IGP (or military high command) takes instructions from him. President Mahama knows for certain that in such circumstances command and control is affected that was why he retired all senior one-star generals upwards to make way for him to appoint lower ranked one-star generals to take over the military high command and other command positions. But President Mahama then appointed his previous ADC who was an Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) to the National Security Secretariat as the National Security Coordinator, and subsequently appointed Mr. Yohuno who had only a few months to his retirement as the IGP to give the President absolute control over the Police Service and making the IGP vulnerable to needing post-retirement contract when he attains the age of 60 on 27 December 2025.
IGP Yohuno is not ready for retirement and is looking forward to post-retirement contract which the President has refused to grant to others. IGP Yohuno was a vulnerable IGP right from his appointment and has to play a secondary role to keep his job and secure post-retirement contract and has therefore lost the command and control granted him by the Constitution.
Mr. IGP Yohuno’s interview and supposed deployment of police and military personnel to brutalize and arrest innocent citizens for the sake of screening them to identify alleged suspects under the command of the President’s hand picked National Security Coordinator shows how more indisciplined the new ruling political elite and the executive branch has become since 7 January 2025.
President Mahama’s hand picked National Security Coordinator, a serving COP, subordinate to the IGP has no authority under the 1992 Constitution for domestic law enforcement let alone to control his superior officers, the IGP, and the Chief of Defence Staff by leading them in a joint police and military operation for a dawn swoop on the innocent citizens in the communities in the Ahafo, Ashanti and Volta Regions whose fundamental rights and freedoms to liberty, privacy, equality before the law and presumption of innocence were unlawfully interfered with on 12 November 2025.
CONTRASTING THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE BRUTALIZED WITH THOSE REMANDED
Ghana Web’s YouTube publication of the media interaction with Mr. Yohonu shows beyond any shadow of doubt that he was not on top of his job as Ghana’s IGP. He could not tell for certain how many innocent citizens had been brutally and merciless assaulted and arrested by military and police dawn swoop on the affected communities. He told the media that for the Ahafo Region between 400 and 470 youthful citizens were arrested; Ashanti Region was stated as between 300 and 400 youthful citizens; and for the Volta Region 162 youthful citizens were arrested in the dawn swoop on the affected communities.
The lower figures he mentioned will give one a total of 862 citizens under the protection of the Constitution who were brutally assaulted and arrested. The higher figures gives us 1032 citizens subjected to the ordeal of unlawful brutalization and arrest. As a former member of the Police Council for a decade and upwards, and a former Minister of the Interior, I have a problem with the efficiency of an IGP who summons the media without waiting for sitreps (situation reports) from his Regional Commanders informing him of the number of citizens arrested in violation of their fundamental human rights and freedoms under the Constitution.
The online media has reported that only over 300 of the persons brutalized and arrested had been screened and arraigned before various courts to be remanded to aid investigations. One may ask President Mahama, how he is going to restore the dignity of the over 500 or 700 innocent citizens who were brutalized, arrested, detained, and screened only to find that no evidence implicates them in any crime related to the unlawful military and police operations carried out under the control and direction of his handpicked National Security Coordinator, a serving police officer lording it over the IGP and the CDS on the orders of the President.
ONE LAW FOR THE POLITCAL ELITE AND ANOTHER FOR THE POOR YOUTH
The confrontation that took place in the Ahafo Region was reported to have implicated the NDC Members of Parliament for Asutifi South and North as being behind the youth who confronted and intimidated the NAIMOS team and the Hwidiem police station. As damage control, IGP Yohuno on President Mahama’s leash asked the MP for Asutifi North to report to the CID head office in Accra only for him to be treated with kids gloves and presented before an arranged Circuit Court to be granted bail the same day for the storm to pass because Ghanaians are generally discredited with having short memories. There is no record of any invitation to the veteran and more senior MP for Asutifi South to report anywhere or any briefing on what has happened on the allegations that the MP for Asutifi North was acting on his behalf and instructions in engaging the NAIMOS team in Bronikrom and Hwidiem, environs respectively. There was no brutalization, arrest, or detention of the suspected NDC MP kingpins. Only the damage control the poodle, Yohuno, was instructed to undertake by presenting the MP for Asutifi North before a Circuit Court in Accra for propaganda purposes and not in Goaso or Hwidiem where the offence was allegedly committed
The ordinary citizens of the environs of Goaso, Bronikrom, and Hwidiem who were reported to have been mobilized and under the protection of NDC Members of Parliament had their hair shaved, brutalized, arrested, detained, and identity screened only for the mass of them to be set free after the inhuman and degrading treatments they suffered. This is a real demonstration of President Mahama’s reset agenda for the unemployed youth struggling for a living on the one hand and for his comfortably living associates, family, friends, and cronies making up the NDC political elite when it come particularly to the fight against galamsey and cheating on the public purse.
PRESIDENT MAHAMA’S DOUBLE SPEAK
President Mahama’s double speak. GBC on 9 March 2023 reported then candidate for the NDC, John Dramani Mahama, “calling on the [NPP] government to provide compensation to all persons affected by last Tuesday’s action by the military in Ashaiman in the Greater Accra Region”. John Mahama was reported to have “urged the military to exercise restraint and allow due process to take the course. He called for a full-scale investigation to apprehend, prosecute and punish the perpetrators of the dastardly act. The military must, therefore, refrain from meting out extra-judicial justice on people.” As President, John Mahama has thrown due process and refraining from extra judicial justice out of the window of his reset agenda.
A Myjoyonline 4 August 2024 1:48pm report quoted candidate Mahama condemning military brutalities and promising the citizens of Garu and its environs as follows:
“There was an incident where some of our people were brutalised and one was killed. He left a wife and children. This evening, I gave a small donation to be given to his wife to look after the children but when we come into government, we will do an inquiry into it so that it doesn't happen again.”
“We must learn the lessons from what happened so that tomorrow it will not repeat itself. And so when we come, we will do an inquiry. The most important thing for us when we come into office is peace in Bawku.“
President Mahama has after eleven months of becoming President of Ghana not set up any enquiry into the military brutalities at Garu and its environs.
On the contrary as President of Ghana, President Mahama has thrown asunder his objection to the action by the military in Ashaiman in the Greater Accra Region in March 2023 and the promises he gave to the citizens of Garu and its environs in August 2024 which were meant for Ghanaians in general that he hates military and police brutalities. John Mahama as President has rather perfected the art of those brutalities using his personal ADC he appointed the National Security Coordinator as the commander, a near retiring IGP grovelling for post retirement contract as his poodle, and a military high command appointed by clearing all younger one-star generals standing in the way of Mahama to appoint more junior one-star generals under the command of one whom he could and has put on the leash as his instrument for unleashing military and police brutalities on citizens under his regime. Mahama has turned Ghana into his personal Animal Farm and fiefdom instead of a democracy.
The worse is to come as I have argued in a memorandum in objection to the Security and Intelligence Agencies Bill, 2025 now before Parliament in which President Mahama seeks to enthrone his former ADC whom he appointed the National Security Coordinator as the head of a novel superordinate National Security Agency proposed in the Bill with unconstitutional powers. A serving police COP to be elevated above the IGP, the CDS, and all other security and intelligence agencies heads who are members of the National Security Council under Article 83 of the 1992 Constitution. See: CONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE SECURITY AND INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES BILL 2025 AND OTHER MATTERS — MARTIN AMIDU SPEAKS
And very soon the rights and freedoms of citizen to freedom of expression will be impacted by the Cyber Security Authority (Amendment) Bill to be laid before Parliament where President Mahama will curtail the rights and freedoms guaranteed the citizen under the Constitution.
CONCLUSIONS
President Mahama’s reset law enforcement agenda for the past eleven months since he assumed office has shown a systematic weaponization of the law enforcement agencies and the Ghana Armed Forces by appointing persons at the high command level amenable to being placed on his leash to be his direct poodles instead of officers with fidelity to the Constitution of Ghana as by law established.
President Mahama has refined, perfected, and developed the art of the military brutalities and arrests he pretended to despise in opposition and promised to investigate upon assuming power when elected as President during his campaign promise to the traumatized people of Garu and its environs, and to Ghanaians generally, to now use his variant of the same military brutalities against innocent citizens in the Ahafo, Ashanti, and Volta Regions to cover up for the involvement of the suspected crimes of members of his family, friends, cronies, and political associates including NDC Members of Parliament acting as God father’s of the teaming unemployed youth struggling for survival and susceptible to manipulation in the illegal mining activities,
IGP Yohuno, this discourse has shown, is desperate for post-retirement contract and is not, therefore, in a position to stand his ground to defend the responsibilities enjoined on him by Article 202 of the Constitution against presidential pressures or directives from his subordinate, a COP acting as the National Security Coordinator receiving instructions directly from President Mahama. IGP Yohonu may have his post-retirement contract soon, but it portends a deterioration in policing standards and abuse of law enforcement policing powers to favour President Mahama’s personal reset political agenda as opposed to the national good.
By the National Security and Intelligence Agencies Bill, 2025 laid before Parliament and the Cyber Security Authority (Amendment Bill), 2025, President Mahama intends to further erode the fundamental rights and freedoms of the citizen guaranteed by the Constitution, and to facilitate more classified and covert brutal swoops on ordinary citizens struggling to irk a living while the political elite forming members of his family, friends, cronies and associates feed fat on the public purse and galamsay with wanton abandon with no real consequences. Ghanaians must stand up against unconstitutional military and police brutalities and arrests whether in Ahafo, Ashanti, Volta Region, or any other parts of the country.
The date of 12 November 2025 chosen by President Mahama for the unconstitutional military-cum-police brutalities and arrests in the Ahafo, Ashanti, and Volta Regions, and the recklessness amounting to the murder of the eight girls at the El Wak Sports Stadium has achieved Mahama’s purpose of denuding the remembrance day of President Jerry John Rawlings in facilitation of Mahama’s ambitions to become Ghana’s greatest President under the Constitution. But nature’s justice opposes man’s self-centred egoistic ambitions as the history of Ghana will adjudge no matter how many brutalities and reckless murders were engineered to occur on 12 November 2025. The People shall be free under the Constitution again no matter how much absolute power corrupts the present. God save Ghana!
Martin A. B. K. Amidu
20 November 2025.