WHO IS MAJOR QUARSHIE?

A.K Deku

By Ekow Mensah

Ghana’s history like the history of all peoples has many mysteries which have not been fully revealed yet.

Over the last fifty years declassified documents of Western intelligence agencies and their governments have revealed a lot about the motivations for the February 24, 1966 coup against Nkrumah.

Operatives of both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States of America and the British intelligence have written profusely and spoken loudly about their involvement in Ghana’s first successful coup.

John Stockwell of the CIA and Miles Copeland of the British Intelligence Agency, M15 all admit that their agencies were deeply involved in the plot to overthrow the Nkrumah Government with the aid of local collaborators.

Attention on local Collaborators have focused mainly on colonel Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka, Major Akwasi Amankwa Afrifa, Police Commissioner A.K. Deku and others.

A.A Afrifa

Interestingly, just before his recent death, Mr A.K Deku who was a member of the Council of Elders of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) disclosed that the main center of the conspiracy to overthrow the Nkrumah government was a Major Quarshie of the Ghana Armed Forces.

According to him, most of the meetings of the conspirators took place at the home of Major Quarshie at the 37 Military Hospital in Accra.

The fact that Major Quarshie was resident at the 37 military Hospital suggests that he was not a regular soldier and may have been a medical personnel of sorts.

He may have been a nurse or a doctor who had been recruited by the CIA or some Western Intelligence Agency.

He may also have been active in the conspiracy without knowing that the entire operation was sponsored by Western Intelligence Agencies.

Whatever the facts may be, it is exceedingly strange that for someone who played such a key role in organising the coup of February 24, 1966, Major Quarshie’s name does not feature in the historical record.

 Also surprising is the fact that he did not play any prominent role in the National Liberation Council Chaired by General Ankrah.

Many questions about Major Quashie remain answered.

Why and how did he melt away so easily after the coup?

 Was he assigned any role after the coup?

Why and how was his name kept a secret?

There can be very little doubt that all those who took part in the coup were determined to reverse the gains of the independent movement and to return Ghana to the gambling house of imperialism.

 A.W. Snelling, the British High Commissioner to Ghana in the early 1960s justified the overthrow of the Nkrumah government in the following words;

“Nkrumah is our enemy, he is determined to complete our expulsion from an Africa which he aspires to dominate absolutely.  We must find blacks who can; and although it would be counter- productive to publicly damn them with our old colonial Kiss, yet surely it is not beyond our ingenuity to find effective ways of affording them discreet and legitimate support”.

Editorial

TROUBLING STORIES

The warning is getting increasingly louder about media infraction which borders on the dangerous.

A number of individuals, including journalist themselves have voiced their discomfort with the directions taken by some media houses in national discourse.

 The issue is not about supporting or opposing politicians or political parties, that is not the problem.

The problem lies mainly with the bastardisation of national issues, often with clearly unsubstantiated allegations with the aim of achieving instant popularity at the expense of everything else.

Debates are ordinarily germane to development, but shouting for its own sake, insults and provocations have the effect of reducing the level of discourse to the point where we are all exposed to unnecessary risk.

By now, almost every professional journalist knows the rules of the same – and these rules are there to prevent another Rwanda.

So when journalists deliberately go outside the rules for short term and dubious gains, they are courting the kind of trouble they probably have not fully assessed.

Cause and effect is a rule that operates regardless of what those who set things in motion,intended or did not.

This is the reminder that we should always have in mind.

Short-term gratifications which bring long pain are clearly not worth the effort.