What do you believe in?

We have all been inundated throughout the week with our own interpretations of the statement made by the National Security Advisor, Brigadier-General Joseph Nunoo-Mensah, at the inauguration of new classroom blocks for O’Reilly Senior High School last weekend in the presence of President John Mahama.  The General has taken a heavy verbal pounding, a ceaseless barrage of attacks that would have felled lesser men long ago who are revelling in the blood sport of our politics.
I must admit that I have thoroughly enjoyed myself with some of the reactions on one hand, and being dismayed and disturbed by others which obviously sprang from motives less than ennobling of our common citizenship on the other. I say this knowing quite well the ‘request’ the General made to the striking workers to leave this country if they felt conditions were so bad for them.

For me, the most important feature of this whole affair is the stark unvarnished truth that the General is one of a kind; the kind that leaves footsprints in the sands of time. General Nunoo-Mensah, unlike the vast majority of men and women in this country, which include his uncharitable and disrespectful critics, believes in something other than his own comfort.

Let me amend that most of us believe in only one thing, ourselves.  Nothing more, nothing less.  We are ready and prepared to do anything to feather our nests, the rest be damned, and the community can go hang. He has a sense of civic duty and communal responsibility that we all can emulate or learn from, with profit to our souls, our community and our nation.

The story of the General reminds me of a fragment of the history of the First World War. In 1915, Winston Churchill mooted the ill-fated idea of the Gallipoli Campaign, on the isthmus joining Greece and Turkey, in order to relieve the Eastern Front and their suffering ally, Tsarist Russia from the Germans whose spectacular victories were counted in acres of Russian, prisoners and thousands of square miles of conquered lands. Historians now believe that if this bold initiative had succeeded, the Russia Revolution of 1917 would not have happened. Of course, this would have meant we would still be a British colony.

The Gallipoli Plan failed spectacularly, and the disgraced Churchill had to quit the Asquith government. Instead of just returning to the Commons backbench to lick his political wounds, he re-enlisted in the British Army and went to France to fight in the Western Front from where he was recalled to the Lloyd George government, which took over from Lord Asquith in 1916.

I can just imagine General Nunoo-Mensah in that role.  The General has the colourful star-studded background for such feats which have everything to do innately with believing in something greater than personal comfort and safety.

We all know General Nunoo-Mensah has been twice the professional head of the Ghana Armed Forces as the Chief of Defence Staff, the only person who has chalked such a feat, and before that, as Director of Military Intelligence. He topped the 1963 cohort in Sandhurst Military Academy, meaning he was the best in all the 52 Commonwealth nations.  The General has held almost all merit-based positions in our army during his active stint. None of his critics can boast of a fraction of his professional and personal experience either in their personal lives or career histories.

He said he was the NPP candidate for the Awutu-Effutu-Senya constituency in 1996, but declined to add he was the campaign manager for presidential candidate aspirant, Nana Akufo-Addo, in 1998. When he made the famous ‘Hand over to who’ statement in Lagos in late January, 1982, in the first month of PNDC rule, President Kufuor was a member of the government as the PNDC Secretary for local government.

Up to today, a lot of us believe the two opposing positions that the political opposition to the Limann government both agreed to the coup with the inclusion of President Kufuor and others sanctioned by the PFP leadership, and at the same time opposed the coup, sending others to their deaths in futile attempts to remove the PNDC from power.

He has been sacked and re-appointed to powerful positions so many times that inviting President Mahama to relieve him of his national security position would not impress him. The important fact is that this straight-talking General has never been on anyone’s list to be eliminated and dealt with in our dangerous years of military rule, and no band of rankers ever had cause to doubt the personal integrity of this simple officer and gentlemen.

We must learn to appreciate the men and women who believe in things bigger than their personal safety and comfort. We must learn to discern the meat in the speeches of public officials and avoid cynical and farcical misrepresentation for partisan ends. We must learn to be grateful to those who are ready to give their time and resources beyond the reasonable call of duty. We must stop snapping like wild dogs at the heels of those who have not sought our approval in the public space for acts which benefit all of us.

Above all, let us all strive to have beliefs that transcend our personal ambitions. Caring for your fellow human beings involves actions, not devout prayers.

By Collin Essamuah/Daily Graphic/Ghana