Reserve Defence Minister position for ex-military chiefs – Kofi Kapito

The Chief Executive Officer of Consumer Protection Agency Kofi Kapito is advocating a shift in paradigm in relation to appointing a civilian to supervise the country’s Defence Ministry. According to him, the practice is tantamount to “putting square pegs in a round hole”, which he said should be stopped.

He claimed on Onua FM’s Yen Nsempa that appointing people who are not experts to head ministries is contributing largely to the underdevelopment of the country, since politicians appointed to those sectors add nothing or little to the sector.

Kofi Kapito is therefore appealing to governments (present and future) to consider appointing at least a former military officer to head the Defence Ministry. “Let me explain something to you, Ghana here we are lucky, elsewhere in the developed countries, civilian will not be appointed to head a security agency, how much more a whole Defence Ministry.

It is unheard of; it does not work like that. Those that we say we are following (USA & Europe) in terms of democracy are not appointing civilians to the positions of security chief but Ghana the situation is different,” Kofi Kapito asserted.

The Consumer Protection Agency boss contended that the position of a Defence Minister, whose duty vastly will be dealing with military, should either be reserved for a retired military officer or a senior most serving officer who is in the best position to understand the dealings and operations of the country’s defence mechanisms.

“The fact that you hold position in parliament as Chairman or Ranking Member of the Defence Committee, is not an automatic guarantee that if your party forms government you should be made the defence minister that is retrogressive,” he said Ministry of Defence is the governmental department responsible for defending the Republic of Ghana from internal and external military threats and promotion of Ghanaian national defence interests.