The Commission on Small Arms and Light Weapons has disclosed that preliminary investigations conducted by the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Center on behalf of the Commission indicate that there are 2.3 million weapons in circulation in Ghana.
The commission added that only about a million of those weapons are registered with the Ghana Police Service.
According to the commission, these weapons which were smuggled into the country by faceless individuals must be a great security concern.
“We are very much concerned about the spread of illicit arms and their possible impact on our democracy especially those that could be triggered by violence,” the board Chairman of the Commission, Brigadier Gen. Francis Agyemfra (RTD) said this at a Political dialogue on small armed violence at Dodowa.
Brigadier Rtd Agyemfra stated that this raises fear of possible armed political violence in election as Ghana moves ahead in its democratic journey.
“In 2016, we will witness another watershed general election as part of our democratic experiment. The entrenched positions seem to have been adopted already by the major political parties especially on the issue of the voter register.
“The by- election in Talensi recently was a wake call to all of us, the security agencies, the political parties and the citizens generally. The recent recovery of assault rifles from the Bimbilla conflicts and numerous others from various crime scenes must put all of us on the lookout for probable triggers of armed violence”.
He added: “the recent murder of political party activist in Asawase, a suburb of Kumasi and the recovery of locally manufactured weapons at the crime scene is yet another case in point.”
Brigadier Agyemfra pointed out that dialogue is part of the commission’s plans to ensure that political parties do not take advantage of weapons smuggled into the country to cause violence in 2016 election as the Commission continues to find ways to clamp down on these illegal weapons.
