Retired military chief, Col Festus Aboagye, has said it would be dangerous for persons at the helm of affairs in Ghana to think the wave of coups sweeping across the West African sub-region can not hit the country.
The international conflict resolution expert said Saturday afternoon that the conditions that trigger a military overthrow of a legitimate government are rife in Ghana.
“This so-called prosperity is only for a few – the majority of Ghanaians are poor and we need to be worried because, in a second, emotions could go through the roof.
“What is happening in some of these countries could begin to happen here and I want us to pay attention to every Ghanaian,” he told Newsfile, a current affairs programme on Joy FM.
He cited what he describes as the blatant hardships Ghanaians are facing due to deep-seated economic inequalities as a source of deep worry.
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He was also worried that the political class in Ghana have failed to live up to their responsibilities of protecting the vulnerable and cushioning the teeming youth from hunger and other economic challenges.
“If people in this country cannot be paid, if there is unemployment why on earth do we have a political class that shuttles around the world in charted planes. For instance, why do we even have to talk about buying a new presidential plane? Why do we have to talk about paying first ladies when many people do not have the means to buy the daily bread to put in their mouths,” he said.
The author and security consultant was contributing to a discussion on the coups that were happening within the sub-region, the latest being the military takeover in Burkina Faso.
Burkina Faso, Ghana’s neighbour to the north, was on Friday suspended from a bloc of West African neighbour states in the aftermath of this week's coup, making it the third nation in the regional alliance to be punished for a military takeover in only 18 months.
There have since been concerns about whether Ghana was safe from a similar occurrence.
Commenting on the issue, Col Aboagye said claims that Ghana’s democracy is immune from chaos were quite misleading and complacent at best.
“Ghana’s democracy is not entrenched in fact I would argue that it is a veneer,” he warned.
He said the cracks in Ghana’s perceived sound democracy were evident in the country’s inability to resolve some of the issues that came up during the last general election.
“So, when for instance the president talks about the principle of free, fair and transparent elections. Can Ghanaians really pound their chest and say the last election was free, fair and transparent including even the election of the speaker in parliament, including the processes of voter registrations, can we really say that the elections were free, fair and transparent,” he said.
He added: “Have we consummated the outcome of the last election? Why do we have a pocket of Citizens in this country who are disenfranchised – who do not have any representation in Parliament?"
This is not the first time the Security Analyst and author of “The Ghana Voter 2020” has sounded a warning about Ghana’s susceptibility for a coup.
Last year, he warned that if security detailing in Parliament was not well managed, it could give rise to a coup.
He said this in reaction to the infamous ‘military invasion’ during the process of the election of the speaker of the 8th Parliament.
He said the first point of call for intervention should have been a reinforcement by the Martials of Parliament or alternatively inviting the police unit of the Parliament house to intervene to restore law and order for the proceedings to move on.