Since the recent unfortunate reports about coups in the sub-region in which Guinea-Bissau, Burkina Faso and Mali have been caught, some people associated with the opposition National Democratic Congress have found it attractive talking about pushing democratically-elected governments out of power, even before they lawfully complete their tenure.
Indeed, the noise became uglier with the Burkina Faso mutiny in which we have had ordinary citizens who massively voted the Marc Roch Kabore government into power openly hailing the new military junta.
Trying to find a political excuse in that to misbehave, some appendages of the NDC, misjudging the circumstances, have got themselves in a frenzy, engaging in open, strident calls for a coup in Ghana.
The unfortunate act witnessed a crescendo in insanity during the ‘Yentua Demonstration’, where mis-educated leaders flew into unholy tantrums, calling for a coup in Ghana.
It is worrying that the unreasonable agitation is coming from a huge chunk of people who never saw the several military coups – successful and abortive – and how their architects and militias ended up.
Of course, that is not to say an Executive President or Prime Minister can afford to misgovern throughout his tenure, and hope that he or she exits in peace. But that is why constitutions are written, so that even after lawful exit, a leader can be tried, granted that he abused office.
Nkrumah
We may cite the February 1966 coup and the toll on human lives, as the then President, then outside the country, still had some units of special soldiers trying to defend his government and paying dearly for it.
But we may also remind ourselves to the fact about newly-commissioned officers deciding to take power and meeting the Waterloo in a court martial and facing a firing squad – though they succeeded in taking lives of the aide de camp of the leader of the 1966 coup and officer in charge of the ammunitions depot at Burma Camp.
Acheampong
Then we had the Kutu Acheampong coup that interfered with an ambitious programme aimed at developing a modern rural economy that would reduce migration and feed into an overall national economic transformation of gradual transformation. With so much in infrastructural investment having been sunk onto the ground to facilitate sanitation and irrigation, for instance, he and some colleagues took up arms and brought the nation decades back – and the huge infrastructure going down.
By the time he exited, we were borrowing from some individuals, including a boxer, to import basic items.
Even as military ruler, he saw himself being inflicted with so many coup attempts that he must have felt sorry for himself for interfering with constitutional governance.
Rawlings
Hanging on tenaciously on a straw, it was only a matter of time before Kutu was overthrown from within, and his colleagues also overthrown in a bloody mutiny that also couldn’t survive because its leaders found out that ethnicity and personal agenda were more at work than a mission to rescue Ghana and develop resilient structures for rapid development.
How unproductive and reckless coups generally are is reflected in Jerry Rawlings’ personal relationship with Boakye-Djan and co-architects thrown to dogs, even after they had slain six top military officers, besides several others caught in personal issues.
In the dog-eat-dog ensuing chaos that hit the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, they had to quickly hand over and rethink their hasty act of political intervention.
Perhaps, the most saddening of all the coups was the overthrow of Dr Hilla Limann after the AFRC had returned the country to civilian rule in which the systems were modestly working.
NDC elders
Again, for 20 years, we had to tolerate a military-cum-civilian junta that brought to an end arbitrariness in our political culture which some of these young men and women – in their stark ignorance – want to call for.
Clearly, the NDC is behaving as if it has no parents or that its parents – if they do really exist – are deadbeat.
It is time somebody very responsible in the NDC told these wet-lip fingerlings that they are living in a fool’s paradise. This is because even the mutineers next-door know that coups are no longer sustainable.
Ghana’s peace and stability has been the envy of many nations the world over. Let us all cherish it and guard it jealously.
About The Author
