Security analyst Richard Kumadoe has expressed concern over the tragic stampede that resulted in six job seekers’ deaths and several injuries at El-Wak Sports Stadium in Accra during the Ghana Armed Forces’ 2025/2026 recruitment exercise.
In an interview on JoyNews, Mr Kumadoe described the incident as avoidable and called for greater accountability from those responsible for organising the recruitment event.
Mr Kumadoe argued that with years of experience in conducting such recruitment exercises, the authorities should have anticipated the potential risks and taken necessary precautions.
“To the extent that we’ve done this recruitment for many years and we anticipated some of these results, it is a situation that would have been avoided,” he said.
“This is a situation that shouldn’t have led to losing a single life, and to the extent that we’ve lost six lives, it means some level of accountability has to be checked.”
The stampede occurred on Wednesday, November 12, at the El-Wak Sports Stadium, where thousands of job seekers gathered for the recruitment event.
According to eyewitnesses, the large crowd caused a dangerous crush, leading to the deaths and injuries of several individuals.
Kumadoe criticised the organisers for a lack of strategic planning, suggesting that a more organised approach could have prevented the chaos.
“Those responsible for the recruitment could have been more creative, they could have been more innovative, and they could have been more strategic,” he said.
The analyst suggested that a more thoughtful approach could have been employed by carefully managing the numbers of people attending the event.
“We know the people who have applied, and we could have listed them and asked them to come for a particular exercise on different days,” Kumadoe proposed.
He went on to suggest that multiple venues could have been used to accommodate the large number of candidates, such as Independence Square, the Accra Sports Stadium, Legon Stadium, Borteyman Stadium, and El-Wak Stadium.
“If we had separated them, then it would not have been the case that today we have a huge number of people at El-Wak, where some couldn’t endure the pressure, and others fainted, resulting in the stampede,” Mr Kumadoe explained.