General Smith’s Lies

It has now been confirmed with incontrovertible evidence given by the minority NPP in parliament that the NDC Government, the Minister of Defence, Gen. J. H. Smith and the Military High Command have illegally and fraudulently recruited unqualified persons into the Ghana Armed Forces.

When the minority leader in Parliament, Hon. Kyei Mensah Bonsu, put it to the Minister of Defence, General J. H. Smith, in Parliament on Wednesday 10th November, 2010 that he has overseen the recruitment of 67 unqualified persons into the first batch of 453 army recruits, he (the Minister of Defence) remained silent in admission without being able to say anything or challenge the assertion.

The Minister of Defence was in Parliament on Wednesday 10th November, 2010 to answer an urgent question asked by Hon. Yaw Maama Afful (MP for Jaman South). The harmless question from Hon. Maama Afful was as follows:

“ To ask the Minister of Defence, to what extent the military took into consideration regional and gender balance in the recruitment of 453 personnel of the 2009 / 10 batch of general recruitment who reported for training on 1st July, 2010”

The Minister gave an answer which was full of lies to the substantive question. It was after the minister had given his answer which begged the question and did not address the real issues and thrust inherent in it that he was caught pants down in supplementary questions asked by the members of the Minority side.

The admission of General J. H. Smith that the Ghana Armed Forces has indeed recruited fraudulently unqualified persons into the Ghana Army requires a full parliamentary enquiry as there are several dimension of the real fraud that characterized the 2009 / 10 general recruitment exercise

The evidence provided by the Minority leader on the illegal and fraudulent recruitment of unqualified persons into the Ghana Army and the admission of that fact by General Smith, the Defence Minister are very serious occurrences that must not be washed away.

Evidence before August House of Parliament, relevant, credible, incontrovertible, genuine and authentic in source and existence should be taken extremely serious and not allowed to die a natural death as has been happening since “Uncle Atta” became the Commander In Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces on 7th January, 2009.

Ironically and paradoxically, it was the same General J. H. Smith who said firstly on 10th February , 2009 to become a Minister and secondly on 10th June, 2009 when he was answering questions on why the GAF suspended and cancelled respectively, the training of 420 qualified Ghanaians that there were some malpractices associated with the 2008 recruitment exercise. On all those two occasions General Smith did not provide any evidence to Parliament to support his mendacious propaganda. For instance on the 10th of February, 2009, Gen. Smith said among other things that some of the potential recruits were not qualified because they had fake documents such as driving licenses and that is why the training of the recruits were suspended.

Then on 10th June, 2009 before the plenary session of the August House of Parliament, Gen. Smith gave a formal written response that the training of the 420 potential recruits had been cancelled alleging (rather mendaciously) that 192 out of then420 recruits were illegally inserted. The Defence Minister who was a former Army Commander, could not brief the house on the recruitment procedure after he had stated that the 192 persons had not gone through the processes and procedures of recruitment exercise. On that fateful day, it was Honorables, Albin Bagbin, E.T. Mensah and Doe Adjaho saved him from total disgrace and humiliation as he tried to put his thoughts together in futility. The issue is that on all those two occasions the Defence Minister was allowed to get away with all those lies as he was not put to any strict liability to prove his allegations. In the instant case, the Minority NPP has been able to provide documentary evidence with a letter from an authentic source in which the names of the persons recruited fraudulently and illegally, against the requirements published in the newspapers, have been provided and yet with the support of the Majority NDC especially Honorable Doe Adjaho who was in the chair as the Speaker of Parliament, the Defence Minister has been left of the hook. There is an urgent demand of Parliamentary enquiries into this matter as there is ample evidence to support the existence of fraud, malfeasance and malpractices with a view to “choking” the Ghana Armed Forces with people from the Volta Region and NDC background for agenda 2012 and beyond. The answer provided by Gen. Smith for the substantive question is provided here below verbatim to prove to all and sundry that he did not give the required answer and would have failed if it were an examination. The answer provided by the Defence Minister went as follows.

“Madam Speaker, recruitment into the Ghana Armed Forces is now a very popular choice for young people and I am happy for this trend. It is keenly contested and that allows the opportunity to stick to our stringent criteria to recruit only the best. Generally, we have little difficulty maintaining the regional as well as the gender balance because the number of applicants always outstrips our requirements significantly.

In the Ghana Armed Forces, recruitment policy generally requires 90% male to 10% female in all the three services. A second requirement is that each region should exhibit the appropriate gender mix as well through all the three services i.e. Army, Navy and Air force. Out of an upper limit of 300, Navy has recruited 180 males and 35 females and the Air force has 104 males and 25 females also part of a quote of 300. In both cases, the regional spread is impeccable. However since the question is confined to the army, Madam Speaker I will therefore focus on that.

In 2009/10 General Recruitment Exercise, the Ghana Army was given a quota of 900, made up of 90% male and 10% female. These recruits are expected to be taken in two batches of 450 each. At the moment 391 males and 60 females are undergoing training. Madam Speaker, the second batch of 534 is currently undergoing medical examination out of which 450 will be short listed to go for training in January 2011.It is hoped that any shortfalls in the regional quotas in the first batch shall be addressed. The extra one person in the first batch may be regarded as trivial detail for our purpose today. It is a human organization and a small measure of flexibility may be permitted provided it does not derail the primary goal of regional and gender balance. The percentage chosen for each region is based on the population census figures of Ghanaians between the ages of 15 and 29. for example Greater Accra is 19.3% Upper West is 2.7% and Volta is 8.2% .During the process of recruitment which consist of aptitude test, medical examination and so on, the figure undergo many slight changes but the final tally is accurate in terms of regional and gender balance Thank you, Madam Speaker, for your attention.

The Ministers statement is full of lies and did not answer the questions as expected. Subsequent publications will dissect his statement paragraph by paragraph to prove to all and sundry that it was an exercise of mendacity and therefore perjury before Parliament. For now let us take paragraph 2 of the letter tendered by Hon. Kyei Mensah Bonsu in Parliament. The letter’s reference is GHQ / 2034 / 801 / RECS dated on 20th July 2010 and has GHQ (Records), BURMA CAMP, Accra as address. “Attached as Annex A, is a list of recruits who have been successfully documented. Annex B is the list of recruits with questionable documents / ages as stated against their names. In view of the observations raised, recruits of Annex B were not documented”.

Source: DAYBREAK