For years, if you were running late for an important meeting, transporting a loved one for burial, rushing to the airport, or simply wanted to beat through traffic with flashing lights clearing the way, there was an “easy solution”, which was to find a police escort.
Sometimes, all it took was just a phone call. Other times, it was a quick conversation with a police officer along the roadside. All you need is the ability and willingness to pay, and then boom, you have a police officer ahead of you with a siren clearing the road for you to pass.
This has been a long-standing open-secret business on Ghana’s roads, where both police escorts and some undeserving private citizens have been engaged in.
But it appears that unofficial business may now be headed for the history books after the Interior Ministry announced that no one may use police escort services without prior written approval from either the Interior Minister or the Inspector-General of Police.
The directive has effectively “put sand in the gari” of what many who are aware of the business describe as an open secret within sections of the Police Service.
For instance, across major roads such as the Accra-Tema Motorway and the Accra-Ada Road, police escorts had become an increasingly familiar sight.
Some escorted hearses and funeral convoys seeking a smooth journey to burial grounds. Others accompanied luxury vehicles whose occupants simply wanted to beat traffic. There were business executives racing against time, travellers desperate not to miss flights, and motorists willing to pay for the convenience of uninterrupted movement.
For ordinary road users, the flashing blue lights often triggered the same reaction: pull over immediately, regardless of whether the convoy was responding to an emergency or merely trying to arrive somewhere faster than everyone else.
Over time, what was intended as a specialised security and emergency service appeared, in the eyes of many Ghanaians, to evolve into something far more accessible than originally intended.
Getting a police escort was less about official protocol and more about knowing who to call, or who to negotiate with. The new directive threatens to change that culture.
By requiring written authorisation before any police escort can be provided, authorities are effectively tightening the gate on a practice that many believe had become too casual and commercialised.
For officers who allegedly treated escort duties as a lucrative side hustle, the directive could represent the end of an era.
For the general public, the growing availability of unofficial escort services had increasingly blurred the line between genuine emergency response and preferential treatment for those able to secure police protection.
Now, with stricter controls in place, the familiar sight of convoys weaving through traffic behind a police pickup or motorbike may become less frequent, unless they carry the required authorisation.
