The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the African Center for Security and Intelligence Studies (ACSIS), Paul Coonley Boateng has said that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s comment that ‘a coup is not an option for African problems’ is questionable.
He explained that the President should be brave enough to tell other African leaders instead of telling the international community.
“As the Chairman of ECOWAS, what did he do [President Nana Addo] to reduce this problem in West Africa?” he asked in an interview with NEAT FM morning show, ‘Ghana Montie’.
A coup is not the solution to Africa’s problems
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has urged the international community to send a clear message to the coup plotters that a coup has never been, and will not be, a lasting solution to Africa’s political, economic and security challenges.
“Statements condemning the coup only without appropriate action will achieve little or nothing, as we have witnessed in recent times. This issue requires collective agreement, effective prevention, courageous action and, equally important, measures adequate prevention,” he said.
While delivering a speech at a side event organized by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, in Munich, Germany, on Friday (February 17, 2023), the President stated that “there are still people who want to control the rules an authoritarian personality, because he claims Africa is underdeveloped and democracy is complicated, and we need to solve it quickly.
Quoting from the 2019 Annual Coup Risk Report, he pointed out that Africa has experienced more coups than any other continent, which, he said, was a “bad statistic”.
Ghana coup
Identifying the case of Ghana, President Akufo-Addo noted that political instability characterized many of the early decades of the nation’s life as an independent nation, and that Ghana became famous for exemplifying every kind of political experiment.
“The one-party state of the First Republic was overthrown in our first military coup, and the Second and Third Republics, which practiced democratic governance, were also overthrown by coups. My father, the President of the 2nd Republic, was overthrown about 51 years ago, on January 13, 1972. Kutu Acheampong’s coup terminate his position,” said.
Bad leadership
Paul Coonley Boateng, however, suggests that the overthrow of President Nana Addo’s father is the result of bad leadership.
“The record is there. . . with every military coup there is a reason for any government to overthrow it,” he notes.
Fix your government if you don’t want a coup
Mr. Coonley Boateng said again, “If citizens are fed up with bad government and ask the military to save the situation, they have no choice but to listen to the masses. If you don’t want a coup, you practice democracy and don’t make things. very rigid and autocratic.”
“It’s not about sending a strong message; it’s what you’re going to do to make people happy. They [President Nana Addo] can’t move and stand somewhere to send a strong warning. . . when sanctioning Guinea and Mali what is stopping them? It’s not sanctions that will make him stop what he’s doing, it won’t work,” to host Kwesi Aboagye.
Listen to the interview
Source: King Edward Ambrose Washman Addo/peacefmonline.com/ghana
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