Flawless information gathered offer justifiable evidence that the President is fully aware of how the country is being turned into a military commando State by the national security apparatus.
The paper’s deduction follows the endorsement of the exercise by the President when he met commandos, commando-trainees currently undergoing military training exercise at the Asutsuare military camp and other cadres of the 31st December 1981 revolution.
The meeting, Today gathered, was convened by the commandos and the cadres and the President agreed to meet them on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 at exactly 8pm. The meeting took place at the Castle, the seat of the Ghanaian presidency, with each of the 80 personnel who attended the meeting being richer by GH¢400 after the end of the two hour meeting.
The President’s meeting with the commandos clearly undermines the stoic defence put up by the National Security apparatus denying an earlier publication by Today that the state was sponsoring the training of commandos at Asutsuare in the Eastern Region and East Legon in the Greater Accra Region stating that the training of the commandos was a routine exercise for military personnel to manage the VIP wing of the presidency.
Other NDC stakeholders like the party’s Youth Forum and serial callers attended the meeting. A leading NDC serial caller, one Hamza, himself a cadre and now a staff at the National Security Annex, Blue Gate, was one of the key speakers at the meeting.
Hamza and other leaders of the group presented to the President, their concerns some of which included the fact that most of them had been neglected by the Mills’ administration and also how the President could help them deal with their unemployment situation and therefore pleaded with the President to address their plight.
The President told the meeting that he was aware that commandos were being trained at Asutsuare and would ensure that all of them were employed after their training and asked the cadres that their concerns would be addressed as soon as possible. Aside from the assurances that he would personally make sure that they were gainfully employed in due course, the President also asked them to be patient because both his government and NDC has some important assignment for them.
The President could however not divulge further the kind of assignment that the executive has for the commandos and the cadres, but the paper discovered from investigations that the expertise of the group would very much be deployed during the 2012 election.
After the first batch of the trainees passed out last year, another batch mainly cadres and foot-soldiers of the NDC are undergoing similar military training at Asutsuare. The decision to stick to the Asutsuare military camp follows the paper’s disclosure of the decision by the National Security to move the training base to Kintampo in the Brong Ahafo Region.
The entire government, NDC machinery seemed to be benefiting from the commando-trainees. Former President Rawlings, Today found out, is being assisted on his special hyacinth project on the Volta Lake during the weekends by the commando–trainees.
As stated earlier, former President Rawlings has been using the commando-trainees in the desilting of hyacinth in the Volta Lake. Today’s visit to the Asutsuare military camp the last two weekends showed that the trainees joined the former President in his special project at Sogakope in the Volta Region.
The former President was spotted on one occasion imbibing into the trainees, his revolutionary fervour through interactions with the trainees and the fact that they would have to be totally committed to the cause of the NDC, especially at a time that the ruling party was getting things tough and rough.
Most of the commandos were used by the National Security during the recent bye-elections and the national delegates congress of the NDC and the NPP that elected new officers to run the two parties for the four years. The issue of providing jobs for the cadres and the commandos and the trainees, Today can state on authority, might not constitute a problem to the administration.
Almost all commando-trainees who passed out sometime last year from the Asutsuare camp have either been offered jobs at the National Security or integrated into the regular army. Some of the fully-fledged commandos were posted to work at the regional offices of the National Security.
Others have been posted to boost security detail of some state organisations and that of some top security personnel. The paper has it on authority that two of the commandos were posted to the official residence of the director of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI).
