The Tolon Naa Maj Sulemana Abukari, the retired Army Major of the then Recce Regiment, has passed on.
News about the retired soldier’s death was broken shortly after it occurred last Sunday.
When personalities of historical importance such as this man pass on, it reminds us about the ephemeralness of life. Like a flower, it starts like a small bud, develops, opens up, displaying beautiful colours which attracts insects. After a short time, what blossomed dries up and drops only to the ground. It decays and enriches the soil where it fell.
The man who commanded troops, the Black Berets of the Ghana Army, screaming orders has gone silent, his GH number and details now confined to the Forces Record Office.
Ghana and not Dagbon alone has lost a man who until his death granted valuable interviews about the turbulent periods in the history of the Armed Forces and politics.
Having been commissioned in 1963 into the Armed Forces, six years after the attainment of independence, he had a rare knowledge about the early days of the post-independence military. The indigenisation of the Armed Forces was in its final stages, and this man was part of the development.
We share in the grief of the loss of this great soldier whose name is etched in history of the Armed Forces, his performance, as it were, in quelling the coup attempt of 1979 cannot be ignored.
The late President Jerry John Rawlings could have been killed at the Air Force Base at the hands of soldiers when the first coup attempt was foiled, but for the intervention of this soldier who took him away to his office, offering him protection from what could have been his doom.
Although there were speculations that he was tortured by Maj Sulemana, this the deceased has disputed, saying that he rather offered him whiskey upon his request.
Such a repository of the contemporary turbulent history of the country, the deceased has been described as a bridge between the officer corps of the period after independence and that of the Rawlings coup period.
Of course he watched on painfully, not able to reverse the clock of change which was playing out in the country. Discipline had evaporated into thin air and Other Ranks broke the rules of regimented life and did the unthinkable.
Senior officers were shaved and some killed by their subordinates, all in the name of a revolution, times had changed.
It is instructive that during one of his many interviews, Maj Sulemana or Tolon Naa recalled telling Rawlings after he had arrested him, “guns cannot change Ghana.”
This was in reference to the changes the uprising sought to reverse.
So many years after the so-called revolution, the same ills which the angry soldiers claimed informed their action remain.
Maj Sulemana was right, they were wrong. The year is 2026 and corruption has taken on new forms, more sophisticated than they were.
How many were left who partook in the uprising? Many fell out with the leader of the revolution, the human factor having played a role in what befell the junta.
Eventually, democracy showed up as the most preferred.
Having returned home from exile, he was enskinned Tolon Naa, his discipline having shaped positively the traditional authority of Tolon. His position on the issue of land sale differs from the prevailing order in other places; for him, land should be given out, not sold.
May the soul of this retired soldier and Naa rest in peace.