Our army and national development: The story of an officer and a gentleman
My focus today on the army and the choice of officer to be analysed as an epitome of the corporate image of our military is certain to raise eyebrows among readers, seeing that the Ghana Army has been the boogeyman in our political, economic and social development as an independent nation for a great part of our nation’s past.
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Talking to this man, Colonel Victor Coker-Appiah (retired) about our army , you would definitely see a very human and efficient institution and bureaucracy which had experienced in its own way the turbulent times in our past politics, inasmuch as it helped shape a large part of that past.
For most Ghanaians, the only image they retain of the men in uniform is the times they dabbled in the civil government of this country, and ran our country with decrees, military orders and revolutionary zeal. The army is seared in public memory as the one institution whose participation in our national political life is a major part of the causes of our current economic woes.
Of course, I reject such a view, and consider those who did not join or have the chance at the time to help shape the political will and history of this country as neither heroes nor cowards, but rather victims of a false sense of self-importance. Great events demand the active participation of all people of substance, else we would all have missed out on the lessons that military intrusion teaches us, as we all enjoy the civilian, constitutional regime of today, which in itself, is a legacy of that period of rule by the gun.
But why Colonel Coker-Appiah? Why not any of the well-known names who participated in military governments in our past, and who have established themselves in public memory as icons of the profession of arms? The other time, I was emphatic about the futility of speculation in historical analysis. But I did not fail to point its limited usefulness in the formulation of certain lines of enquiry.
So I should be permitted to speculate thus: why didn’t Komla Gbedemah take over the Conventional People’s Party (CPP) when elections were first won by the party in 1951 when Nkrumah was in prison? Why didn’t Nana Akufo-Addo take over the NPP in 1995 during the Kumepreko demonstrations as some people had expected of him? For Colonel Coker-Appiah, it would be why with his background and experience, he declined to take over the country in 1966 after the coup, knowing the considerable work he and his Field Engineers Regiment did on that day under his command to ensure the success of the first coup?
His contribution
One thing the old colonel felt very proud of was the contribution of his regiment to the successful construction of the Akosombo Dam in the early 1960s long before the coup of February 1966 in which he played a pivotal role. He was the first Ghanaian to command this strategic self-contained unit capable of independent operations. And he was probably the first Ghanaian officer with university education to be trained at Sandhurst Military Academy, even though he did not complete his honours degree in chemistry at the University of Ghana due to circumstances beyond his control, and his refusal to take the general science degree in compensation.
But he had a valid grievance against his superiors which should have translated into a personal ambition to supplant them during the coup; he never got the promotion equal to his actual command as a lieutenant-colonel of a whole regiment comprising two battalions of skilled troops trained in emergency bridging and related duties during military operations. At the time of the coup, he was a mere captain of engineers instead of a lieutenant-colonel, even though he had passed his promotional examinations with flying colours.
The National Liberation Council of General Kotoka corrected this anomaly and backdated it but felt with his powerful unit he was a threat to the regime, so it sent him out to India to pursue another course he was due for anyway rather than join the government as a commissioner as others less active on the day of the coup had been.
Bureaucracy
He readily admits that a large part of the refusal of the army bureaucracy to promote him before and after the coup was his outspokenness against wrongs in the army, a trait which would have stood him in good stead after June 4, 1979, as it did many others, but he had retired by then.
It was during the regime of General Acheampong, after the second successful coup in January 1972, that he was given a civilian appointment as commissioner, first at Works and Housing, then later sent to Sunyani as Brong-Ahafo regional minister. Even then, General Acheampong, a co-conspirator in the 1966 coup who knew Colonel Coker-Appiah’s importance, appeared not very comfortable with his colleague, and eventually sent him outside the country again, as the military attaché to the OAU in Addis Ababa, and by the time he returned, the July 5, 1978 palace coup that brought General Akuffo to power, and June 4, 1979, which heralded Chairman Rawlings and the AFRC, had swept everything away.
Just imagine that if this retired, feared colonel had assumed a more prominent role in our military governments commensurate with his commands and general assertiveness, our history would have been a different and very likely exciting in its own way. One way of assessing things is the old colonel’s resolute refusal to harm Colonel David Zanlerigu after the latter’s capture and arrest by Colonel Coker-Appiah’s men in the early hours of February 24, 1966. He did not see the point in harming a fellow officer who had surrendered, and whose later escape and leadership of resistance at the Flagstaff House could not reverse the coup in anyway. This was because Flagstaff House had been surrounded and effectively cut off from supplies and communication with the outside world by troops of the Field Engineers Regiment till they surrendered late in the morning.
My readers should remember that it was this same army which gave Brigadier Odartey-Wellington a fitting military burial even after he had sought to reverse the June 4 coup and resisted by arms the men of Flight-Lt. Jerry Rawlings. This slice of the military past of this nation reveals the many layers, rich in texture and detail that lie under the obvious things we take for granted in this country. To say our army has not been of useful service to our country before and after February 1966 is inaccurate and the life in the army of Colonel Coker-Appiah gives the lie to such unfortunate views.