President John Dramani Mahama has questioned the sole reliance on aptitude test scores in Ghana’s security services recruitment.
He argued that courage, psychological resilience and the ability to hold ground under fire were qualities no digital scoring system could measure, stressing that the country’s recruitment process needed to reflect that reality.
President Mahama made the remarks during a question and answer session at a presidential dialogue with civil society organisations on Monday, where he offered a candid assessment of the flaws exposed by the recent security recruitment exercise that drew 280,000 applicants.
He said while digitalisation had made the process more transparent and resistant to manipulation, setting a hard aptitude threshold of 65 percent as the sole qualifying mark missed something fundamental about what security work actually demanded of a person.
“When the security services come under fire, sometimes it is the 65 percent and above who run first,
“The 40 percent aptitude person, because he is brave and courageous, might be the one who will stand and repel the attack,” he emphasised.
He said aptitude and intelligence were important but could not be the only measure, and that psychological testing and physical assessment needed to be built into the process alongside academic performance so that the security services could identify recruits who would hold their nerve when it mattered.
President Mahama said the government would work to combine aptitude with other attributes in future recruitment exercises, and that the existing database of 280,000 applicants would be maintained and used as a rolling pool from which 10,000 recruits would be drawn each year over four years, giving as many qualified young people as possible a fair opportunity to serve.