How were the challenges of intelligence reform managed in Ghana’s broader security sector reform process? This chapter finds that Ghana’s intelligence reform was the result of an incremental, deliberate process of institution-building, personnel development and appropriate legislation. Ghana’s security transformation was driven by political, economic and security conditions between 1981 and 2000, when a combination of donor pressure and local democracy advocacy groups created an enabling environment for reform. While a lack of clear policy guidelines for the security services has hindered the implementation of oversight, demand for parliamentary and civil society oversight of intelligence agencies has become part of public debate in Ghana.
The recognition by Ghana’s leaders of the link between a functioning security system and democratic development has resulted in peaceful elections in 2000, continuing peaceful transfers of power between governments and the creation of a legal framework that keeps the security services out of politics. Ghana’s intelligence services have become integrated into the national security and budgetary systems.
Such achievements are particularly notable given that domestic intelligence activity that was dominated by regime protection throughout the colonial and post-colonial periods. The security services: i) engaged in conspiracy against the state; and ii) failed to thwart the coups. After the 1981 coup the intelligence apparatus collapsed, and a gradual process of rebuilding intelligence capability began.
An accountable agency, the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI), was established to carry out basic intelligence functions, separate from the police and military. The National Security Council (NSC) Secretariat became the collating centre for intelligence reports from both internal and external agencies.
- More advanced intelligence training and technology was used, and recruitment entry criteria were raised.
- The 1992 Constitution included detailed provisions for the management of security structures. By including the Directors of External, Internal and Military Intelligence in the National Security Council (and therefore under the purview of the Constitution), intelligence agencies were stripped of their anonymity and made subject to the law.
- Further, the Constitution established a Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice whose remit included the scrutiny of activities by intelligence officials.
- The Security and Intelligence Agencies Act of 1996 sought to make these agencies accountable to parliament (and dependent on parliament’s allocation of funds).
- Civil society also played an important role in furthering an intelligence oversight framework. Parallel to the administrative and institutional advances being made, pro-democracy groups and civil society organisations in Ghana campaigned for SSR through demonstrations, private newspapers and private radio stations. In 1990 the National Commission on Democracy organised fora across the country, at which Ghanaians demanded multi-party government and institutional change.
Despite a meticulous approach to establishing regulatory and constitutional provisions for oversight, however, implementation of security sector oversight was problematic. The main difficulty in establishing oversight was the lack of a clear, comprehensive and strategic policy guideline for Ghana’s security services. For instance, ‘national security’ remained undefined.
- It seems that Ghana’s economic dependence on international financial institutions and donors also results in political dependence, which does not facilitate a foreign and defence policy sufficiently independent or different to warrant a policy statement.
- The absence of a vigorous opposition party in parliament weakened parliamentary scrutiny, and the new national security framework’s lack of coherence was not addressed.
- Turf wars among NSC agencies paralysed its effectiveness in the early stages.
