It will be no news to hear that a dog has bitten a man. However, it will be big news to hear that a man has bitten a dog. Definitely the latter will get you asking questions like, how angry was this mad man? Or how hungry was he? But to hear that a man has been bitten by his own dog will not just be news but sad and unfortunate news. This certainly has a strong Ghanaian political undertone and points to very recent developments that have the tendency of threatening the peace and tranquility in the country. In Ghana’s 53 years of independence we have for five different times experienced periods when people who had been trained, clothed, fed and paid from national coffers disturbed the peace and quiet of the nation and turned it into moments of great tension and chaos. Their thirst for power consistently proved to be stronger than their duty to protect and safeguard the nation against any form of aggression- internal or external. Those were some of our most shameful years as a nation; much as being bitten by one’s own dog. Five Military takeovers in 53 years of independence coupled with pockets of information suggesting such intentions within its few years of democratic rule still gives us cause to worry. No government, no system, no leader or policy that brings such perceived hope to a nation through the killing of some of its citizens by tagging them as ‘enemies of the state’ on its own accord can be regarded as a good one. He who kills to bring hope to you can equally kill you to bring hope to another and the deadly trend will find no satiable end. Over the years however, the good people of Ghana have rebuilt their confidence in not only the Military but the whole security setup. In these times that “our politics has increasingly become acrimonious, negative and therefore unproductive” (Quantson, “Ghana: National Security”, 2006) the least that we can demand from our security units is for them to maintain a high level of decency, integrity and unity of purpose. We cannot again risk our security for any group or individual’s unrestrained selfish desire for superiority or otherwise. To secure our security is to secure our future. Ghana, in comparative analysis with other African countries may not have seen the ugliest side of the military but we have seen enough to be spared these recent attacks on Police officers at their duty posts by some Military men. Such news is certainly most unfortunate and qualifies for high professional misconduct. This sort of negative attitude must be quickly condemned and the perpetrators made to face the bursting rigours of the law without compromise. In a nation like ours where our place in the international community is safeguarded by our tolerance to peace and stability, we cannot trade any of it to such uncultured cruelty and unproductive rivalry between two of our major security forces. The incident that was reported to have occurred in Kumasi on June 4 and 5, 2010 where some soldiers from the Fourth Garrison in Kumasi brutalised some police officers and vandalised property at some police stations must be looked at very critically with such intelligence aid, because I believe there are both backward and forward extensions to it. This is not the first time that the Military has had such unhealthy confrontations with the Police. To me, it has always been an unnecessary show of superiority just to make the other feel inferior. How can we continue to nature such a professionally unethical behaviour in our most sensitive area of security? We need to wake up quickly because these happenings are more dangerous and have a wider expanse than any of the chieftaincy or tribal disturbances that have their scopes immediately defined around the people and their communities. How can we be sure of protection from external hostility in the midst of such indiscipline? I have always reposed so much confidence in the Ghana Armed Forces most especially, and they earned for the whole military setup first place in my ratings of the most disciplined institution, establishment or body in Ghana. I no longer think they will perform well in my next ratings because they have consistently for some time now in recent years violated one of the most fundamental principles of democracy, that brutality must never be a response to provocation. The protection of our young but thriving democracy, peace, unity, and integrity as a nation must not be compromised for anything and the powers that be must act swiftly to broker peace and forestall further confrontations between the Military and the Police or with any other body that may be concerned. There must be mutual respect between these two setups. In any case, they are not set up to be rival units. The duties of each of them are clearly defined and where the duty of one must compliment or overlap the other, it must be done with professional expediency. What we know so well but never seem to execute well enough is that no one is or must be above the law, by extension no private or state institution is above the law. The country will become progressively ungovernable if any person at all or group of persons is given the slightest chance to feel bigger than the laws of the land. For this very reason anybody who commits any offence against the state or anyone legally resident in this country must immediately be made to answer the right questions. It is unfortunate that currently the law only seems to drag and dirty those who do not have strong affiliations with particular institutions or persons. When it happens so, it gradually becomes the right of those without such protection to also resist the law. We must correct what is wrong now to prevent anarchy tomorrow. Unarguably the Ghana Police Service is ill equipped to effectively execute its core mandate of maintaining law and order and combating crimes such as armed robbery and other forms of organised crime. The Police Service must even be so well equipped to be able to protect the government and the citizens against any form of Military uprising and bring actors to pay the price of their actions. We need the Police to be able to stand up to anybody at all once it is in the interest of peace and order not runaway in the face of opposition. I am just wondering what will become of us if we ever have to confront an enemy that we never prepared for. We must not give anything to chance. I am not calling for any form of rivalry or reprisals; the caution is that we must do what we have to do now to eliminate all apparent threats to our national security. Eric Zinbabora Batung Zinbabora@yahoo.com