NPP GERMANY
PRESS RELEASE
18—11—2025
Make Use Of Digitalization; Sack The Whole Military Hierarchy Over Recruitment Stampede, Needless Deaths—NPP GERMANY Demands
Ghana has been plunged into national mourning following the needless deaths of six young women during a chaotic and utterly avoidable recruitment stampede. The tragedy was not an accident. It was not fate.
It was the direct result of a reckless, outdated, and irresponsible recruitment process sanctioned at the highest levels of the Ghana Armed Forces. And today, the only honourable path left for those top officers is nothing short of resignation.
In a professional institution where discipline, order, and strategic thinking are supposed to define every operation, it is unthinkable that leaders would authorise a mass physical screening of thousands of desperate young applicants at a single location.
What kind of planning was this? What risk assessment was conducted? Where were the contingency measures? The answers are frighteningly simple: none that worked.
Common sense — not military strategy, not advanced security training, just common sense — should have told these officials that gathering huge numbers of unemployed youth into an overcrowded space could end in disaster.
Yet they went ahead. And now six families must bury daughters who simply wanted an opportunity to serve their country.
These are not the kind of failures that deserve excuses, explanations, or committees.
Which serious organisation, in this day of advanced technology will hold recruitment exercise asking people to queue up under the scorching sun without any consideration for online or digital processes??
These are failures that demand heads rolling at the top. No senior officer who signed off on this mass screening has any moral authority left to remain in office. Leadership is responsibility — responsibility to protect life, not gamble with it.
For years we have been told that the Ghana Armed Forces is a modern institution. But what happened during this recruitment exercise is the behaviour of a system trapped in the 1980s, still clinging to manual processes that expose young people to unnecessary physical danger. It is backward, archaic, and indefensible.
It is even more shameful considering Ghana has spent years investing in digitalisation systems that could have prevented this exact disaster.
Former Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia championed digital reforms precisely to eliminate these unnecessary queues, stampedes, and bottlenecks. And yet, the very institutions that mocked these initiatives failed to implement them when it mattered most.
The political actors — particularly within the NDC — who once dismissed digitalisation as “useless” should bow their heads in silence today. Because if the military recruitment system had been fully digitised, we would not be mourning six promising young women.
The technology exists. The systems exist. The national infrastructure exists. Every serious organisation in this century screens applicants through digital shortlisting, online interviews, staggered appointments, and structured scheduling.
Why then is the Ghana Armed Forces — a pillar of national security — operating like a chaotic market square?
Leadership must answer. Leadership must take responsibility. Leadership must resign. Anything short of that is mockery to the grieving families.
For how long will public institutions deliberately ignore technology and then act shocked when their negligence leads to tragedy?
How many more young people must die before Ghana’s leaders acknowledge that manual processes are dangerous and outdated?
This careless recruitment method is not new. Every year, thousands of desperate youth are pushed into unsafe crowds, forced to scramble for opportunities that should have been administered with dignity and efficiency. But the difference this year is that the ultimate price has been paid — lives have been lost.
And when lives are lost due to poor planning, accountability must be swift and uncompromising. That accountability must start with the senior officers who approved this disastrous approach.
Their silence since the incident has only deepened public anger. No serious leader presides over such a catastrophe and retreats behind protocols. Leadership demands facing the consequences head-on.
Ghana cannot continue normalising preventable tragedies. We cannot continue burying victims of our own institutional laziness. We cannot accept incompetence wrapped in uniforms, titles, and polished salutes.
The military’s prestige does not make it immune to criticism. On the contrary, greater respect comes with greater scrutiny. And right now, the Ghana Armed Forces deserves the sharpest scrutiny possible.
If top officers cannot adopt modern systems, cannot protect applicants, and cannot foresee basic risks, then they cannot be trusted to command forces in times of national crisis. This recruitment fiasco exposes a structural weakness that cannot be ignored.
It is refreshing to hear that the government has launched an investigation into the incident but what we require instead is independent, civilian-led inquiry — not an internal military one — because the institution cannot investigate itself after such a profound failure.
But before any inquiry begins, the officers responsible must step aside. Accountability must precede investigation, not follow it.
Ghana owes the six deceased young women more than condolences. We owe them justice, institutional reform, and leadership consequences. We owe them a military system that values life more than outdated tradition.
And the first step toward that justice is simple, necessary, and overdue: the immediate resignation of the top military officials whose decisions cost these young women their lives.
Ghana’s democracy deserves better.
God Bless Our Homeland Ghana!!!
Long Live Ghana, long live the Elephant Party!!!!
Kukruduuuu Eeeessshiii!!!
Signed:
Nana Osei Boateng
NPP GERMANY
Communications Director
