Today’s Ghana can be likened to the coup days of the founders of NDC and Afghanistan under Najibullah

The recent unfortunate arrest and detention of a young lady, who happens to be a loyalist of the New Patriotic Party, for reposting someone’s clip, has brought nothing, but sad memories.

Ghanaians, for close to two decades, were subjected to cruel, degrading, and inhumane treatment by the coup making founders of the National Democratic Congress(NDC).

Some of us, regrettably, witnessed the squeamishly ugly events during the coup days of the NDC founders amid the irrational and ostensibly ludicrous tribunal system that mainly targeted the political opponents of the P/NDC regimes.

It has been well-stencilled that in their desperate attempt to hold on to their illegitimate power, the founders of the NDC ghoulishly set up various paramilitary organs such as People’s Defence Committee (PDC), the Civil Defence Organisation (CDO), which was popularly known as the Militia, and the Workers Defence Committee (WDC), where the last two organs were later reorganised and renamed as the Committee for the Defence of the Revolution (CDR), whose collective mandate was to defend the revolution by hook or by crook.

The PDCs and the WDCs (Workers Defence Committees) had their own courts(tribunals) and meted out justice according to no established legal procedures[Amnesty International, 1983).

In their hasty attempt to get rid of alleged sleazes and corruption, many Ghanaians were unjustifiably murdered or tortured mercilessly for apparent infinitesimal offences.

Some market women were regrettably stripped naked in the public and whipped for allegedly hording their products or selling on high prices. While their male counterparts were wickedly shaved with broken bottles and whipped for offences that would not even warrant a Police caution in a civilized society.

The ace journalist, Malik Kweku Baako once recounted somewhat morosely: “Under his [Rawlings’] watch, if you don’t know let me tell you today, over 240 Ghanaians disappeared into thin air. One of them is B.B. Bismark. As we sit here, the family doesn’t know where the man disappeared to, and he wasn’t the only person – 247 Ghanaians got lost, they have families,” Mr Baako said on Kokrokoo on Accra-based Peace FM on Wednesday, 17 October 2018.

The human rights violations were so cruel and rampant to the extent that many citizens seized the slightest opportunity and left the country after the 1992 general elections.

It is with the deepest regret to venture to state that innocent citizens lost their inherent dignity and human rights in the days of NDC founders hopeless coup d’états.

Unfortunately, in recent times, we have been witnessing human rights abuses amid the arrests and detentions of the NPP operatives over free speech and freedom of opinion.

When the coup enthusiasts (the founders of NDC) burst onto the scene, they went haywire, set up tribunals and barbarically tortured and murdered people with minimal offences.

It is against such backdrop that some of us, who were old enough to have witnessed the revoltingly ugly scenes back then, are not jumping for joy over the idiosyncratic introduction of the dowdy and incommodious tribunal system by the Mahama administration once again in Ghana.

Make no mistake, my dear reader, the National Democratic Congress(NDC) is a progeny of truculent coup d’états, and therefore it is understandable if the party loyalists do not have a soft spot for democracy.

The Founding Fathers’ of Ghana, so to speak, were true patriots whose blood and toil won for us the desired independence in 1957.

But as to whether the vast majority of Ghanaians have regained their economic and fundamental freedoms and the inalienable human rights following Ghana’s independence some seventy years ago, is a million dollar question that would be opened to different interpretations.

It seems to me that the hard work put in by the Founding Fathers’ for our freedom has been in vain. I bet, the founding fathers’ are mourning their beloved Ghana in their graves. How unfortunate?

Ghana, cannot and must not return to the coup days under the founders of the NDC , “in the China of “the Great Helmsman,” Kim Il Sung’s Korea, Vietnam under “Uncle Ho” , Cuba under Castro, Ethiopia under Mengistu, Angola under Neto, and Afghanistan under Najibullah”.

May God bless our homeland Ghana!
K. Badu, UK.
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