Former Executive Vice President of Unilever, Yaw Nsarkoh, has expressed concern that Ghana's Fourth Republic could face the threat of a coup d'état if the nation does not address the fissures emerging due to poor governance.

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During an appearance on PM Express on JoyNews, Nsarkoh emphasized that the persistence of inadequate governance can lead to an environment where populist forces gain traction and seize control, acting in their own interests.

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While some may believe that Ghana is immune to such political upheavals due to its history, Nsarkoh argued that the underlying issues that previously led to military interventions in the country are resurfacing within the context of the Fourth Republic.

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“So when the people of Ghana say, ‘no, we are not like that, as for us, it will always be okay’, It’s just a collective amnesia of things that have gone wrong in this society before. And let us remember that I was alive at that time.

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“In 1979, I was 11. So I still remember these things that happened and we saw them. There are causative factors that created these disruptions. We have been through the First Republic, which the soldiers kicked out, a Second Republic, which again, the soldiers kicked out and a Third Republic, which the soldiers kicked out,” he stated.

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Mr. Nsarkoh voiced his disapproval of coups, asserting that it is not within the mandate of the armed forces to govern a nation.

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However, he emphasized that in order to safeguard the Fourth Republic from experiencing the same challenges as its predecessors, it is imperative to engage in discussions aimed at addressing the underlying issues that could potentially lead to its downfall.

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“We must remember James Baldwin famously said ‘The most dangerous creation of any society is the man with nothing to lose’. And we in our society today have many who have nothing to lose. So, if we think that we can leave so many people out of the fruits of development and national building and somehow keep it stable, we deceive ourselves.”

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“We are beginning to see the features of some of the things that went wrong (in earlier republics) and we must start to have the conversation now. We don’t want to go back to those days. If the Fourth Republic will endure and become the last, then we need to change some of the things that we did in the past that created those sorts of disruptions.”

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Mr Nsarkoh noted that Ghana has a chance to make things right and learn from the mistakes of the past.

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He stated that “I know that if you allow misgovernance, you create spaces for a populist. It is not necessarily even a military populist. You create spaces for a populist to emerge. So we must be as concerned about good governance as we are about condemning military coups and so on and so forth.”

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