What Retooling The Ghana Armed Forces Means To Me

I would try to define what “retooling” the Ghana Armed Forces means to me, since the news item on this subject which was generated by the Ghana News Agency (GNA), characteristically, did not contain much, by way of specifics, for the critical reader and thinker to make a head or tail of what Defense Minister Dominic Nitiwul meant by the preceding promissory observation (See “Government to Retool Ghana Armed Forces – Nitiwul” GNA/Ghanaweb.com 12/5/17). In plain and simple English, the “retooling” of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) means the provision of a new and, hopefully, far more productive and effective set of operational instruments or logistics to make the most significant security network in the country even more effective than it is presently.

In the past, a quite remarkable percentage of the membership of the GAF did not appear to fully appreciate the reason or reasons for which the institution through which they had pledged their allegiance to the Republic of Ghana was established. Which was why the GAF hadbecome a staging point for the rampant and riotous intervention in the democratic and civil governance of the country.

Today, some who have no appreciable knowledge or understanding of our still fledgling but, nevertheless, robust, democratic culture continue to unwisely and despicably talk about the supposed “failure of the ballot box,” by which they almost invariably mean that things are not going their way. Which, further put in even more simple terms, means that their political party lost the last election and was legitimately replaced, according to the popular mandate, by a different political party whose modus operandi they are in diametric disagreement. This, of course, is sheer political arrogance.

At any rate, what I gathered from the news article under discussion is that in the recent past our military has not been at the topmost form that it possibly could be. Which may stem from an obvious combination of factors, including low or scanty logistical supply of basic working tools, such as guns and vehicles and the sort of regular professional training needed to ensure that the personnel of the GAF would be in ship shape and on the highest level of alertness and ready to prevent any dastardly attempt, largely from the outside, to destabilize or endanger the wholesomeness and integrity of the country’s sovereignty. I have not yet had the chance to verify this, but there was a time that the Ghana Armed Forces was the best equipped fighting force in the West African sub-region and ranked 3^rd, or so, on the continent after Egypt and the erstwhile Apartheid South Africa, for obvious reasons.

Today, one would be hard put to have the GAF ranked among the top-5 best equipped and best trained institution of its kind on the African continent. We may not be far behind; but we are also not where we need to be as a major stabilizing force in both the West African sub-region and the continent at large. Well, I just did a quick google search and discovered to my horror and great disappointment that among the 30 countries in Africa ranked according to the Index of Global Firepower, as of May 2016, Ghana ranked 19^th, well behind Egypt, the number one fighting force on the African continent, and Nigeria, the number four fighting force on the African continent (See “Ghana’s Military Ranked 19^th Most Powerful in Africa” Citifmonline.com 5/16/16).

One does not need a college degree in Ghanaian or African Military History to appreciate the fact that ours is scarcely a viable fighting force even in our own West African sub-region, where we are ranked a distant second to Nigeria. What we also learn is that just within the last three years, during which period the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) held the reins of governance, Ghana’s ranking on the Index of Global Firepower just in Africa alone, declined from a scarcely remarkable position of 14th to 19th.

This is ironic because it was also during the same period that then-President John DramaniMahama resorted to the rampant wearing of military fatigues and ceremonial uniforms as Commander-in-Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces, in an obvious bid to intimidate his most formidable political opponents in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election.

“Retooling” the GAF may thus entail a considerable investment in both capital and human resources, and the active participation in military preparedness exercises around the globe, possibly with such global military giants as the United States, Russia, China, India and Great Britain, among several others. Then also, our military personnel, at all levels, need to be trained in the most diverse intellectual and cultural and professional endeavors possible. It goes without saying that in its present state and form, the Ghana Armed Forces does not have much to boast of that is worth writing home about, as it were.

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