Street Urchins: The Trojan horses of terrorists and armed robbers?

The current business of child street begging is, at the very least an irritation to motorists and at the very worst, a grave threat to the security and existence of our country.

Why this is not seen for what it is by our myriad of security outfits and social service organisations can qualify as the greatest mystery of all time.

The brand of beggars we have on our streets now is not the old-time physically or visually impaired, mostly adult lot who brave heat, cold and humiliation to go cup in hand begging for money to fill an empty stomach.

The brand we have now are children, suspiciously of foreign extraction and apparent siblings, who strategically position themselves at traffic lights to ply their trade with a certain degree of irritating confident permanency.

While it might be argued that Ghana has an obligation, under one International Treaty or another to host refugees, our leaders have a primary obligation to secure our safety as a matter or duty. This duty is made more urgent in view of the current spate of armed robberies in town and the terrorist activities and threats in the West African sub region.

These street urchins appear not to be integrated into the Ghanaian system, such that they are not part of the “no child left behind” program that is driving the “free education” policy – otherwise why are they on our streets even during school hours?

Fifteen years or so later we are very likely to have uneducated and unemployable youth who will, from having stayed here for that long, start feeling a sense of entitlement to everything available to us and feel resentment for being unemployed.

The easiest and most attractive route for them, under the circumstances, is recourse to armed robbery with vengeance.

Worse still terrorists, who obviously have Ghana on their radar, will find these angry foreign youth who have no loyalty or allegiance to Ghana, suitable recruits to use to wreak havoc on the stability of our nation.
Could that really be the reason they have been sent here? Are they really trojan horses sneaked in on us as a long term strategy by the enemies of our state?

Why are our Ministers of National Security, Interior, Defence, our plethora of “security experts,” cross party parliamentarians, opposition parties, journalists, FixTheCountry campaigners, serial callers, and expert radio and television analysts, silent on this looming danger?

Let us wake up and tackle this threat before it is too late.

Captain Michael Yao Foli

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