Bawku: Family of slained Immigration Officer demands Justice

The family of the slained officer of the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) in Bawku in the Upper East Region, has appealed to the leadership of the GIS to collaborate with other security agencies to ensure that justice was served in relation to the killing of the officer.

The family says it is saddened at the loss of their beloved son and expressed the hope that the GIS will take steps and liaise with other security agencies to bring the perpetrators of the heinous and barbaric act to book.

Speaking on behalf of the family, Cephas Motey, a younger brother of the deceased appealed to the GIS to ensure that the body of the officer was brought back to Accra with dispatch to enable the family to fast-track the funeral planning process.

Mr Motey, a lawyer spoke on behalf of the family when the Comptroller General Of the GIS, Kwame Asuah Takyi led the leadership of the GIS to call on the family to express their condolences, reports Graphic Online’s Benjamin Xornam Glover from Klagon in Greater Accra.

Philip Motey, the immigration officer was killed in Bawku in the Upper East Region last Monday. He was in a vehicle with two other immigration officers when unknown assailants pounced on them and fired indiscriminately into their vehicle.

Motey was pronounced dead on arrival at the Bawku Presby hospital.

The two other officers are receiving treatment at the hospital, one in critical condition at Tamale and the other at Bawku.

The deceased, an Assistant Inspector of Immigration, 42, was in the company of Eric Ayibiya, 30, and Laurence Afari, 42, when they were shot multiple times while moving in a blue sedan vehicle in Bawku by the unknown gunmen.

The three officers stationed at different border posts, were on their way to the Bawku Township to buy food when the incident happened. The gunmen reportedly surfaced and shot into the vehicle and bolted after the incident.

The Comptroller-General, accompanied by Members of the National Immigration Management Committee speaking during a visit to the family house of the deceased on Thursday, April 6, 2023, gave the assurance that the GIS will liaise with the relevant security agencies to find the perpetrators of the crime, so they face the law.

He said the leadership of the Immigration Service would ensure that justice is served. The entire officers of the service are sad at the incident and are calling on management to take decisive action to ensure that justice prevail, he said.

Mr Takyi disclosed that because the deceased died in active service, the leadership of the service would consider recruiting qualified relatives of the deceased family into the service to compensate for the loss.

Mr Takyi on behalf of the GIS and in line with custom offered a cash donation of GHc5,000 and 40 packs of water to the family as part funeral preparations.

Calm person

The younger brother of the deceased, Cephas Motey, a lawyer, described the late officer as a selfless, calm, dedicated person who was aspiring to become a lawyer and had even completed his LLB course and was waiting to write the entrance examination for the professional part of the legal education.

“He would have become the third lawyer in our family,” he said, adding that their 89-year-old father and 79-year-old mother, who incidentally have had an experience working in the northern parts of the country, have been left devastated.