General Hamidu Fires First Verbal Salvo At President Rawlings

A former Chief of Defence Staff, Lt. General Joshua M. Hamidu (Retired), says the Vice President, Professor John Evans Attah Mills, is not safe so long as President Rawlings remains his mentor from whom he seeks advice.

"Prof. Mills, you are not safe, please believe me. I know what I am talking about. Please be your own man" General Hamidu said emotionally at a press conference last Wednesday in Accra.

According to him, this statement was prompted by Professor Mills' claim that he would be knocking at the door of President Rawlings, morning, afternoon and in the evening for advice when he, the Vice President, takes over the mantle of leadership from next year.

Referring to President Rawlings as a dictator who wished he would always remain in power, General Hamidu said, "Now that his tenure of office is coming to an end, the most recent threat of President Rawlings is directed at the very man he himself has hand-picked to be the flagbearer of the PNDC/NDC Party".

Continuing, he said the President has explicitly stated that he would be very much around and in charge, long after the forthcoming December elections, and reminded Prof. Mills that "you are equal to the task, without having to make one who has failed Ghana during the past 20 years, your mentor".

Reacting to President Rawlings' recent statement that after leaving office, among his prospective activities would be to "police all of us and the gains of his regime", the Retired General advised all Presidential aspirants in the coming elections to come together and form a Government of national reconciliation.

He said, that's the only way in which President Rawlings will never be given any future opportunity to "police us and the gains of his regime".

Touching on the military, he noted that JJ Rawlings has successfully destroyed the esprit de corps of the army by establishing a private army of Commandos named the 64th Battalion and advised forces of the Battalion who, according to him, are better resourced and remunerated, not to allow themselves to be misused "to perpetuate the one man and his family in power".

Addressing the 64th battalion, he said "a look around for his collaborators in treachery from 1979 to date, should provoke you to ask the question: Where are they all?" And advised that with the impending ending of Rawlings' tenure, there is the need for a plan to absorb and integrate them into the Armed Forces.

Speaking on events that preceded his going into exile, Hamidu, who returned to Ghana in May, this year, after 20 years in exile, revealed that, in actual fact, the chairman of the AFRC then, Flight Lieutenant J. J. Rawlings and a few of his colleagues in the AFRC did not want to hand over power to the democratically- elected Government of the 3rd Republic.

He said, indeed, even on the morning of 24th September, 1979, the day scheduled for the handing over ceremony, the function was 45 minutes late in starting, because J. J. Rawlings and a few of his colleagues refused to turn up at Parliament House for the occasion.

"I had to send the Minister for National Security to go and persuade them to come to Parliament House where the world press and the Ghanaian press, Diplomats and all invited guests were seated, waiting for this momentous handing- over to take place" Hamidu stated.

He said, it was later he was informed that Rawlings finished wearing his uniform in the Pinzgauer vehicle while proceeding from Burma Camp.

"Between 1966 and 1969, we had the military liberators. They didn't liberate our country. From 1972 to 1979, we had the military redeemers. They did not redeem our country. And, from 1982 to date, we have had the military defenders who later wrapped themselves with a thin veneer of civilian democratic credentials. Only the clothing of the boss has been demilitarized, but not his mind. These defenders have only temporarily convinced themselves as having so far been effective in defending only their misdeeds and not the rights of our people," the former Chief of the Defence Staff stated.

According to him, the President has sown some awesome seeds of destruction, disintegration and potential anarchy that can make the country ungovernable.

"He seems to be oblivious to the immutable natural law that 'we always reap what we sow'. We, the Ghanaian people, must never again permit violence, anarchy and mayhem in this land," he added.

He went on to entreat students and the youth of the country to pursue excellence in order not to become casualties like their predecessors, twenty years ago, who were used to support what was not and has never been in the interest of the country, adding that "the unfolding globalised world is ruthlessly competitive and demands the best of every citizen of our world."

Responding to questions from the media concerning the possibility of his joining the political race, Gen. Hamidu said he didn't have the resources and, even if he did, it would be too late to form a political party.