Over the last few days a plot facility being the official residence of the Chief of Defence Staff, secured at independence by Ghana’s first President Dr. Kwame Nkrumah but said to be on sale right in the blackness of the night, has generated so much furore.
Two central figures in the seemingly boiling fray have been Brigadier General Joseph Nunoo Mensah, who had originally been a member of the ruling party (NPP) and sector Minister for Defence, the accountant-by-profession Albert Kan-Dapaah have come out throwing political punches.
Brigadier general Nunoo Mensah was incidentally a member of the 1982 junta that ruled the country for 11 years under the then Chairman J.J. Rawlings, and actually held the CDS position.
His anger stems from the fact that the wide stretch of land strategically situated at the Roman Ridge, is also up for grabs just as Ghana Telecom went, in his view, for a song.
The military capo with a background in intelligence says, just too few people in power today are benefiting from the sale of state property, and wants it put on record that if the ruling government wants to carry on with the sale of state property, they could be inviting an insurrection and once this begins, lights will not have to go out for trouble to kick-start.
Not even explanations by Minister Kan-Dapaah could water down the anger and disappointment of the almost 70-year-old Brigadier-general, who first enlisted into the Ghana Army in 1960.
Gen. Nunoo Mensah believes the smart parry by the Minister as regards some prying questions meant he was economical with the truth because, he is aware of a security meeting on the issue when the sale of the facility was first put up.
But it is the military capo’s claim that a private person may posses the facility that has got THE SUN in two minds because, he adds that the military could slip back into its old ways of embarking on coup d’etats and therefore throw Ghana’s democracy out of gear.
The next couple of days should see answers to begging questions emerge. Posterity should then be in a position to tell if indeed the General’s barks are stewed in sour rapes after having been sidelined when his own party came into power, or that he really has a soft spot for the Ghana Army, and so cares more than the Commander-in-chief.
THE SUN believes that because the matter borders on security, the totality of the citizenry has to find out if indeed the OUTSIDER can indeed cry louder than the BEREAVED, or that the bereaved cannot be surpassed in the shedding of tears.
