Details have emerged concerning the dismissal of 501 army recruits who were undergoing training at the Army Recruits Training School (ARTS) at Shai Hills in the Greater Accra Region.
The recruits were said to be undergoing a six-month training to be absorbed into the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) when they were sacked over what the military termed misbehaviour and threat to national security.
But information DAILY GUIDE gathered revealed that not all of the recruits embarked on the December 3, 2015 demonstration at about 2am.
The 501 recruits were reportedly grouped into three namely, Charley, Alpha and Bravo, to undergo training at ARTS when the incident occurred.
A certain Allotey, former recruit who would have passed out last year but was repeated as a result of hernia operation and broken leg – said to be the leader of the protesting recruits – managed to influence four members of Charley Group to ‘Run Away Without Authority’ from the training school.
Allotey, who spent only two weeks with the previous recruits before he got injured and had hernia, was reported to have told additional 10 recruits of the group that the training he had with his former colleagues was not strenuous like the current one and so they were being punished by the Commanding Officer. He allegedly convinced the other recruits to protest against their trainers for being punished.
The recruits bought into the demonstration idea, marched straight to the Commanding Officer to demand a change in the training module.
The Officer, instead of using his powers to tell them to go through the training, was said to have rather opted to beg the recruits to calm down.
Tension went high as other members joined them but not all the 501 recruits were rebellious.
After the incident, a committee was set up by the GAF which investigated the matter for two weeks and recommended the dismissal of the entire trainees.
“Because there is a rule in the military school as ‘electrification’ which means when a group member commits a crime, it goes a long way to affect all members of the group. That law caught up with the 501 recruits hence their sack,” the source indicated.
On Wednesday, December 23, 2015, the recruits were asked to go home together with the Commanding Officer so as to unravel the circumstances leading to a misconduct involving them in their training camp.
Colonel E. Aggrey-Quarshie, Director of Public Relations of the GAF, in a statement, explained that the recruits’ behaviour was far-reaching and inimical to the security of the state.
After investigating the matter, the board was said to have found the recruits guilty on grounds of misbehaviour and misconduct, which could pass for mutiny in military circles, but for their relatively short stay in the camp, they were spared any stringent discipline.
Meanwhile, the sacked army recruits have been further barred from joining any of the country’s security agencies as a result of the action.
The Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) is now investigating the matter with a directive to ensure that the directive is complied with. BNI is to make available details of their (sacked recruits’) fingerprints data to all the security agencies in the country for future identification
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