Listen to the Kindergarten Security Coordinator

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

Garden City, New York

Jan. 17, 2015

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

Whatever name Lt.-Col. (Rd) Larry Gbevlo Lartey made for himself and the faux-revolutionary party that he represented largely had to do with harassing and terrorizing members of Ghana’s main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP). Then in the latter stages of his tenure, he decided to pick on the outgoing Vice-Chancellor of the country’s flagship academy, Prof. Ernest Aryeetey, over the latter’s laudable decision and attempt to protect and preserve the quiescent and tranquil academic climate and culture of the University of Ghana from the chaotic din of commercial traffic.

Truth be told: the fact of the matter is that Col. Gbevlo is professionally woefully untested in ways that could not be said of his frontline former counterparts in Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania and Chad, for example. And so one cannot really take him very seriously. He pretty much reminds me of the other septuagenarian security operative, Brig.-Gen. Joseph Nunoo-Mensah, the man who spent a considerable temporal span of his career saluting and genuflecting before Flt.-Lt. Jerry John Rawlings, both in the latter’s capacity as a serial coup-plotter and a faux-civilianized elected President of Ghana.

Now Gbevlo-Lartey would have Ghanaians accept the patently idiotic premise that the members of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Defense and the Interior had absolutely no right to have been let in on the decision by President John Dramani Mahama to accept the two Saudi-born Yemeni citizens who spent some 14 years each in the U.S. Maximum-Security Prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on charges of terrorist attacks against members of the United States military (See “ ‘Consulting Parliament on Gitmos Transfer Irrelevant’ – Gbevlo” Ultimate 1069.com / Ghanaweb.com 1/15/16).

That Col. Gbevlo-Lartey offers absolutely no coherent reasons for denying the legitimately elected representatives of the people information pertaining to the deliberate transplantation of high-risk terrorists within our internationally recognized geopolitical space, is indicative enough of the fact of the former National Security Coordinator’s being what Americans call a “Wuss.” In other words, if the Parliamentary Select Committee on Defense and the Interior has absolutely no right to such vital national security intelligence, then precisely why was this committee established? Just to make believe that Ghanaians have representatives in our National Assembly who are watching our backs for us, but who are actually getting cut some fat paychecks only to sit duck?

You see, his glaring problem is that Col. Gbevlo-Lartey thinks that having served in the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) puts him over and above the rest of us who never did dog-walking for Israeli and Palestinian internecine combatants in Lebanon under the specious guise of UN Peacekeeping. I have often said that other than our strip-mall Togolese neighbor, it is very doubtful whether in the event of a full-scale war, the rag-tag Ghana Armed Forces could be counted upon to hold their own. In my lifetime, the greatest achievement of the Ghana Armed Forces was the February 24, 1966 auspicious ousting of the Nkrumah-led Convention People’s Party (CPP). For the most part, the members of the Ghana Armed Forces have proven their prowess by roughing up, gang-raping and intimidating Makola Market Women and getting promoted for doing just that!

I also remember the half-Scottish waif using a single World-War II-era jet to reduce the entire capacity of the Ghana Armed Forces to a bunch of full-term pregnant women in an emergency delivery room. Once I actually had a WOII at the old Kumasi 4th Battalion Infantry Barracks confess to me that if his Brigade Commander had ordered his group to move down to Accra to stop Flt.-Lt. Rawlings and his Abongo Boys in the wake of the June 4th Mutiny, he would immediately have tendered his resignation letter. It is quite obvious that the likes of Col. Gbevlo-Lartey have yet to fully appreciate the fact that Fourth-Republican Ghana is a Constitutional Democracy that is regulated by law, order and informed consent.

Needless to say, ours is a civilized society that no longer takes its marching orders from a bunch of gun-toting jungle bunnies who cannot tell the difference between economics and politics. You see, in civilized polities like the United States, Britain, France and Canada, when one talks of national-security experts, the reference is invariably to well-educated “Gentlemen Soldiers” and their equally erudite civilian counterparts, not “Buga-Buga Boys” like Col. Gbevlo-Lartey who can barely “coordinate” a grammatical sentence in just about any language.