A Concerned Resident of Upper West Region by Name Abakisi Lawrence has expressed concern over the Rate of Corruption linked with staff of Ghana Immigration Service in Jirapa and Lawra Sections of the Upper West Region.

He pointed to instances where fulanis were charged Ghc20 to outsmart the system. A Concern many tagged as unfortunate and needs investigations for Sanctions to be metted out to officers involved.

Statement by Abakisi Lawrence

Ghana Immigration Service

Your officers at the Jirapa checkpoint and Bagbile checkpoint both leading to Nandom in the Upper West region take money from passengers, mostly non Ghanaians who do not have the Ghana card or travel documents. These people are mostly Fulani/Mossi.

I have consistently educated passengers who become impatient at the immigration checkpoints on the fact that the officers are not only carrying out their lawful duty but protecting all of us especially in an environment close to cross border conflicts and terrorism.

But when routine security checks are not conducted professionally but masquerade into corrupt acts, then those checks no longer serve their intended purpose.

Usually, those without Ghana cards or travel documents are asked to disembark from the vehicle to go answer some questions and the real thing that happens is that they are told to pay an amount otherwise they will be detained. They pay and are released.

Recently, I was stunned when I realized that the commercial drivers who ply the Jirapa-Nandom route now have a working relationship with the officers. Because the checks on these Fulani usually take time, the drivers, whose profits depend on how many trips they can make in a day when approaching the immigration barrier collected Ghc 20.00 each from the 3 Fulanis who were in the car.

When we got to the checkpoint, the driver got down, went behind and handed out the money to the officers. Then the officers came to do their routine checks, directing everyone to remove their Ghana card. One by one everyone complied but interestingly when they got to the Fulanis, they skipped them, no demand for travel documents, no questions asked because they had received Ghc 60.00 from the Fulanis. I noticed the officers didn’t have name tags too.

Ghana Police Service as for your officers on that same route, that is the Wa-Jirapa-Nandom route, they collect their Ghc 5.00 from trotro drivers without shame.

I don’t know if these officers usually consider the wait of the uniform they wear before they engage in these acts.

We have come to accept police extortion on our roads as normal and passengers actually insult drivers who do not hand over money quickly to the police. Shall we allow our immigration officers to also drift this far?