Professor Raymond Atuguba Warns Of Coup; Says 'Broke' Economy May Trigger One Soon

• Professor Raymond Atuguba has indicated that the country is susceptible to a coup judging by the nation's economic woes
• The law professor revealed that a study about successful and unsuccessful coups used Ghana as some of its case studies
• YEN.com.gh earlier reported that the cedi had plunged against the dollar to become the worst-performing African currency

The Dean of the University of Ghana Law School, Professor Raymond Atuguba, has said a profound academic study on Ghana suggests that the country risks an imminent coup d'etat.

According to the respected law professor, this grim prediction dawned on him after assisting an academic colleague of the Washington DC-based National War College who wrote a dissertation on 'Why some coups fail and others succeed'. That dissertation used Ghana as a case study, he revealed.

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Speaking at the Solidare Governance Forum - a public lecture and panel discussion - on Monday, February 28, 2022, and sighted by YEN.com.gh on the Facebook page of Woezor TV, Professor Atuguba said the current poor state of the economy is also a viable trigger of a possible coup.

"We do not want a coup in this country. Yet, I fear that if we do not act quickly, we may have one on our hands very soon...My current assessment that Ghana may be ripe for a coup partly springs from the knowledge I gained from accompanying my friend through parts of his doctoral research on this topic," he said.

He added that the recent coups sweeping across the West African subregion constitute another factor that makes a possible coup even more likely.

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"It does not help matters if we consider Samuel Huntington's thesis on the snowballing effect of coups in the sub-region and the closeness of the recent coups to home.

"I urge my good friend the Minister for National Security, Hon [Albert] Kan Dapaah, to have a conversation with my friend at the War College.

"A big part of why certain coups succeed and others fail is the economy. What is the state of Ghana's economy today? At the level of the most irreducible idiomaticity, Ghana is broke. Your nation is radically broke. So broke, the Speaker of Parliament has publicly warned government may not be able to pay the salaries of public sector workers in some three months unless a miracle happens," he said.

Prof Atuguba's prediction on Monday about a possible coup in Ghana adds to a host of similar sentiments expressed by other social commentators, academics and security experts.

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Ghana Cedi Plunges Against Dollar To Become Africa's Worst-Performing Currency

The latest report by Ghana-based finance analyst, Databank, shows Ghana sits at the bottom of a 15-currency ranking after depreciating by 7.6% to the U.S. dollar.

This makes the local currency the worst-performing on the continent. At the start of 2022, the Ghana cedi sat at number 14, beating only the Zambian kwacha.

Source: YEN.com.gh