A retired military officer and security analyst, Colonel Festus Aboagye, has shed light on troubling practices within the Ghana Armed Forces, revealing that some personnel were deployed to perform domestic chores in civilian homes, including high-end estates occupied by top executives.
His comment comes after the Ministry of Defence, as part of ongoing efforts to restore discipline and accountability within Ghana’s security framework, announced the withdrawal of military protection for all civilians not legally entitled to such services, including public officials, former ministers, and businesspersons.
Defence Minister Dr Edward Omane Boamah announced in a post on his official Facebook page on Tuesday, July 15, describing the move as part of the government’s broader Reset agenda aimed at promoting transparency and responsible governance.
“As part of our Reset agenda to restore discipline and accountability, we’ve withdrawn military protection for civilians (including public officials, former ministers, businessmen, and women, among others) who are not entitled to it,” he stated.
Commenting on the matter in an interview with TV3 on Tuesday, July 15, 2025, monitored by GhanaWeb, Colonel Aboagye disclosed that, in some cases, commanders allegedly assigned soldiers to perform such tasks as a means of generating Internally Generated Funds (IGF) for barracks maintenance. According to him, these unofficial deployments highlight a critical shortfall in the government’s defence budget allocation.
“The directive [to stop the practice] is welcome,” Colonel Aboagye stated, “but the government must recognise that the money it is making available to the Ghana Armed Forces may not be sufficient. It needs to address that budget shortfall.”
He criticized the previous administration for what he termed a “misapplication” of the military, highlighting that some individuals who were assigned protection were not entitled to such services.
“Some of the people that were mentioned are not entitled to military protection, including some of these socially upward areas – very expensive estates where chief executives living in those estates were recruiting soldiers to go and guard their premises and invariably end up pounding fufu and that kind of thing. I mean the whole thing is totally unprofessional.
“So even if the military has not gotten anything to do, the soldiers should remain in barracks so that they don’t get exposed to civilians as police might do,” he said.
Colonel Aboagye emphasized that regardless of workload, soldiers should remain in barracks rather than being exposed to domestic environments in civilian homes, which he warned could erode military professionalism and discipline.
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