I am writing a main theme with two subsidiaries: the president and ECOWAS, what the EC wants believed and Governor Addison’s one swear word. All three have gone under the news headlines in the habitual manner, despite unresolved. But I am in on them here. My senses are two from the trick of dictum I find. Firstly, confess, repent and get it right. I shall close with my second.
Ghana’s leader Nana Akufo-Addo had recently thrown the West African countries’ leadership [ECOWAS] a challenge to research the roots of military interventions in the Region. The Region had woken to what looked like the resurgence of coup-mania, which started in Nigeria 1966. I have not yet read he either gave both his own ideas to share experience; or provide his colleague-Heads, pointers for the assignment he had spelt out. I know his experience includes the FOUR which this country had been taken through—1966, 1972, 1979 and 1981.
The initial attitudinal response has been ‘’as if he did not know’’. In our African traditional translation it is likened to a child having de- feathered a bird and gone to ask his father to name-identify the bird. I object to that inference because it could accuse without proof, by implication, though strictly apt contextually… But the better, interpretively, of the summary reaction is that both ‘’book-long’’ and ordinary citizens may not pay attention to the call is that ‘he should know’ the regular menu consists of bad governance which capsules the causes or might put any nation at risk.
I want to think weirdly for two purposes: raise-prompt about others glossed over; and provoking greater in-debt ‘’savvy’’ and simple potpourri of thoughts including ours and theirs thoughts about the military because as citizens they also have equal stakes in the safety and wellbeing of the states and people. The first President, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah’s theory of ‘’soldiers have no business’’ in running of Government, re-defined as part of consensus force in a model package that finally pre-empts itchy fingers on the trigger. [The statement was the centrepiece in Dr Nkrumah’s address, in parliament in Accra, reacting shortest, in the wake of Nigeria’s coup 15 Jan. 1966. He was overthrown following month]. A coup is a rebellion. It translates indiscipline, put in abeyance the groundswell dynamics into except the military intervened. That is the constant acceptable—‘’half-for-do’’, kind of.
Looked at from another prism, a certain indiscipline had occurred. In retrospect, every first measure the military take is to whip back disorder into line. If they become mashed in that is beside the argument. The modern African grotesque misconduct is found in the death of cultural norms. Briefly put, we disrespect the authoritative diktats of the principled concepts of being decent which underpins our traditions. I think it emanates over the years from the terms like in the instance of the Gold Coast, –the Bond of 1844, which enslaved the country. The counter is the chiefs and Elders felt it secured safety. There were examples of the people having criticised the chiefs for signing them under appeasement through which the peoples’ rights including the traditional rulers’ control and authority were gnawed away. As regards the importance of working our way back to restore the power and wield of chiefs as our bedrock, I shall recommend the British tapestry of royalty, tradition and governance cues-in and outs.
For the Gold Coast we were told of also the feuding among the leading chiefs who signed it into chiefs absenting from the launching of the UGCC. Founder-Financier Paa Grant even defended the chiefs saying the chiefs ‘’are not against us’’, taming Dr J.B.Danquah’s outright condemnation of the chiefs as ‘’lackeys of a foreign government’’. But that erosion of power had already begun, deteriorated today. Reportedly and indeed as known, politically appointed DCs place themselves above the traditional ruler to the extent that unless the chief was beholden unto the MMDCE’, his already circumscribed authority, is disdained and disgracefully impotent practically.
Running closely, is weak leadership. What happens after an electoral rule is the in-fighting of cliques within and around the new leader who gets fastest locked out in the panic of the skulduggery. It lifts the opposition into dangerous group whose only aim is to bring down the government. A weak leader is led to believe only what the stirrings in the corridors of the seat wish for ‘’only the president’s ears’’. That enables malfeasances to rot, sliding into wanton, an invitation for another huu-haa reason. The pattern specifically in the histories of the West Coast military entries are strewn with that combination which I label as external and domestic coups. In all the narratives throughout the sub-region. It is charitable for recording a benefit of doubt where they are un-kept.
Practically too, our African governments generally shun simple accountability. The best visible example is Ministers seems uniformly or routinely dodge parliamentary question-time. These accumulate on the debit side, adding up source of public ire. Yet they are so useful substitute where the public are informed to make judgments barring deceits which boomerang in the process. Former British Prime Ministers Boris Johnson paid the price for covering up breaking the law about Covid-19 and another predecessor Harold Wilson on running guns for Lagos during the in Biafran secession war 1967-70. But it served another idea of external intervention. The man named as the lead British government gun-runner was Maj-.Gen. H.T. Alexander, a retired chief of Defence in Ghana.
Taking up the BoG’s Governor Addison’s one word, as raised the storm, it had two sides: the built up anger and whether his remarks breached public decorum and the EC’s reporting its ‘’limited registration’’ had exceeded expectations. Except the president’s quest which is legitimate, both of the Tripod’s posts raise issues—the governor and EC. I should start with the main telling claim that said the ‘’limited exercise ‘’exceeded targets.’’ It is a phrasing which is commonly often used by state and private institutions and passed as soothers, especially to do with governments in which element of PR usually surpasses the realities. But then, this as a PR and not stunt, may make Joseph Goebbels, Nazi greatest propagandist look amateur, relative to the surrounding controversies, apparently unabated. In its qualitative interpretation, the EC had known what they wanted. The question it provokes instantly is by which statistical data? Then is the EC able to give even guess mates of the numbers who were locked out? Some of these lapses lead to all unkind comments which are indecorous and could be muddying credibility.
The worse seems to come along that word ‘’hooligans’’ to characterise the protestors, if that is exactly what BoG Governor Addison said. Unlike rough politics where rivals could banter no-holds-barred, high office holders don’t cross that kind of threshold, privately let alone in public, because it is written and unwritten code of honour. Informatively, there are five top public positions whoe occupants are under ‘’Gag’’— the Speaker, Chief Justice, COD, IGP and the Governor of the Central Bank. They may in democratic dispensation, if any had to break that order, the advantage is their pronouncements shall be taciturn, instantly authoritative, unchallenged. Inside one other sensitive sense is also the Bank’s big faux pas was to have asked the Security Chief to stand in. There wouldn’t be an error of analysis to question an aforethought that the people might be rowdy. On one hand this is a right posture. On another, more seriously the Bank may have prepared a Trojan Horse. Failing all prognostications, were there no other higher senior officers rather than that man whose presence was likely to have been presumed to scare or intimidate, would be taken as slighting other high officers of the bank. Any in that mould would have cooled tempers and misunderstood at also a time the Bank suffers an apparent and very riled public’s zero trust. In any case, that chief of security won the hearts for job well accomplished. But the tool scuttled an urgent goodwil, at the least both at home and abroad which the BoG needs, close to desperately.
Whichever, President Nana Akufo-Addo spoke early month encouraging ECOWAS to find roots and propose pre-emption of coup-mania which had re-surged in the region, he has the experience of four in his country. That more than qualifies his quest and I guess he is most senior in politics of the region and likely, the AU. Recalling history relative to the assignment, it is that between the 80-90s, two Fleet Street Specialists on Africa, Colin Legum and Michael Wolfers, concurred in the view that Africa’s ‘’golden-periods’’ which offered hopes, were the 80s but frittered; and Wolfers insisted that a disenchanted generation of Youth including ‘’Young Turks’’ might yet strike, if their countries’ leaderships failed to turn around the prevalent inequalities; or they might themselves be sucked by the external interests and the circus of coups would continue.
Winding down came a reminder predator determined international won’t let go Africa in a US policy document ‘’Global Facility Act’’. The US last Tuesday declared Niger’s shake out as a ‘’coup’’ to starve Niger of cash assistance. But the US did not say how much they are purloining and whether they are going to stop. That Act directs the active pursuit to run down Africa, keep it gripped in constant turmoil, weakening the economies and kept ECOWAS shouting sabre rattling but would be manipulated to act favourably to the US. The bomb shell in that revelations are that both Rawlings and a former Kenyan President were pressured [forced] to step down. For us in Ghana, Nkrumah’s: ’’The Last Post of Imperialism’’ plus his OAU {AU] foundation speech have the contrarians—Text and Crib respectively. I guess that would explain President Akufo-Addo’s leaving it a challenge.
By Prof. Nana Essilfie-Conduah
