Don't Be An Alarmist, Dr. Aning

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Garden City, New York

July 22, 2014

In the wake of the rash of industrial work stoppage and demonstrations across the country, Dr. Kwasi Aning, of the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Center (KAIPTC), was widely quoted to be saying that if care was not taken by the leaders of these protest demonstrations, militants from outside Ghana could infiltrate the ranks of the demonstrators in order to create mayhem and instability in the country (See "Militants Infiltrating Industrial Protests in Ghana - Dr. Aning" MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 7/22/14).

While, indeed, it is quite laudable for the well-known security expert to put both industry and union leaders, as well as the Mahama government, on the alert, nevertheless, I find Dr. Aning's observation to be inexcusably insulting to the intelligence of the hardworking but woefully underpaid Ghanaian worker.

First of all, the deafening implication here is that disgruntled Ghanaian workers ought to shut up and pretend that all is well and rosy in the country, so as not to flagrantly rock what Dr. Aning envisages to be the perfect and equitable resource-distribution gravy-train that is the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

Another inexcusably preposterous implication here is that, somehow, Ghanaians are naturally docile and doltishly longsuffering, and that any constructive tendency towards militant agitation for better conditions of service would necessarily have to be imported from one of our more politically volatile neighboring countries. Dr. Aning might just as well resign his plum job at the Kofi Annan Center and get himself an even more cozy and better-salaried full-time job as the Propaganda Minister of the Mahama government.

In other words, What Dr. Aning ought to be doing, if he really cares about the maintenance of peace and stability in the country, is to earnestly advise Mr. Mahama and his largely cynical executive operatives to ensure that socioeconomic justice becomes their topmost priority. So far, even as staunch supporters and sympathizers of the National Democratic Congress readily attest, the Mahama government seems to be primarily interested in the welfare of the filthy rich and powerful.

The swift and reckless abandonment of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), the drastic and systematic underfunding of the School-Feeding Program, and the generally abject neglect of education, at all levels, point to the dire and immediate need of the sort of industrial militancy of which Dr. Aning seems to be so vehemently opposed.

And on the preceding score, it goes without saying that the history of the formation and development of each and every one of the most significant traditional polities - or states - in the country inescapably reflects the normative human phenomenon of social, economic and political militancy. And so it is rather ironic for a man heavily invested in ECOWAS and Pan-Africanist tenets to be so stridently against the logical realization of the same.

It is also just not clear precisely what the Kofi Annan Center's Dean of Security Affairs means, when Dr. Aning pontifically asserts that "These [industrial strike] demonstrations are neither spontaneous nor orchestrated." Is he, for instance, implying that these industrial actions have not been well-thought-out and thus woefully lack executional, or operational, coherence?

And just why does Dr. Aning think that any morphing of these demonstrations into militant agitation would, perforce, have to be externally engineered? Is it because in the "expert" opinion of Dr. Aning, Ghanaians are too timid and cowardly to speak and act forcefully for their own good? Come again, Mister-Doctor!

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