The former president of Ghana, Jerry John Rawlings, is reported to have expressed irreversible grave concern over the lack of discipline amongst Ghanaians in recent times.

The former president is reported to have poured his heart out during a sensitization ceremony ahead of the construction of a mother and child centre in Maamobi, in Accra (see: ‘Ghana has progressed but the people have retrogressed-Rawlings booms; myjoyonline.com, 17/05/2019).

Ex-President Rawlings however asserted that given the improvement in social infrastructure as a measure of development, he would have expected an equal improvement in public behaviour, but the attitudes and behaviours keep worsening.

“Look at our roads and infrastructure...the universities,” “he pointed to improvement in Ghana’s infrastructure since he left the scene as President in 2001.”

According to J. J. Rawlings, “while Ghanaians did not experience the volume of development in the past, they conducted themselves “in a very responsible and disciplined manner.”

“It was a better reflection of the quality of the human being,” a quality he found to be dying among the current generation of Ghanaians (myjoyonline.com).”

Well, it could be true that Ghanaians were responsible and disciplined during Ex-President Rawlings’s despotic rule.

But the overarching question then is: why did Ghanaians pretend to be responsible and disciplined?

I have always maintained that we cannot make sense of the present happenings if we refused to take stock of the past events.

Thus, some of us, as a matter of principle, cannot help but to relentlessly shrill, grouch, censure and highlight the revoltingly risible and inherent tendencies of the devotees of the June 4 1979 and 31st December 1981 coup d’états.

In fact, I have stressed severally that some of us regrettably witnessed the appalling events which took place over a period of three decades (1970-1990s), and hence cannot be misinformed by the coup enthusiasts.

What the former president failed to tell the good people of Ghana is that citizens regrettably lost their inherent dignity and human rights during his tenure in office.

In fact, it is somewhat self-deceptive for the same person who created the culture of silence to take needless credit.

It has, however, been documented that when the coup enthusiasts (the founders of NDC) burst onto the scene, they went haywire and barbarically tortured and murdered people with minimal offences.

Dearest reader, tell me, why wouldn’t Ghanaians be responsible and disciplined when people with more than two vehicles were being tortured?

Why wouldn’t the good people of Ghana be frightened to death when the vast majority of house owners were being punished severely for having more than one toilet facility in their households?

Let us be honest, every right thinking person would take notice when the innocent business men and women were regrettably being tortured and murdered for legally borrowing meagre sums of money from banks to support their businesses.

Some innocent business men and women, so to speak, were abhorrently humiliated and their businesses were either seized or destroyed by the despotic NDC founders.

The good people of Ghana had to be scared to death when billions of cedis (in 50 cedi denominations) were impertinently being seized from ordinary Ghanaians, albeit without a trace. How bizarre?

Apparently, Rawlings and his minions vowed to lustrate the country of the perceived sleazes, corruption and social injustices which instigated their coup d’état.

So in their attempt to purge the country of the perceived injustices, they carried out what they termed “house cleaning exercise”,--they dealt with perceived offenders arbitrarily.

The mutinous jailbreakers proceeded with their intentions and callously exterminated prominent people including General Fred Akuffo, General Kutu Acheampong, General Akwasi Afrifa and many others.

In their weird attempt to get rid of alleged sleazes and corruption, many Ghanaians were unjustifiably murdered or tortured mercilessly for apparent infinitesimal offences.

Some market women were regrettably stripped naked in the public and whipped for hauling their products or selling on high prices.

While their male counterparts were wickedly shaved with broken bottles and whipped for offences that would not even warrant a Police caution in a civilized society.

As if that was not enough, three eminent High Court Judges and a prominent Army Officer were barbarically murdered by some mindless stooges of PNDC on 30th June 1982 for carrying out their constitutionally mandated duties.

So, who in his/her right thinking mind won’t run for cover when innocent people were being tortured and murdered for no apparent reasons?

Truly, Ghanaians were not necessarily responsible and disciplined, but they were rather frightened to death.

K. Badu, UK.

k.badu2011@gmail.com