Editorial (Daily Searchlight, 7th March, 2022)
Of late, there has been much talk about the possibility of a coup d’etat in Ghana.
What has really raised eyebrows, however, is the seemingly tacit intellectual support given to the possibility by some intellectuals and leading members of our community.
Instead of cautioning people to avoid or stop this kind of talk, these ‘intellectuals’ continue to posit that a coup is possible, and somehow, justifiable.
The Daily Searchlight says that if someone were to take it into his or her head to shoot their way to power over all the litany of transgressions (and transgressions there are), it would be the single most reckless and irresponsible act that any Ghanaian has committed, since independence.
Why do we say so?
First, Ghana has successfully changed governments by the ballot box for six or seven election cycles. Indeed, two and a half years from now, Ghana would retire yet another President, and select a new government through peaceful means, without blood, and without stress.
Second, participation in the election would be free, for those contesting, and for those voting for the contestants. Anybody who believes that he has ideas on governance, should take his message to Ghanaians. He/she may win the election, without bloodshed.
The excuse that some people give for suggesting that a coup is possible, is the alleged disparity between the haves, the have-nots.
To begin with, not anybody riding a luxury car, is a thief. Ghana has hundreds of thousands of genuine business people who do rea business and earn legitimate money. Comparatively, we have far fewer people as politicians who are genuine leeches on the economy. The suggestion that we should have a coup, because of a few miscreants, is highly unaccepted.
Indeed, like it or not, Ghana is far better, economically bigger, with a greater GDP than ever before in our history. This didn’t happen by accident. It is the democracy we all thumb our noses at.
It is a fact that Ghanaians are more prosperous. With a population of thirty million, Ghana is reputed to have nearly two million vehicles plying its roads. We have a greater private sector base than we have ever had in this country, and it will only grow larger.
The fact is that our infrastructure is at an unprecedented high. We have more schools, more hospitals, more roads than ever before in our history.
And for now, we are governed by the best that this nation can train. The fact is that our current crop of leaders are far better trained at governance than any soldier. Anybody in his right sense will accept an Akufo Addo or John Mahama leadership over any person with a gun, any day, all year!
Ghana cannot afford another decade of experimentation at the hands of a crackpot. Too many people have worked too hard, for too long, for some suffering individual to try to shoot their way to power under the misconception that they alone has solutions, the magic wand, to the nation’s problems.
The intellectuals who have been suggesting that a coup is justifiable in Ghana should hang their heads in shame. We should be chasing the bunch of coup mongers with sticks, because on this one, all of us have a stake.
No Ghanaian should be prepared to be forced indoors like a prisoner at six by some adventurer. And anybody who dreams that for us, should be shot.
(The Daily Searchlight appears every day on the newsstands and for sale 24 hours every day and all week on www.ghananewsstand.com. Visit www.ghananewsstand.com for a wide variety of newspapers published in Ghana and from across the world.)
