Features
‘Possible’ coup looms in Ghana?
According to Wikipedia, a coup d’etat (French), often shortened to ‘a coup’ in English or ‘overthrow’, is a seizure and removal of a government and its powers.
www.britannica.com also says; a coup d’etat is a sudden, often violent overthrow of an existing government by a small group.
Typically, it is an illegal seizure of power by a political faction, rebel group, military or by a dictator.
According to experts, coups d’etat usually seek only to replace key government personnel rather than forcing sweeping changes to a country’s fundamental social and political ideology.
As a key to success, groups attempting coups, typically seek to gain support of all or parts of a country’s armed forces, police and other military elements.
In his book; Political Order in Changing Societies (published in 1968), Samuel P. Huntington says, there are three generally recognised types of coups. And they are (a) “The breakthrough coup” (b) “The guardian coup” and (c) “The veto coup”.
Samuel Huntington, also a political scientist, says with “The breakthrough coup”, opposing civilian or military organisers overthrow the seated government and install themselves as a nation’s new leaders.
Huntington explains that with “The guardian coup”, typically described as ‘justified’ as being for the “broader good of the nation”, occurs when one elite group seizes power from another elite group.
According to Huntington, in “The veto coup”, a nation’s military steps in to prevent radical political changes.
Of late, readers, the fact of the matter is that, ‘coup-mongering voices’ seem to be spreading from the ‘stock’ of the Opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), thus, ‘snowballing’ into a national conversation.
For instance, Brigadier-General (Rtd) Joseph Nunoo-Mensah, a former National Security Adviser and an NDC ‘high-fly-employee’, claims all his efforts to meet President Akufo-Addo to discuss a possibility of a coup in Ghana have proved futile.
Recently speaking on Rainbow Radio (87.5 FM) , Brigadier Nunoo-Mensah said, he and a colleague retired army officer had sought audience to dialogue with President Akufo Addo on the coup in Mali and Burkina Faso and “a possible one in Ghana” but that opportunity has not been possible.
He said, he and his colleague had seen some indicators that could trigger a coup in Ghana, stressing that “the nation must prepare because the signs of coups are clear on the streets.”
The former Chief of Defence Staff said:”Ghana is in danger but our leaders have refused to be on guard to address the hardship Ghanaians are facing.
“Just last year, myself and a former military officer, General Selasi (rtd) tried to see the President so as to bring these to his hearing but we never got the chance to meet the President.
“Up till now, we’ve not had the opportunity to meet him. If we don’t take care, what we fear will happen.”
Some critics of Brigadier Nunoo-Mensah are, however, asking:”Apart from his anxiety to meet the President in person, what useful advice has he got to give the Akufo-Addo led Government?
“If Brigadier Nunoo-Mensah is genuine with his ‘intentions’, can’t he give whatever information at his disposal to the relevant security agencies, looking at his ‘pedigree’ as a high-notch military officer?”
The Dean of the University of Ghana School of Law, Professor Raymond Atuguba also says,”the current economic situation in the country could trigger a coup”.
He is quoted as saying: “My current assessment that Ghana may be ripe for a coup partly springs from the knowledge I gained from accompanying my friend, through part of his doctoral research on this topic.”
Speaking at a forum organised by Solidare Ghana, on the nation’s economy, last Monday, February 28, 2022, Professor Atuguba said: “We do not want a coup in this country, yet I fear that if we do not act quickly, we may have one on our hands very soon.”
However, some critics of Professor Atuguba are also asking: “When President John Mahama was mismanaging Ghana’s economy, culminating in ‘dumsor-dumsor’ and destroying all businesses in the country; did it trigger a coup or the NDC was expecting the ‘rotten-Mahama economy’ to trigger a coup that never happened?
“To the extent that the Mahama regime of which Professor Atuguba was a king-pin , had to run to the International Monetary Fund, to seek ‘policy credibility’ because the economy was rendered hopeless; and even that did not trigger a coup?”
Professor Atuguba’s critics further ask: “Why are the coup mongers ’emerging’ from the ‘stock ‘of the NDC?
“Are they in haste to be ‘drafted’ into ‘coup-government’ to do more damage to the economy in this pandemic era?”
And currently, Mawuse Oliver Barker-Vormawor, an NDC apologist, is being prosecuted on a charge of treason felony.
Barker-Vormawor’s arrest and prosecution is in relation to a social media post in which he threatened to stage a coup if the E-levy Bill which is currently under consideration in Parliament is passed into law.
According to the police, Barker-Vormawor’s social media post, “contained a clear statement of intent with a possible will to execute a coup in his declaration of intent to subvert the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana.”
And without any provocation from the Ghana Armed Forces, Barker-Vormawor described the Ghana Army as “useless” in his social media post.
Readers, from the foregoing, can anyone of you fathom why the ‘coup-mongering gas’ is gradually but steadily ‘leaking’ from the ‘kitchens’ of the NDC?
Contact email/ WhatsApp of the author:
asmahfrankg@gmail.com (0505556179)
BY G. FRANK ASMAH
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
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Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
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