Barker-Vormawor face trial for coup comment
Professor Raymond Atuguba says Ghana maybe ripe for coup
Member of Parliament for Wa Central, Rashid Pelpuo, has urged President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to halt the arrest of persons alleged to have threatened to stage a coup.
According to him, the arrest of such persons proves counterproductive as it rather popularizes coups.
He tasked the President to instead solve the challenges confronting the economy in order to curb such coup comments.
“My advice to Nana Addo. Please take [it] serious. Stop arresting or getting unnecessarily worried about people making reference to coups. It popularizes the forbidden act! Just solve the economic malaise. You believe in people who tell u lies. Just do it yourself!!,” Pelpuo tweeted.
The past few months have been inundated with conversations about coups.
This is as a result of the West Africa sub-region experiencing three coups in Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso.
Security analysts have based on the trajectory predicted that there will be many more coups to come.
In Ghana, one of the conveners of FixTheCountry Movement Oliver Barker-Vormawor threatened to stage a coup if the E-Levy is passed.
This has landed him in the grips of the Police.
Dean of the University of Ghana School of Law, Professor Raymond Atuguba in a recent lecture said, Ghana may be rife for a coup if economic challenges are not addressed.
Professor Atuguba had earlier on narrated how his family survived the 1979 coup back in the northern part of the country.
“Others were not that lucky. Many Ghanaians who were not able to beat the system like the way my mother did or successfully fight the system like my father did, were mistreated, beaten…even killed.
"We do not want a coup in this country yet I fear that if we do not act quickly, we may have one on our hands very soon. A former colleague doctoral Ph.D. student wrote his dissertation also on Ghana.
"He now teaches at a War College in the US. Whiles my topic was on the Ghana Police, his topic was on the Ghana military.
"Naturally, our paths intersected and we have remained friends since. My friend’s Ph.D. thesis was on the topic ‘Why certain coup succeed and why others fail’; his case study was Ghana.
"My current assessment that Ghana may be rife for a coup partly springs from the knowledge I gained from accompanying my friend through part of his doctoral research on this topic.
"It does not help matters when we consider Samuel Huntington’s thesis on the snowballing effect of coups in the sub-region and the closeness of recent coups to home. A big part of why certain coups succeed and others fail is the economy. What is the state of Ghana’s economy today?
"At the level of the most irreducible idiomaticity, Ghana is broke. Your nation is radically broke. So broke the Speaker of Parliament has publicly warned, gavel in hand, that we may not be able to pay salaries of public sector workers in some three months unless a miracle happens.
"The Minister for finance has waded in very fine and polished English…he says something like ‘the legitimate reality is that there’s no money”.
"At least he has confessed to us that there are some illegitimate realities. Here, we recall the African adage, if a crocodile comes out of the water and tells you a fish is dead, do you challenge?'"
Many pro NPP activists are calling for the arrest of Professor Raymond Atuguba for his coup comments.
Wa Central MP, Rashid Pelpuo