Sergeant Daniel Alolga Akata-Pore (rtd), a key figure in the defunct Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC), led by former President Jerry John Rawlings, has voiced out his willingness to join forces with the latter to ask the nation to pardon them.
He wants Ghanaians to accept their remorse, reconcile and bring closure to the incidents following the 1981 coup which was led by the then Ft. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings, a junior officer of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF).
It is a posture former President Rawlings, the lead architect of the coup, is silent on.
He has over the years justified his come back after handing over power to the Limann administration in September 1979.
Akata-Pore and Rawlings fell out in the 1980s after the bloody coup and its aftermath that left many Ghanaians scared from atrocities of indiscipline military officers.
He fled to London after the June 19, 1983 abortive coup. He has since been in exile 36 years after his narrow escape from jail.
The Rawlings critic expressed regret after viewing the Joy News ‘Scars of the Revolution’ documentary.
The documentary chronicles events of the 1979 and 1981 coups, both orchestrated by Mr Rawlings. Several military officers including generals and former heads of state were executed on the orders of the PNDC, in some cases without trial.
The spill-over resulted in chaos and disorder with various accounts of torture and inhumane treatment meted out to Ghanaians.
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Sergeant Akata-Pore (rtd), who was speaking to Daniel Dadzie on the AM Show on Joy News, which was monitored by TheGhanaReport.com on Friday, said: “The point is, Jerry Rawlings is key to this, he has to deliver a proper apology to all the victims and to the nation then we can begin to heal”.
“I am very sorry for our part in it because at the end of the day we achieved nothing substantial for the nation,” he added.
He recounted how the documentary has brought back sad memories stating that: “It is clear that this won’t go away until the victims come to terms with it”.
For him, the objective of the revolution was not achieved and highlighted the importance of reaching out to affected families to help deal with the hurts.
“I wrote to Jerry Rawlings a long time ago suggesting to set up an NGO. I offered to come and help run that NGO which will assist. I wasn’t even thinking about the wider victims, I was thinking about the soldiers that have been affected in the process,” Mr Akata-Pore, now in exile in the UK, stated.
According to him, he was more disturbed after returning to Ghana several years after the PNDC era to witness and experience the state of affairs at the time, which was in variance to what he had envisaged.
“It had even become more traumatic for me when I came back and I actually saw what has happened 35 years on,” he observed.
