Coup mongers are treading on dangerous grounds - Nyaho Tamakloe

A Founder-member of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) Dr Nyaho Nyaho Tamakloe has condemned suggestions that the current economic and socio-political situation in Ghana provide a fertile ground for a coup.

The suggestion was first made by retired Army Captain Budu Koomson.

He said the numerous labour agitations coupled with power and water crises as well as deliberate schemes to delay the election petition case which is currently before the Supreme Court could be used as a launch pad for a coup.

Mr Budu Koomson’s concerns were trumpeted by the UK branch of the NPP last week.

The group went on a demonstration in London to raise similar concerns.

Budu Koomson’s remarks followed similar comments by the Chairman of the Databank Group Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, who recently said at the William Ofori-Atta (Paa Willie) Institute for Integrity Lectures at the British Council Hall on March 12, 2013 in Accra that, the country’s silence on the election petition case could trigger a coup.

“For me we can cause a revolution with our lack of outrage, with what Rawlings did in 1979, you will realize that this is not merely hyperbolic,” Mr Ofori-Atta cautioned.

He accused clerics, civil society groups, journalists, Ghana’s middle-class and other important organisations, such as the National Peace Council and the Ghana Bar Association of “cowardice and hypocrisy” and reminded the nation that it was this kind of culture of silence in the face of impunity that forced a young Jerry John Rawlings and his colleagues to stage their revolution of June 4, 1979.

However, Dr Nyaho Nyaho Tamakloe has said the coup mongers are treading on dangerous grounds.

“Some are saying that conditions in Ghana today create a conducive environment for a coup d’etat; that is wrong”.

“Let us not repeat [the] mistakes that previous generations made by embracing the concepts of coup in [a] democratic dispensation. We saw it happen to Limann, we saw it happen to Busia and we all know how the story ended”, Dr Nyaho Tamakloe warned.

He said coups in the past could be rationalized but same cannot happen now.

He asserted that the notion of selfless or altruistic coup makers is a “myth” adding that some did it in the past out of “inordinate ambition”, “covetousness” and “self aggrandizement”.