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Opinions of Wednesday, 9 August 2023

Columnist: Onipayede Ossom Teye

Military coups will take us backward

Nigerien coup leader, General Abdourhamane Tchiani Nigerien coup leader, General Abdourhamane Tchiani

We Africans must know that every power pays homage to where it comes from, in military rule the guns are more respected than citizens, in autocratic rule the interest of that one person is paramount to the interest of the rest of the citizens together, in democracy, power belongs to the people, so the interest of the people supersedes any individual.

I will plead to fellow Africans that, we (the people) should work on grabbing power by encouraging and voting for young and intelligent ones with values to the legislature, for better amendment and protection of the constitutions, to give power to the people.

We have our constitution, let's work on it, the military will take us backwards, throw the constitution out, and it may take years of negotiations for a new constitution to start again.

Ghana's last coup was in 1981. We returned to constitutional rule in 1992 which translates to 11 years of military rule.

However, no major constitutional amendment has been done over the last 42 years since the last coup de tat in 1981.

This means supporting a military coup in Ghana may take us 42 years or more for a first-time constitutional amendment.

The pillars of autocracies in Africa are the unconstitutional bodies portrayed as constitutional, let's kick against that and give power to the people.
Every Ghanaian should read chapter seven of the 1992 constitution.

'REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE', page 44, Article 47 for better knowledge as to whether the current parliament is constitutional or unconstitutional.
We will talk about that in my next article.