Minister who warned of rising crime wave in 2025 now cites intelligence-led policing as a turning point
Ghana’s Criminal Investigations Department (CID) recorded 1,142 armed robbery cases in its most recent review period, a 5.1 percent decline from the previous year, Interior Minister Mohammed Muntaka Mubarak disclosed on Monday at the department’s annual WASSA celebration in Accra.
Highway robbery registered the sharpest improvement, falling from 312 to 228 cases, a reduction the Minister attributed to targeted operations along major transport corridors. Muntaka told attendees that the overall crime situation has shown considerable improvement, driven by prompt responses to crime scenes, intelligence-led policing strategies, and enhanced community engagement.
The figures mark a notable shift in tone from the Interior Minister, who spent much of 2025 raising alarms about escalating violent crime. As recently as July 2025, Muntaka warned publicly about the increasing sophistication and frequency of armed robberies across Ghana, cautioning that the violence was creating widespread fear with far-reaching implications for public safety and the national economy. By that month, data from security agencies showed 628 robbery cases and 340 murder cases involving illicit arms already recorded for the year.
The government launched a series of counter-measures in response. A six-week national gun amnesty programme took effect on December 1, 2025, allowing holders of unregistered or illegal firearms to surrender them at designated collection points without facing arrest or prosecution. By mid-March 2026, the Ministry confirmed that more than 4,000 firearms had been voluntarily surrendered by civilians during the amnesty period, on top of approximately 11,000 weapons retrieved by security agencies before the programme launched.
Alongside the amnesty, President John Dramani Mahama in December 2025 handed over 40 armoured vehicles to the Ghana Police Service, with the Interior Minister directing that the fleet be deployed strategically across the country, including along highways and in high-crime zones, to support rapid response teams.
At the WASSA event, Muntaka also announced government support for broader modernisation of the CID, including upgrades to the fingerprint identification system and increased investment in Artificial Intelligence as part of a longer-term effort to build a data-driven policing infrastructure.
The Minister did not specify the exact reference period covered by the 1,142 armed robbery figure, nor did he provide updated murder statistics alongside the robbery data.
