Brig. Gen. Joseph Nunoo-Mensah (left) assisting Lieutenant General P.A. Blay, Chief of Defense Staff to unveil the GMA@50 logo. Behind them is Brig. Gen. J.S Nkrumah, president of the anniversary planning committee.
By William Yaw Owusu
Tuesday April 6, 2010
The National Security Advisor, Brigadier General Joseph Nunoo-Mensah (rtd) has admitted that the military is engrossed in active partisan politics which he says is endangering the country’s security and stability.
This is the second time the two-time Chief of Defense Staff is expressing concern about the polarised nature of the country’s security agencies of which the military plays a key role.
“In the face of many challenges in the sixties up to the eighties, our country sailed through these political and military turbulent periods because the officer corps held together and did not allow parochial interests to divide us. Unfortunately today we have allowed politics and other negative tendencies to infiltrate our ranks,” he complained.
Brig. Gen. Nunoo-Mensah said this at the launch of the golden jubilee anniversary celebration of the Ghana Military Academy (GMA) in Accra on Thursday.
Themed, “Beyond 50 years of Excellence: Turning out elite leaders for national and international peace and security,” GMA has outlined series of activities including public lectures, book launch, fun games, panel discussion as well as a parade of all Military Academy Training Schools (MATS) to mark the celebration.
Since its establishment on April 1, 1960, the academy has produced over 3000 military officers both locally and internationally who are now serving in various capacities.
The National Security Advisor said “in the immediate years ahead we need to inculcate new values into the young officers that come out of the Military Academy so that they eschew politics, ethnicity and other divisive tendencies that may confront the military.”
He said the GMA had come a long way from its humble beginnings to attain its present status as a full-fledged academy and had held its own against other renowned academies in Africa and the rest of the world, adding “this celebration is a welcome opportunity for us to carry out an institutional self-introspection, and a performance audit, to chart the way forward into the future.”.
Brig. Gen. Nunoo-Mensah who is also a product of the academy said that the quality of officers produced by the academy had enabled the military to ‘surmount’ what he calls ‘major difficulties’ and ‘kept our profession intact’, adding “there are however new challenges of different nature, some of which pose serious threat to national security and stability.”
He also bemoaned the absence of adequate infrastructural and logistics at the disposal of the academy to enable it train more officers saying “the present infrastructure and logistics leaves much to be desired. The physical structures in the academy are virtually the same that were constructed some 50 years ago, in spite of the fact that intakes have almost doubled.”
He reiterated the need for the military high command to recruit people who are dedicated to the service of the country and also work towards the improvement of the condition of service of personnel in the military to sustain interest in the service.
Lt General Peter Augustine Blay, Chief of Defense Staff said the military was using the anniversary to “chart a new path for the future”, adding “the activities lined up for the celebration would interrogate the performance of the GMA and position it to respond better to the needs of society.”
He said he will continue to strive for a well motivated, cohesive and formidable joint force, with the capacity to effectively discharge its constitutional responsibilities.
Brig. Gen. J.S Nkrumah, president of the anniversary planning committee said the GNA needed a lot of infrastructural development and logistics inflow to maintain its envious reputation as one of the leading academies on the African continent.
He appealed to alumni, individuals, organizations to assist the GMA to make the anniversary a memorable one.
Also see: www.dailyguideghana.com
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