Remembering Addo-Kufuor’s era: Yaw Boadu Ayeboafoh writes
Habits are like a cable. We weave a strand of it every day and soon it cannot be broken. Horace Mann.
There are certain things that keep coming up, the more you try to dismiss them the more they touch you to the heart. One of such things is the statement that no individual is indispensable. However, upon reflection it is easy to realise that each human person is unique and that no two human beings are the same.
As reports of brutalities meted out to some persons at Iron City, Kasoa, filtered in and diffused the airwaves, I was forced to rethink whether there is any justifiably philosophical underpinning for the statement that individuals are readily replaceable.
My thoughts went to the period that Dr Kwame Addo-Kufuor was the Minister of Defence with the concomitant discipline within our Armed Forces. There was never an incident of deviant behaviour by a military person that proper investigations were not conducted for the necessary remedial action.
Indeed the process of demystifying the military and inculcating into the soldiers the obligation towards the civilian population started with open days. The development enabled ordinary citizens to tour the barracks and interact with soldiers, including rides for school-children by the Ghana Air Force. There was no reported act of impunity against any person which was not investigated.
The high sense of commitment and respect of the fundamental rights of the citizens could not be sustained. Thus, the last few years have witnessed deviant behaviours from some soldiers which have either not been investigated or whose outcome has not been made open. In the particular instance of brutal attack on policemen in Kumasi because one of them had dared to stop a soldier driving an unregistered and unlicensed vehicle, all that we heard was that it was a matter between two security organisations, when the deviant conduct occurred in the open with the public as the audience.
With the specific case of the attack on some people at Kasoa, the position of the Military High Command was tainted with the usual Ghanaian attitude of fundamentalist nepotism and solidarity. The position of the military was ambiguous and ambivalent. While offering to investigate the matter, the High Command nonetheless, concluded that the soldiers were on official legitimate operation when they were brutishly attacked by a mob forcing them to defend themselves and the operation they had been posted to perform.
The reaction is similar to the position the Command took a few years back when some military peacekeepers in Bawku took the law into their own hands to dehumanise some suspects in their custody. The initial response was that the incident was not true and never happened. When evidence was produced to back the allegation, the military dithered and gave in with the promise to investigate the matter. But so far, we have not openly been told what happened and whether the deviants were found culpable.
That kind of attitude does not inspire public trust and confidence that justice will ever be done. That is where I am drawn back to the days of Dr Addo-Kufuor as the Minister of Defence. The first step that a genuine attempt at investigation would require is a public apology, especially in this Kasoa incident where a life was reportedly lost, before a promise to investigate. That is the path defined by Dr Addo-Kufuor in protecting civilians from unwarranted military impunity.
The outcry is that the soldiers were there to protect some private interests against the interests espoused by those who suffered the brutalities. The issues then are whether or not the state must support directly one private interest against another or whether the courts must be allowed to determine the legitimacy of private interests in civil litigation and whether military intervention is justified because the processes of the courts and the rule of law are slow.
If we had sustained the culture of inculcating in our security personnel respect for fundamental rights of our people, the rule of law, due process and the understanding that any acts of impunity and arbitrariness will be adequately punished, by now the soldiers would not take the rights and dignity of any Ghanaian for granted.
Dr Addo-Kufuor as Minister of Defence, with the support of dedicated and committed leadership at the High Command, brought discipline among military personnel. This reduced the incidence of avoidable and needless attacks by military personnel.
The incident at Iron City, Kasoa, must be thoroughly investigated. Those found culpable must be appropriately punished. That will help to assuage public sentiments, build confidence and trust between our people and our public security institutions. That way, we would see our security personnel as allies not enemies. Service personnel who mistreat the public must be isolated, investigated and appropriately punished.
