Brig-Gen Nunoo-Mensah

Many children have to be dragged to school each morning by their parents, but for this man when he was little boy he decided to start school entirely on his own. It didn’t end there — he also ensured that even when things became very tough for him, he never threw in the towel nor said, ‘That's it! I give up’.

Little wonder that he had to find various things to sell in order to self-finance his secondary education with the help of his older siblings and other relations.

All these struggles notwithstanding, he performed brilliantly wherever he found himself and today he stands tall in the security services of our beloved country, Ghana.

Brigadier-General Joseph Nunoo-Mensah, twice the Chief of Defence Staff of the Ghana Armed Forces and currently the National Security Advisor, is the man. His job as the National Security Advisor is very important because he co-ordinates the activities of the various security agencies in the country at the highest level to ensure that the President, the people of Ghana and the country are safe from security threats that are increasing by the day.

"I built myself up. My life has been a struggle, even as an adult. When I left office between 1979 and 1982 as the Chief of Defence Staff, I worked on my 40-acre farm at Kwabenya," he told the Junior Graphic.

When this reporter asked why he said his life had been a struggle, Brig-Gen Nunoo-Mensah, who is noted for being very outspoken, said as a young boy growing up at Winneba he had to combine school with work in order to assist his parents pay for his education.

His mother traded in fish and local foodstuffs so he sold plantain and banana on the streets of Winneba and also accompanied her to neighbouring towns such as Kuntanase and Odoben, north of Agona Swedru. He also had to work as a driver's mate when he completed middle school and was unemployed.

"I used to go to the port at Winneba to load cocoa beans on the sheds. On Friday afternoons I sneaked out of school with others to go to Warababa (a suburb of Winneba) to trap and sell crabs. I had to do all that to earn some money. I could not go to my mother or my father for money and so I had to do anything I could to earn a little money for myself," he said.

Sharing his childhood story with the Junior Graphic in his office at the Castle, Osu, Brig-Gen Nunoo-Mensah, who was called Kwesi Nunoo when he was a child, said it was sheer coincidence that he attended school. Among his siblings of four males, he is the only one who is educated because, according to him, at Winneba, "Education in those days was not attractive. Children preferred going fishing or doing something else to earn a living to attending school, which was considered boring and not exciting".

“I found myself in school because I wanted to play. One morning when I visited a friend (now Dr Don Arthur) at home so that we could play, I was told he had gone to school. So I followed up to the school to play with him and all my other friends. But when I got there, I didn’t just play but stayed on to study too. Since then I never looked back because I enjoyed school and always looked forward to being in school. My favourite subject was Mathematics," he recalled.

Having been born in an era when there were no means of entertainment such as television and radio as we have today, Kwesi Nunoo found solace in reading and made books the source of his entertainment.

"I was always studying, especially Mathematics, and tried to be near perfect in it," he said.

Because of his studious attitude, Young Kwesi was always at the top of his class.

Despite the economic problems he faced, life at Winneba in those days was wonderful, he said.

"There was food everywhere and so much good fish to eat. I believe those of us from the coastal areas such as Winneba were very intelligent because we ate a lot of fish, which is good for the brain," he said laughing.

Kwesi Nunoo's education started in 1945 at the Basel Mission School, Winneba (now Presbyterian School) where he was one of the 10 pioneer pupils. Like any child in those days, he went to school barefooted. He continued his education at the Agona Nsaba Presbyterian Boys’ Boarding School and described conditions there as extremely tough and harsh.

Discipline was strictly adhered to, such that by the time the boys came out of the school, they were completely transformed and ready to face the challenges of life. According to him, Nsaba in those days was a small town that did not have electricity or potable water.

"I used to wake up at 4 o'clock each morning and together with other students went on a four-kilometre journey barefooted through the forest to River Akora to fetch water for our teachers. For us students, after delivering the buckets of water to our teachers' homes, we went back to wash in a small pond at the outskirts of the town that was very filthy. Sometimes we saw frogs and snakes in the pond but we coped with all that. We also had to burn charcoal during the weekends for use by our teachers," he added.

Unable to stand the harsh conditions there, he spent less than a year there and returned to Winneba to continue his education at the Methodist Middle School. After middle school, Young Nunoo-Mensah had to stay at home and work for two years, first as a house boy and later as a messenger in a British construction company. That was where he saved almost all his earnings to enable him to have secondary education because his parents could not afford to pay his fees.
"I attended Winneba Secondary School, which at the time was a private school established in 1949 by Dr Kwame Nkrumah," he recalled.
Since he had studied seriously on his own during the two-year period that he was at home, he was made to enter Form Two straight away.

Unfortunately, there came a time in school when he had no money to continue his education. Luck, however, smiled on him when one Mrs Gibson who had come to the school at the instance of Dr Nkrumah to save it from collapse assisted him to secure a scholarship.
Kwesi Nunoo passed the West Africa School Certificate Examination with Grade One which was not very common in those days. With such a good grade, he could have gained easy admission to Sixth Form and later continued at the university, but something interesting happened.

Some of his family members were in the military, with a couple of them having served in Burma during World War II. The late Major Sampson Acquah, who tragically lost his life in June 1982, was one of them. Young Nunoo had been so fascinated by the military career that he decided to make the Army his career too.

He enlisted into the Ghana Army in October 1960 and started training at the Ghana Military Academy. Midway through the training, he was selected to continue his training at the prestigious Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, England, where he graduated in 1963 as the Best Overseas Officer Cadet of his intake and awarded the Military Cane of Honour.

On his return after the two-year training, he served in various positions in the military, rising to become the Chief of Defence Staff on two separate occasions.

He was a member of the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) government which came to power on December 31, 1981 but resigned in 1982 and spent the following 10 years in England with his family.

He is married to Mrs Margaret Nunoo-Mensah, Proprietress of Premier Florist at Danquah Circle in Accra. They have three children.