I still believe the Ghana army is useless – Barker-Vormawor (video)
Convener of the #FixTheCountry movement, Oliver Barker-Vormawor has said that he still stands by his claim that the Ghana Army is useless, although that was part of the Facebook comments that landed him in trouble.
Convener of the #FixTheCountry movement, Oliver Barker-Vormawor has said that he still stands by his claim that the Ghana Army is useless, although that was part of the Facebook comments that landed him in trouble.
He emphasized this in an interview with ‘Unprovoked’, a Ghanaian YouTube channel which aired on Sunday, May 1.
According to him, while the Ghana Armed Forces has a good name outside the borders of Ghana for its prestige in helping in peacekeeping across the globe, it gets unreasonably brutal with the citizens of Ghana internally. In his view, the Ghana Army does not stand for the interests of ordinary Ghanaians, a posturing that makes it scary to the people.
Barker-Vormayor went on further to call on the Ghana Armed Forces to carry out reforms to make them truly civilian-friendly and to give them their rightful place and respect in Ghanaian society.
"People in this country absolutely fear the Ghana Army and that’s a useless army… they are not a pillar of our democracy and it must undergo reforms on itself. The fact that military personnel holds guns does not mean in a democracy, we must create a taboo around institutions and I don’t believe in that," the social activist said.
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Barker-Vormayor is currently facing trial for comments he made on Facebook in February of this year in which he vowed to stage a coup if the e-levy law, which was then a bill in parliament awaiting passage, succeeded.
He made the post while abroad, but was arrested at Kotoka International Airport when he returned to Ghana.
He was kept in police detention for more than a month before being granted GHC2 million bail.
Since his release, he has not stopped his activism and criticism of the current NPP government and some of its policies. He has been using his Facebook page mostly as well as a few TV and radio interviews to recount his experiences in the police cells and the alleged torture he was subjected to, among other things.
