Lt Gen Joshua Mahamadu Hamidu (rtd)
Lt Gen Joshua Mahamadu Hamidu (rtd) will be interred tomorrow at the Military Cemetery in Accra, his widow and children have announced.
The celebrated retired General, one of the first crop of Signal Officers of the Ghana Army, will be honoured with a state-assisted funeral, which activities will take place at the forecourt of the State House, Accra, tomorrow.
Details from State Protocol Department indicate that a filing past is scheduled between 6am and 8:30am.
A pre-burial Church Service will follow between 9am and 11am.
The General, who passed on at the age of 84, has a chequered military history having been head of the then Military Intelligence and later the Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) of the Ghana Armed Forces.
He was also a member of the Supreme Military Council (SMC) and served as Ghana’s envoy to Nigeria and Zambia at different times.
General Hamidu also chaired the Board of the Narcotics Control Board.
Gen Hamidu was a cadet mate of top Nigerian Generals such as Gen Olusegun Obasanjo, Gen Theophilus Danjuma among others, all of them products of the then Regular Officer Training School (ROTS), Teshie, now the Ghana Military Academy where they underwent their initial military training before leaving for the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst in England.
The deceased, a Dagbon royal, was born in Yendi in 1936 and played an important role during the heady days in the history of the military in the late 70s.
The son of the late Sunson-Naa Hamidu in Dagbon, he was a member of the second batch of students to enter the then Government Secondary School, Tamale Senior High School, aka TAMASCO.
There are speculations that he has a manuscript detailing a lot about the history of the military’s evolution. Should this be true and the manuscript published his trove of institutional memory would definitely enrich the knowledge of students of Ghana’s military and political history.
His pivotal role in the establishment of the Command and Staff College and his subsequent contribution to its growth is manifested in a hall being named after him at the College, Hamidu Hall.
By A.R. Gomda