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Mr Jones Bortey Appierh, the Executive Secretary of Ghana National Commission on Small Arms (GNACSA) has called on political parties and their supporters to be circumspect in their actions in the run-up to the 2016 polls.

They should particularly avoid the kind of politics that would incite violence, leading to the use of lweapons and ammunition.

Mr Appierh who made the call in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) said the proliferation of small arms in the West Africa was an issue of major security concern to governments in the sub-region.

“Precious human lives have been lost in several countries in the sub-region through ethnic and civil wars and other forms of violence because guns and other lethal weapons find their way into the hands of criminal elements who use them to commit all kinds of crimes”, he said.

He made reference to what he described as an increasing incidence of “gunrunning” in which weapons were transported to theatres of conflict within the sub region, and indicated that internal conflicts within West Africa could easily erupt into major situations if efforts were not doubled to check the flow of guns into wrong hands.

The situation, he said, was further aggravated by the fact that there was no proper surveillance along the numerous unapproved routes, as well as the borders through which most of the weapons were smuggled in dismantled forms.

“It is to this end that the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is seeking to control such leakages by introducing the National Arms Marking Programme under Article 18 of the Convention on Small Arms and Light Weapons”, he stated.

Mr Appierh explained that by this convention, ECOWAS member-states would give special codes to each weapon for purposes of identification, thus making it possible to track those weapons where ever they may be.

“Currently, the GNACSA has been able to mark only the weapons of the Ghana Army in Accra. This means that it has not been able to mark the weapons of the Ghana Navy, Ghana Airforce, the Police Service, as well as the other security agencies”, he noted.

The Executive Secretary indicated that nonetheless the little that GNACSA had been able to do so far had made an impact in terms of curtailing adventurism on the part of security personnel, “because they know that any illegal move on their part could easily be detected”.

Mr. Appierh called for adequate logistical support to ensure the successful implementation of the Arms Marking programme, saying that it would help save the country huge sums of money that would otherwise be spent on troops deployment for peacekeeping efforts in the event of outbreaks of armed conflicts.