I Cannot Celebrate the Ghana Armed Forces!!!

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

I have been mulling the contents of an article that appeared in the online edition of the Ghanaian Times of April 6, 2010. What intrigues me more than anything else about the article is its caption, which runs as follows: “Brain Drain Hits Ghana Armed Forces.”

At first, I though it was an April Fool’s joke or some such prank. You know, like the one that appeared as headline news in the Ghanaweb.com edition of April 1, 2010, regarding the purported Ghanaian visit by the Tea Party spearhead, Ms. Sarah Palin.

And just exactly what does it mean to imply that the palpably odious institution that gave us the Butcher-of-Dzelukope has all of a sudden contracted a canker called “Brain-Drain”? The pertinent question to pose here is the following: So where was the purportedly cerebral genius of the Ghana Armed Forces, when a hitherto career-frozen Flt.-Lt. Jeremiah John Rawlings hijacked this otherwise august institution and rode roughshod over it for some two decades, and in the process effectively “Ewe-ized” it?

Which is largely why it can only come as prime grist for humor when Brig.-Gen. Nunoo-Mensah calls for a new generation of professionally trained Ghanaian soldier who “eschews [partisan] politics, ethnicity and other divisive tendencies that may confront the military.”

Actually, “ethnicity,” per se, did nothing inimical to both our mega-national cohesion and the development of our country at large. What we have seen, to be certain, are politicians like Flt.-Lt. Rawlings, Capt. Kojo Tsikata and the rest of the Dzelukope Mafia who, for close to a generation, converted this institution into an Akan-killing machine, all in the name of a revolutionary housecleaning exercise.

And so when a prominent alumnus like Brig.-Gen. Nunoo-Mensah exhorts his countrymen and women to ponder the rather vacuous theme of “Beyond 50 Years of Excellence,” the former Chief of the Defense Staff had also better instructed us about precisely what kind of “excellence” it is that he is alluding to. For, indeed, a remarkable percentage of Ghanaian civilians, feigning pride and nostalgia over the supposedly mythical achievements of the Ghana Armed Forces, is luridly akin to attempting to retrieve discharged human waste. For that exactly is what the Ghanaian military has meant to us for the most part.

Personally, I cannot be elated enough over the fact of my late father having flatly refused an offer from the Ghana Military Academy to join its staff of language instructors at the coveted entry rank of a Major in 1970. The old man would shortly find himself at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, a renowned spout of intellectual advancement and eternal protection from the Dzelukope vermin.

Indeed, other than that one auspicious epoch when the Ghana Armed Forces, spearheaded by Generals Kotoka, Ankrah, Afrifa and Ocran, and ably engineered by Mr. J. W. K. Harlley, sent “Ali Baba and the Forty thieves” into their Guinean exile, the institution has literally ossified into a para-professional rental agency routinely employed to perform observer duties in the Middle East, and elsewhere, for the pittance of a buck (dollar) or two, which these miserable and “duty-craving” soldiers use to supplement their incomes.

Thus what has erroneously come to be envisaged as the sterling peacekeeping performance of Ghanaian soldiers abroad is, properly speaking, a shameless craving for alms.

In view of the preceding, I have absolutely no alternative but to passionately renew my earlier call for Ghana to abolish the kind of neocolonialist occupation force that currently passes for an army. Instead, like the State of Israel and elsewhere, the time has come for our

country to establish a citizens’ armed forces, one that is proportionally represented ethnically and, even more significantly, one that is organically oriented towards national development at all levels of endeavor.

And here, I cheerfully recall the fact that the last time that I issued my call for the establishment of a citizens’ army, a visibly shaken Ghanaian soldier bombarded me with all the “e-mailably” gratuitous reasons as to why such an establishment would not redound to the benefit of our country. Indeed, if the current trend of voting across the nation has any meaningful message to retail, the latter clearly regards the imperative need for Ghanaians to be our own best friends.

It is also not clear precisely what Brig.-Gen. Nunoo-Mensah means when he exhorts the next generation of Ghanaian military personnel to be prepared to defuse our “increasing chieftaincy disputes” unless, of course, progressive cultural training is made integral to the curriculum of the Ghana Military Academy. Even more worrisome regards precisely who would be inculcating such critical professional values into the young military personnel? Irreparably compromised old dogs like the National Security Adviser? Or does Brig.-Gen. Nunoo-Mensah have in mind any corps of competent trainers elsewhere?

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI), the pro-democraccy policy think tank, and the author of 21 books, including “Selected Political Writings” (Atumpan Publications/Lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net.

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