The organisers and the police at the Accra International Conference centre were clueless in crowd control.
First, they decided it wasnt neccesary to admit people into the hall based on date and time. As such, people with tickets for the 3pm viewing for June 6th were unable to enter despite being there before 3pm. I was 1 such person.
They admitted just any ticket into the hall. In typical police fashion, they then lied to us saying we were late and that was the reason they admitted those with tickets for other dates and time.
On several occassions they had the brillant idea of trying to speak over the noisy crowd. They intended to have the crowd move back to allow for those from the first screening to exit. Silly. The crowd wont hear what you are saying. How do we move back when the people behind were pushing forward? Those behind couldnt even see the Police men at the gate.
Then they tried to lock up the gate. Which failed miserably.
Then they decided that the 5 or 6 of them at the gate were going to push back the thousands. Again, Silly!
The crowd pushed back and began to win.
Then in typical Ghana Police fashion, the use of common sense and wisdom was abandonned for brute force and bullying. They brought out guns. This only further enraged the crowd that pushed them back harder.
We obviously over powered them and got inside the lobby.
Then they decided that they would control the crowd with tazers. Visibly angry that the crowd, which by then had realised how futile the brute force of the Police was, had decided they were going to stand toe-to-toe with them, they started to try to taze people. Needless to say it failed and we got in.
Anas shouldnt engage the services of the organisers of the Accra viewing ever again, because they are not organised.
The Police need a mental overhaul and crowd control training. The police need to know that their greatest weapon is wisdom, not their strength. Asking us to go back to allow those from the first viewing to exit while there were 2 exits being manned by Police men which had been locked, was beyond any of us in the crowd and demonstrated that those in charge were not clever.
SONKA 