Gov’t Blowing Share Of World Bank’s Terrorism Money On Comedies …Barker-Vormawor

Convener of pressure group, #FixTheCountry, Oliver Barker-Vormawor, has revealed that the Akufo-Addo government’s recent claims that the country is on the radar of terrorists are just a comedic show to justify some US$450million that the World Bank has made available to a number of West African States to prepare against terrorism.

To reinforce this view of Mr. Barker-Vormawor, the government recently picked a gospel musician, Gift Osei, as the Ambassador of terrorism.

In a write-up, Mr. Barker-Vormawor reveals that the sudden state-sponsored rhetoric about Ghana being supposedly exposed to terrorism attacks emerged after the World Bank made the money available.

Then in an attempt to deepen the impression to the sponsors, the government made haphazard recruitments, very likely of party foot soldiers, and put them on payrolls with a duty to use their ears and eyes to fish out strange activities in neighborhoods and report them.

“A few weeks ago the World Bank gave Ghana and three of our coastal neighbors 450 million dollars to aid our preparedness for the fight against terrorism. So flush with cash, the Ministry of National Security decided to bombard our airwaves that the terrorists are coming. Not one educational programme was designed to educate the public on what terrorism is, and what kind of activity is terrorism-leaning,” he wrote.

According to him, “They recruited 1000s of people quietly across the country in all communities and gave them motorbikes. They put them on an 1800 cedis a month salary. They told them if they see anybody coming around mobilizing the youth, sharing fliers, or making any town hall meetings including demonstrations, they should report it to them. None of them were trained on what terrorism is.”

He adds that the government also printed flashy posters about terrorism and distributed them around.

“The flashy posters had a toll-free number 999. I got a hint from a contact at the national security HQ that the number on the poster wasn’t operational. So I called the number and filmed myself, and encouraged everyone to do that. Not a single person across the country got any response. We all heard Jazz. Embarrassed by the incident, they put pressure on the call Centre they gave the contract to, position people to pick up the calls. Not a single call attendant has been trained,” Barker-Vormawor revealed.

Barker-Vormawor accuses the government of lying when it claims that the hotline that is set up to collect information from the public on terror recorded thousands of prank calls, saying his personal experience is that when the lines are called nobody picks and that rather, what is heard on the other end is jazz music.