Features
Continuous sensitisation needed to end mob justice in Ghana
Mob justice remains a serious problem in Ghana, and there is an urgent need for sustained sensitisation to curb the menace. In many communities, when someone is suspected of wrongdoing, a crowd can quickly form and take the law into its own hands. Within minutes, the situation can turn violent, and in some cases, the person accused does not survive. This is why public education must be intensified and sustained if the country is to bring an end to these acts.
Mob justice is dangerous and unacceptable. No one should lose their life based on suspicion alone. People must be encouraged not to take the law into their own hands but rather to trust the justice system and allow the appropriate authorities to handle such matters.
The recent lynching of two scrap dealers at Ntensere in the Atwima Nwabiagya North District of the Ashanti Region shows how serious the issue has become. The two men were accused of attempting to abduct a three-year-old child, after which they were attacked and killed by a mob, and their motorbikes were set ablaze. The level of destruction shows how quickly anger can escalate when there is no control.
Painful incidents that reflect a national problem
Ghana has seen similar incidents in the past. In 2017, Major Maxwell Mahama was lynched after he was wrongly suspected to be an armed robber. His death shocked the nation, yet it did not completely stop mob justice.
In 2024, Wilberforce Appiah, a musician popularly known as Wylbee, was lynched at Tanoso in the Ashanti Region after he was accused of theft. Reports indicated he had stepped out at dawn when he was attacked.
More recently, on February 27, a 26-year-old Liberian national, Austin Tengeeh, was also lynched at Lashibi. The incident sparked outrage on social media, but like many others before it, it raises concerns about how such cases can be prevented.
The role of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE)
The National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) must play a leading role in ending mob justice through continuous sensitisation.
The Commission needs to intensify its public education campaigns and make them consistent. Education should not be occasional; it must be ongoing and visible across communities.
The NCCE can organise regular engagements in markets, transport terminals, schools, and communities, using simple language to explain why mob justice is wrong and illegal. It should also make better use of community-based radio stations by introducing discussions, short dramas, and call-in programmes that address real-life situations.
Using local languages is critical to ensuring that the message reaches everyone, especially those in rural areas. The focus should be clear, any suspected offender must be handed over to the police, not attacked.
Influence of religious, traditional leaders and school authorities
Religious leaders, traditional rulers, and enlightened individuals have a strong influence on community behaviour and must be part of the solution.
Religious leaders should consistently speak against mob justice during sermons and emphasise the value of human life. Their messages can help shape attitudes and discourage violence.
Traditional rulers can support the effort by setting clear community rules that discourage mob action and promote peaceful reporting of suspected crimes to the authorities.
Educated and influential individuals must also take responsibility by speaking up when tensions rise. In many cases, mob attacks occur because no one intervenes early. Calm and informed voices can help prevent escalation.
The role of schools in shaping attitudes
Schools also have a critical role in addressing mob justice by shaping the mindset of young people. From the basic level to tertiary institutions, pupils and students should be taught the importance of respecting the rule of law and the dangers of taking matters into their own hands. Civic education lessons can include practical examples that show why mob justice is harmful and why due process must always be followed.
Teachers can also encourage discussions around real-life situations, helping students understand how to respond when they witness suspected wrongdoing in their communities. Through debates, role play, and guidance, young people can be groomed to value patience, fairness, and lawful behaviour. When children grow up with this understanding, they are less likely to participate in mob action and more likely to influence others to do the right thing.
What the police must do consistently
The Ghana Police Service has a central role in addressing mob justice, and its approach must be practical and consistent.
One key step is to strengthen community policing. When the police are visible and approachable, people are more likely to report suspected crimes instead of taking action themselves.
The police must also increase patrols in areas where mob justice is common and ensure a rapid response to distress calls. Delays often create room for mobs to act.
Public education should be part of regular police work. Officers should engage communities frequently, explaining the legal consequences of mob justice and assuring the public that due process will be followed.
Enforcement is equally important. Individuals involved in mob justice must be arrested and prosecuted consistently. This will serve as a deterrent and reinforce the rule of law.
Sustained sensitisation is the way forward
While arrests are sometimes made after such incidents, the focus must shift from reaction to prevention. Continuous sensitisation, strong community involvement, and effective policing are key to ending this problem.
Mob justice should not be accepted as normal in Ghana. Every individual deserves the right to a fair hearing, and the law must be allowed to work.
If sensitisation efforts are sustained and not relaxed, Ghana can gradually reduce and eventually eliminate mob justice. The goal is clear: to build a society where no one loses their life because of suspicion, and where justice is handled through the proper legal system.
BY RAISSA SAMBOU
THE journalist is a hunter. He goes after human rats and grasscutters personified, matters about whom he can salt and spice and present as news. The fatter and juicier the catch, the better, because sensation is essentially our cup of tea.
Our job is to sell news and sell it in grand style.
Because the journalist is a hunter and is created with a special kind of nose for sniffing out news, he is usually not welcome in many places. He is seen as someone who has been born to make people uncomfortable.
The problem is that some people don’t want things written about them even if it is promotional and favourable. When it entails publishing their pictures alongside the story, they are doubly scared.
“Please, don’t use my picture. People will think I’ve got money and come for loan,” someone told me.
Anyhow, journalists are seen as intruders, undesirables, born with plenty of okro in the mouth; maybe some also in the nose. Some of my friends are no longer too close because they fear I’d give them full coverage in the Sikaman Palava column. Ha ha ha! What a funny world!
Well, people like my Uncle, Sir Kofi Jogolo, my former classmate and born-mathematician, Kwame Korkorti, and ex-football star cum human-salamander Kofi Kokotako don’t mind featuring in the hilarious inches of this column. Kofi Owuo alias Death By Poverty is one personality who has to be mentioned in this palaver.
These are people who are going to live long, primarily because they see the world as one big ball of fun. When Kwame Korkorti was told that his dear mother was dead at home, he smiled and asked the bearer of the message whether his mother had cooked the afternoon meal before claiming she was dead. Until her death, Korkorti ate his lunch at his mother’s end.
When my Uncle Kofi Jogolo was picked and lost 1,500 dollars and a good amount of Sikaman currency, he didn’t lament the loss. Instead he was amused. In fact, he was almost glad about it, because he grinned from ear to ear, stroked his delicate moustache and congratulated the thief, adding that “He is smarter than I am.” Yeah, Jogolo is the man who employs a Swedish barber to trim his moustache.
And when Kofi Kokotako was unemployed and was nearly hit by an articulated truck, he called the driver a fool. “The idiot should have killed me,” he said to me. “Didn’t he know I was unemployed and suffering?”
Today, Kokotako is employed as a Reverend and is not doing badly at all. Thanks to the regular silver collection.
And what about Kofi Owuo, the celebrated poor man. His wife left him not because he was poor, but because he swore in front of her that he would never prosper.
The following dawn the wife packed bag and baggage and went back to her parents and told them all about her husband’s alliance with poverty. Her parents were bewildered and called the alliance unholy. They had no option than to send back Owuo’s drinks to end the marriage.
Kofi Owuo alias Death By Poverty did not contest the issue. He was more engrossed thinking about how to become poorer than to contest what he called a frivolous matter. The wife could go to hell, he said. These are people longevity smiles upon. Nothing worries them.
Getting back to talking about journalists. I’d say that anywhere there is journalism, the issue of press freedom is not too far away. Is the press free? That’s one question foreigners want answer to when they are on visit.
Well, journalists celebrate a yearly WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY to drum home the idea of press freedom as a very important thing in the practice of journalism.
This year’s was celebrated almost a fortnight ago but people didn’t see much of us because we are normally not good celebrants. We should have mounted a float to roam the entire capital, dancing asaboni to brass band music just like PTC did recently.
Although journalists are known to be very good dancers because they walk very much, on that day, they were all busy writing. It was the Minister of Information, Mr Kofi Totobi Quakyi who saved the day by addressing a forum organised to mark the day.
He is a man I’ve always admired since his radical university days. He spoke much on press freedom, cautioning the press not to abuse the freedom granted by the Fourth Republican constitution, but to use it for the progress of society.
Well, press freedom has been defined by many journalists as the freedom to ‘write nonsense’. This definition is not quite accurate. I asked one staff reporter to define press freedom. It took him fifteen minutes to put up something.
“Press freedom is the freedom that is enjoyed by the press that enables journalists to publish or broadcast any kind of material so long as it is absolutely true, is not libelous and slanderous, and is not against the national interest.”
I gave him eight out of 10, a straight A. I guess every journalist is old enough to know that certain things he or she writes is for or against the national interest. We certainly must guard against writing against the national interest; that is very important.
There is also the question of criticising government. The government can be criticized, so long as the criticisms are genuine and the President and his ministers are not insulted and called names. Let us criticize, but let us do it decently so that the journalistic profession can be revered, and its nobility acknowledged. We are not war mongers, are we?
One area in which journalists are not spoken well of is the complaint that they misquote people. Journalists sometimes misquote people, but in four out of five complaints it turns out that nobody is misquoted after all.
When we interview people they say things unreservedly and we publish unreservedly. When the publication is out and their friends or superiors read it and accuse them of having said too much to the press, then they start claiming they were misquoted.
We have encountered these ‘misquotation palaver’ every now and then and reporters are usually accused of this transgression. However, when they bring out their note-books or recorders, it is realised that they wrote nothing out of the way. “Book no lie”.
My advice to people who deal with the press is that if they do not want anything written, they shouldn’t say it. What they want to say is OFF-RECORD, then of course, there is no reason to say it. When you say it, you’re taking a risk. In that instance, you can’t also claim to have been misquoted or words put into your mouth.
And it isn’t every journalist who would be circumspect in matters that are supposed to be off-record, because journalists often want to be as sensational as possible to make their stories saleable. So say just what you want to see published and you won’t later regret it and claim you were misquoted.
Well, I’m not holding brief for journalists, because a few of us are notorious for colouring our reports sometimes sand-papering the words so much that they look very bright in front of readers.
As I once said, when the police tells one such notorious pressman that the thief stole a brown goat, the pressman would want to know whether the goat was bearded. Of course, the police would say ‘Yes’.
However, in the press report, it appears, “A gang of notorious goat-thieves were apprehended in the early hours of yesterday. In the car in which they were riding was a brownish-red goat having a long beard. Upon further examination, it was realised that the goat also had a greyish moustache.”
When the story appears, the police are naturally disturbed. A single thief turns out to be a gang of thieves. The goat also becomes a chameleon and changes colour to brownish-red. And a moustacheless goat overnight wears a greyish moustache whether you like it or not. Luckily the journalist does not add that the moustache was trimmed by a Swedish barber.
Yes, we have a few of such mischief-creating, chronically notorious journalists. But they are one in a hundred. In any case, we make the world. And we shall always do our best to make it a happy place to live in.
This article was first publish on Saturday, May, 20, 1995
When I hear of people who are of the opinion that they cannot make it in life unless they travel abroad, l become sad.
Whenever I see on TV, news of people, that is migrants who have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea, while attempting to cross to Europe, l become filled with sadness and then anger.
The underlying factor is desperation born out of loss of hope, in life. When an individual tends to believe that his only hope of making it in life is to travel abroad, the risk of dying at sea, does not deter him or her.
The role of some pastors on shaping the mindset of people, especially the youth, leaves much to be desired. You hear them declaring on various media platforms how they can pray for you to get a visa to travel abroad, instead of encouraging them to find something to do to improve their lives as the Bible teaches that God will bless the work of their hands.
The GREATER WORKS CONFERENCE is geared towards renewing the minds of people with a specific focus on people of African descent to rid themselves of the negative perception of lack of capacity to excel in life.
Pastor Mensa Otabil believes that every human being, no matter the skin colour, was created in the exact image of God and therefore has the capacity to do exploits.
The whiteman was not created in the image of God while the Blackman was created in the image of something other than God. The Black person therefore can achieve whatever the whiteman can achieve.
The development in terms of industrialisation that is lacking which has generated unemployment for the youth, is due to lack of effective leadership. The lack of moral integrity in society, is what is causing the lack of job opportunities, which is as a result of corrupt acts which drive away private investment.
A culture of inferiority complex exists which needs to be dealt with, so the African can develop the self worth necessary for personal development which can then result in capacity deployment to avhieve personal goals.
Success in life begins with the individual’s recognition that he or she is capable of achieving the dreams he or she has conceived in his or her mind. The Bible teaches that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the holy is understanding according to Proverbs 9:10.
Christianity was the driving force behind the development of Europe because no society can sustain development without high moral values. GREATER WORKS therefore is a deliberate project to shape the minds of people, especially the youth, who will become the leaders of our future, to prioritise morality in their daily lives.
This is the only way to see a massive transformation in every aspect of our lives as Ghanaians and Africans in Ghana and the rest of the continent.
Since the inception of the GREATOR WORKS CONFERENCE, it has made a lot of impact in the lives of many people from the youth up to the senior citizens level. I recall the testimony of a church member who was motivated and pursued higher education and became one of the youngest Chartered Accountants in this country. Year after year, the impact of the conference has been enormous and lives in Ghana and across the continent, are being transformed.
Black people have started regaining their self confidence and the youth have started getting into areas that previously were considered out of bounds. At a personal level, certain ideas that some years ago, l would have not dreamt about suddenly has become realistic dreams.
The Christian lifestyle has impacted on my children and those close to me. Mindset change starts with one individual, then another and then gradually it spreads like a viral infection until a critical mass is attained and them a massive impact. There is hope for the future.
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
