Accra, May 14, GNA - Major General Henry Anyidoho (Rtd) Former Commanding Officer of the Ghana Military Academy has called for a debate to establish the justification or otherwise of Ghana's five major coups de tats after independence.

He said one rule that was drummed into the ears of the cadet corps was that the military must be an arm's length from politics let alone stoop into usurping power from constitutionally mandated government. The coups de tats were staged in 1966, 1972, 1978, 1979 and 1981. The retired General, who is the Deputy Joint Special Representative for the United Nation-African Union Hybrid Operations in Darfur, was delivering the Golden Jubilee Lecture of the Ghana Military Academy (GMA) in Accra on the topic: Ghana Military Academy, Present and the Future on Thursday. The lecture was on the theme: "Beyond the 50 Years of Excellence Turning out Elites Leaders for National Peace and Security." He noted that since the institutionalization of the 1992 Constitution, Ghana had held elections in successions and changed governments without any military adventurism.

"As someone who has spent a good portion of my life in conflict management, I pray and hope our country will continue to experience good governance," he said. He noted that now that Ghana had undisturbed civil government for the past 18 years, it was apparent that a political evolution has taken place in the consciousness of Ghanaians.

"Good governance must therefore be the key to progress and development of the country," he said and added that that was a reality not lost on the minds of the GAF.

He stressed that all Ghanaians must work to ensure that civil society organisations developed to the stage where the populace as a whole could speak out boldly when those that govern took other citizens for granted. Major Gen. Anyidoho said it has always been his belief that cadet training was an investment in character d evelopment adding that "if it is an investment, it must yield dividend." He said training of military cadet must be focused on ethical values of the profession, which he said was very unique in several ways. "We should reestablish and reinforce monitoring mechanism through proper periodic evaluation of the officer's career," he said. He said the military had chalked many achievements but said there was deficit in the training programmes that must be addressed to find out the decline in the quality of the officer that graduate from the academy in recent times.

He said French language training should be compulsory, making it necessary for cadets to have a degree of fluency in the language. He stated that the standard of military course came with the study of French language but, back at secondary school, French was not taken very seriously.

He added that it was obvious that to strengthen regional cooperation, exchange of cadet training should be established and that the efficient use of the French language was one critical means to achieve that. He proposed socially interactive programmes to be part of the training to sensitize the officers to the social environment in which they live and the part they could play as officers in responding to the needs of the society.

He told the officers and men of the Ghana Armed Forces to cultivate the habit of writing and to contribute meaningfully to the school's magazine "The Square."

He said they must discard the erroneous notion that soldiers had nothing or little or nothing to do with literary skills. Lieutenant General Joseph Henry Smith Minister, whose speech was read on his behalf, said the theme for the celebration could not be realized if GMA did not constantly remind itself of the past. He observed that the current officers had a sacred duty to take the mantle of leadership and vow never to let the nation down or the Armed Forces down adding that the challenges that might come their way should be viewed as a stepping stone, not as obstacles. 14 May 10