NDC Was Founded on Vigilantism; Government Risks Chaos by Not Deploying the Military

He may have the credentials and the performance track record to back up the implicit claim that, indeed, he is the best or the foremost national-security analyst in our beloved Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana. But, of course, it also goes without saying that Dr. Adams Bonaa has absolutely no right to cavalierly presume to have a far better perspective on the dire security situation in the country, leading up to the watershed and the fiercely contested December 7, 2024 General Election, in particular the December 7, 2024 Presidential Election.

That judgment call and statutory authority rest in-toto with the National Security Minister and such functionally allied ministerial and executive associates as the Defense Minister, the Interior Minister and the Inspector-General of the Ghana Police Service and their designated Deputies, Commanders and Assigns (See “Election 2024: Don't deploy military to polling stations — Adams Bonaa to government” Modernghana.com 11/2/24). The locally renowned Dr. Bonaa is widely reported to have made the foregoing assessment at a democracy lecture series focused on ensuring that the December 7, 2024 General Election was executed devoid of any serious incidents of violence and mayhem, as have been the experience in previous electoral seasons and exercises, including byelections, all over the country.

We are also informed that the theme of the forum of the democracy lecture series which constitutes the subject of this column was: “Ghana’s Democracy Development: Assessing the Implementation of the Vigilantism and Related Offenses Act 2019 for Ensuring Peaceful December Elections.” First of all, Ghanaians need to critically examine and interrogate the origins of vigilantism as we have come to know and experience the same over the past half century, and stop hypocritically and dishonestly, as well as cowardly, pretending as if this morally and politically prohibitive culture of heinous criminality only became a reality or a major problem with the historic and the seismic accession of the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic (NPP) on January 7, 2017.

Rather, it goes at least as far back as the late Chairman Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings-led bloody juntas of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and the long drawn-out and comically designated Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), the infamous Apostolate of Probity, Accountability, Transparency and Justice, an Akan-targeted open season of persecution and massacre and hideous depravity surreptitiously engineered by the Dzelukope and the Rawling-Tsikata-led Sogakope Mafia, with the equally criminal complicity of some morbidly self-serving Akan-descended political cynics, largely Non-Asante, although the major and the seminal participation of a bona fide Asante Traitor par-excellence like the late Mr. Paul Victor - “PV” - Obeng cannot be ignored under any circumstances.

But that the aforementioned lecture series at which Dr. Bonaa allegedly made his most unfortunate and immitigably outrageous comments, was partly or jointly sponsored by a so-called Care for Free and Fair Elections Ghana (Care Ghana) and the prestigious Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Germany-based Foundation, could have at best only come as very cold comfort, for the simple reason that the afore-referenced forum clearly appears to have been strategically and deceptively packed with such National Democratic Congress’ sponsors of State Terrorism as Mr. Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, the criminally indicted but as-of-yet never convicted alleged mastermind behind the Kumasi Kidnapping of the Three White, Young Canadian Women NGO Volunteers several years ago, among a host of other National Democratic Congress-sponsored acts of terrorism, who presently claims to be well-armed with a Doctorate in National Security Studies.

Equally significant must be critically examined and interrogated precisely why it took only as recently as 2019 for the Vigilantism and Related Offenses Act to be passed by the present lame-duck Akufo-Addo Administration, when the previous 8 years of the tandem Mills-Mahama regimes had witnessed an unprecedented wave and level of vigilante violence in the country, including those that occurred in such places as Talensi, in the Upper-East Region; Akyem-Kwabeng and Akyem-Akwatia, in the Eastern Region; and the Amenfi Area of the present Western and Western-North Regions.

Indeed, so riotously rampant was vigilante violence under the previous Mahama regime that even Mr. Martin ABK Amidu would write and publish reams of newspaper columns and articles, enough to fill the covers of at least a half-dozen books, bitterly complaining about former President Mahama having hermetically cordoned off the private residence of Ghana’s longest-serving Deputy Attorney-General and Deputy Minister of Justice and its immediate vicinity, and also having stationed a platoon of 24-Hour Heavily Armed Guards detailed from the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) or some such National Security Agency. Maybe this is where the idea for the Mahama-fangled 24-Hour Economy “Resetting of Ghana” originally came from.

To hear the former Akufo-Addo-appointed Independent Special Prosecutor tell it, the Frafra native from Bolgatanga, in the Upper-East Region, had absolutely no doubt in his mind that the “faultfully tolerant” President Mahama was after his very life. And, yes, this is the sort of “Christocentrically Tolerant” Ghanaian leader that Monsieur Manasseh Azure Awuni and Mademoiselle Shamima Muslim have been telling their audiences is Fourth-Republican Ghana’s most liberal and democratic leader, with a fist-full of staunch backing from the Benedict Arnold of Akyem-Abomosu, to wit, Mr. Kwaku Sintim-Misa, the New York University-educated Professional Stand-Up Comic, locally renowned talk-show host, and decently moneyed private entrepreneur and Akufo-Addo relative.

We need to also underscore the readily accessible fact that as of this writing, on the eve of the US General Election, that is November 4, 2024, the Biden Administration and the Governors of several States of Our Great American Union and the National Intelligence and Security Agencies, were having full-throttle discussions about the possibility of promptly and swiftly dispatching personnel from the United States’ Military and the various State-sponsored National Guards, to ensure that this year’s General Election proceeded perfectly on course and orderly as planned.

On the latter count, we also need to highlight the fact that by and large, American Citizens tend to be far more civically disciplines and socially and politically responsible than their copycat Ghanaian counterparts. In the runup to the 2016 General Election, when then President John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama ordered some 2,000 (Two-Thousand) Troops from the Ghana Armed Forces into the Eastern Regional Capital of Koforidua, that is, the electoral and the political stronghold of Ghana’s then main Opposition Leader, Candidate Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, does Dr. Bonaa suppose for even a nanosecond that this Brigade or Battalion of heavily armed soldiers was being billeted or garrisoned in Koforidua to ensure a massive turnout of New Patriotic Party voters? Come on, Dr. Bonaa, don’t you raise my hackles or get me started!

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
Nov. 4, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]