Ghana can degenerate into a civil war at any time, Senior Research Fellow at the Legon Centre for International Affairs and Diplomacy (LECIAD) at the University of Ghana, Dr Vladimir Antwi-Danso has said.
“Ghana has been overly praised. Too much, they’ve praised us…[but] from where I seat, and from what I know, from what I’ve learnt, Ghana can go to war at any time. When we say this the Journalists just insult us. Wait until it comes”, Dr Antwi-Danso told an audience Wednesday at the 35th anniversary of late President Hilla Limann’s investiture.
Buttressing his point by making reference to the 1994 tribal war between Kokombas and Nanumbas in northern Ghana, which resulted in the death of more than 2,000 people, Dr Antwi-Danso pointed out that if a mere brawl over the price of a guinea fowl between two men from either tribe could trigger an ethnic clash on that scale, then Ghanaians must not think similar trivial happenings in any part of the country could not trigger a civil war.
“The guinea fowl was only a trigger point; several things happened, several things are there. So we have to be very careful when we say we are doing well. It’s because we have some basic physical things that resemble democracy, but for me, there is a big difference between democracy and good governance. Don’t make a mistake”, he warned.
“Usually when we have constant elections, the presence of a constitution, or institutions of government, the police, what not, then we say: ‘Oh we have democracy’. What if the ruling government stuffs the police or your institution: all the institutions–electoral commission, police, army, CEPS, everything, it is government people? So the institutions can’t work. So you don’t have that institutionalism that will make for democracy. What if unqualified people are put there? What if corrupt people are put there? Incidentally in Africa, and in our country Ghana, that’s what we have”, Antwi-Danso observed.
