Gargantuan Appointments And Promotions In The Ghana Armed Forces

The Supreme Commander has been embarking on gargantuan kokofu appointments and promotions in all the Security Services and the Ghana Armed Forces in particular in an unprecedented manner. The appointments and promotions of 2025, post 7th January and 2026 are based purely on political and ethnocentric considerations.

Juniors have been promoted over seniors not because of merit, abilities, skills, knowledge and experiences but based on politics and ethnicity. Most of the people who have been and/or are being promoted have their political godparents, NDC Party Cards and affiliations, evidence of financial and operational assistance to the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the 2016 and 2024 elections.

The principle of “NO CONTRIBUTION NO CHOP (NCNC)” has been and is being strictly applied. In order to put our research findings in their rightful perspectives, we started publishing the seniority roll of the Ghana Armed Forces, as at 7th January 2025 when the Supreme Commander was sworn into office as President by the then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Her Ladyship Justice Gertrude Araba Esaaba Torkornoo.

We started with the highest rank (General) downwards through Lieutenant General, Major General and their equivalents and got to Brigadier Generals and equivalents in the Ghana Navy and Ghana Air Force.

We ended the last publication with Brigadier General Charles Kwashie Gbekle (GH/2903) as the 74th Brigadier General in terms of seniority in the Ghana Armed Forces as at 7th January 2025.

We wish to continue the list of Brigadier Generals and equivalents as follows:

75. Brigadier General Lloyd Kwaku Atror (GH/2639) – Deputy Commandant, Ghana Military Academy.
76. Brigadier General Yehuza Salifu (GH/2685) – Deputy Chief Staff Officer (P&P), Army Headquarters.
77. Brigadier General Zibrim Bawa Ayorrogo (GH/2646) – Commissioner of Customs, GRA, Attached to Army Headquarters
78. Brigadier General Richard Lassey Mensah (GH/2941) – Commander, Kumasi Military Hospital.
79. Brigadier General Thomas Acquinas Gbireh (GH/3007) – Head of Department, Surgical Department, 37 Mil Hospital.
80. Brigadier General Richard Naab (GH/3009) – Head of Department, Obstetrics and Gynecology, 37 Mil Hospital.
81. Commodore Seth Adjei Adjetey (GH/3037) – Head of Department, Surgeon Department, 37 Mil Hospital.
82. Commodore Paul Kudzo Yegbe (GH/3042) – Head of Department, Quality Assurance Department, 37 Military Hospital.
83. Brigadier General Forster Ohene Okae-Yeboah (GH/2696) – Senior Directing Staff, National College of Defence Studies.

​84. Brigadier General Timothy Tifucro Ba-Taa-Banah (GH/2699) – Attached to National Security.

​85. Brigadier General Frank Worlanyo Kwasi Agbebo (GH/2700) – Director General Policy (GHQ, COS).

​86. Brigadier General Eric Kwame Boa-Amponsem (GH/2711) – Senior Directing Staff, National College of Defence Studies.

​87. Brigadier General Isaac Amponsah (GH/2777) – ADC to President Akufo-Addo, Jubilee House.

​88. Brigadier General Glover Ashong Annan (GH/2700) – Assistant Commandant (R&D), HQ Training Doctrine.

​89. Brigadier General Albert Yaw Assiamah (GH/2561) – Director General, Human Resource, GHQ (PA).

​90. Brigadier General Albert Sison Ogaja (GH/2694) – Chief Coordinator, National College of Defence Studies.

​91. Brigadier General Maxwell Obuobi Mantey (GH/2721) – Deputy Commander, HQ, Support Services Command.

​92. Brigadier General Richard Agbeko Kinney (GH/2704) – Commander, 14 Engineer Brigade, Burma Camp.

​93. Brigadier General Jude Barry Mwinyel (GH/2784) – Deputy Chief Staff Officer (Logistics), Army Headquarters.

​94. Brigadier General Emmanuel Opare Nyante (GH/2785) – Deputy Chief Staff Officer (Administration), Army Headquarters.

​95. Air Commodore Richard Danso (GH/2854) – Commander, Air Force Logistics, Accra.

96. Air Commodore Samuel Tettey Tetteh-Charway (GH/3142) – Deputy Chief Staff Officer (Air Intelligence), Air Force Headquarters.
97. Air Commodore Sophia Adzo Jiagge (GH/2863) – Deputy Chief Staff Officer (Administration), Air Force Headquarters.
98. Commodore Stephen Billins Nyam (GH/2872) – Deputy Chief Staff Officer (Operations and Training), Naval Headquarters.
99. Commodore James Adongo Agambire (GH/2873) – FOC, Headquarters, RIVCOM.
100. Air Commodore Kwabena Kissiedu Mansukure Atiemo (GH/2962) – Base Commander, Air Force Base, Takoradi.
101. Brigadier General Andrews Seth Altoh (GH/2778) – Head of Postgraduate College, 37 Military Hospital.
102. Brigadier General Christopher Yaw Dagadu (GH/2686) – National Defence University.
103. Brigadier General Charles Kweku Budu-Kumi (GH/2703) – Director General, GHQ (Civilian Establishment).
104. Brigadier General Theophilus Adokwei Myers (GH/2763) – Head Medical, 37 Military Hospital.
105. Brigadier General William Adarkwa Kwabiah (GH/2753) – Senior Directing Staff, National College of Defence Studies.
106. Brigadier General Selorm Kwasi Amengor (GH/55) – Commander 10 Artillery Brigade Akoefe.
107. Brigadier General Michael Antiaye Addy (GH/2783) – Director General, Support Services, GHQ (MLD).
108. Brigadier General Salifu Osumanu (GH/2808) – Defence Financial Controller, GHQ (DFC).
109. Commodore Bismarck Kobla Akabutu (GH/2857) – Deputy Defence Adviser, London, United Kingdom.
110. Commodore Raymond Kyaano (GH/2958) – Senior Directing Staff, National College of Defence Studies.
111. Commodore Roger Bagoniah (GH/2960) – Deputy Chief Staff Officer (Logistics), Naval Headquarters.
112. Brigadier General Benjamin Godson Kumi Woode (GH/3215) – Director General, General Headquarters (Religious Affairs).

Thus, as at 7th January 2025, the summary of “Generals” in the Ghana Armed Forces was as follows:

* Four Star General – 1

* Three Star Generals and equivalent – 4

* Two Star Generals and equivalent – 15

* One Star Generals and equivalent – 112

Total: 132

As at the same 7th January 2025, the following commissioned officers held the rank of Colonel and equivalent in the Ghana Armed Forces:

1. Colonel Charles Kweku Ayiku (GH/2693) – Deputy Director General, Defence Industries Department, GHQ.
2. Colonel John Ishmael Yao Boglo (GH/2701) – Deputy Director General, Logistics [GHQ (Log)].
3. Colonel Edward Awaribey (GH/2712) – Deputy Director General, General Headquarters, Joint Operations.
4. Colonel Francis Sasu (GH/2695) – Acting Chief Coordinator, National Defence University.
5. Colonel Clement Titus Nii Mensah Laryea (GH/3073) – Physician, 37 Military Hospital.
6. Colonel Percy Sydney Tetteh Annan (GH/3074) – Acting Commander, Level II Plus Field Hospital, Tamale.
7. Colonel Nicodemus Larbi Simpong (GH/3075) – Commanding Officer, UNISFA, Ghana Medical Corps 3.
8. Colonel Monte Kwaku Nuamah Kutin (GH/3076) – Officer In Charge Anesthesia, 37 Mil Hospital.
9. Colonel Joy Frederick Nyankomabo Anaman (GH/3078) – Director Dental, GHQ (Medical).
10. Colonel Joshua Amanor (GH/2760) – Deputy Commander, HQ Army Training Command.
11. Col Bessa Kwao-Adotey (GH/2752) – Deputy Director General, GHQ (International Peace Support Operations).
12. Col Wellington Kwame Attipoe-Dumashie (GH/2754) – General Coordinator, HQ Army Training Command.
13. Col William Nii Nortey (GH/2758) – Chief of Staff, UNDOF.
14. Col Alfred Kojo Botsoe (GH/2762) – Director Training, Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre.
15. Col Abednego Eclaircie Shooter (GH/2823) – Deputy Military Secretary, GHQ (Military Secretary).
16. Col Ebenezer Mark Alo (GH/2824) – Seconded to Rwandan Armed Forces Command and Staff College as Directing Staff.
17. Col Richard Kainyi Mensah (GH/2825) – Assistant Chief of Staff (Operations and Training), GHQ COS.
18. Col Goodwill Yao De-Souza (GH/2826) – X-List; Course Local, National College of Defence Studies.
19. Col Kweku Yankson (GH/2827) – Deputy Military Adviser, UN Headquarters, New York.
20. Col Kingsley Kwabena Kessie Affrifah (GH/2829) – Chief G7, Army Headquarters.
21. Col George Abosi Oppong (GH/2832) – R List – Staff Officer, United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
22. Col William Kwaku Abotsi (GH/2746) – Director, Corporate Affairs, GHQ (Defence Industries Department).
23. Col Kwesi Ayima (GH/2748) – Chief Coordinator, Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College.
24. Col Michael Kwami (GH/2757) – Director, Research and Development (GHQ DID).
25. Col Samuel Stanley Nanor Mezo (GH/2761) – Deputy Director General, GHQ (Training).
26. Col Fuseini Abdulai Nabogma (GH/2828) – Director Supply and Transport, GHQ (S&T).
27. Col Richard Kofi Akotoh (GH/2790) – Director Physical Training and Sports, GHQ (Training).
28. Col Frederick Aboagye (GH/3143) – Deputy Judge Advocate General, Ministry of Defence (Chief Director]).
29. Col Halidu Ayinga Salifu (GH/3145) – Officer In Charge Dental, 37 Mil Hospital.
30. Col Joseph Kelvin Merdiemah (GH/2808) – Deputy Director General, GHQ (Plans, Research and Development).
31. Col John Danso-Ankrah (GH/2803) – Deputy Director General HR, GHQ (Personnel Administration).
32. Col Jonas Agyei Wiafe (GH/2805) – Director of Engineer Services, GHQ (DES).
33. Col Henry Kwesi Nditsi (GH/2807) – Director of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, GHQ (DEME).
34. Col Joseph Kobla Buame (GH/2809) – Director Resettlement, GHQ (Resettlement).
35. Col Ibrahim Abukari Salifu-Wumbei (GH/2810) – X-List, Course Local, National College of Defence Studies.
36. Col Stephen Opoku Agyeman (GH/2811) – X-List, Course Overseas, UK.
37. Col Clement King Dingane (GH/2814) – Acting Chief Coordinator, HQ Support Services Command.
38. Col Edward Owusu-Ansah (GH/2705) – Chief Coordinator, HQ Training Doctrine.
39. Naval Captain Edward Owusu Nyarko (GH/3099) – Leave without Pay and Allowances wef 15 Mar 2024 to 14 March 2025.
40. Col Simon Doe Kwablah Gbezeh (GH/2830) – Director of Ordnance Service, GHQ (Ordnance).
41. Col Lawrence Deku (GH/2812) – X-List, Course Local, Ghana School of Law.
42. Col Lawrence Brobbey Owusu (GH/2817) – Chief G3 (Peace Support Operations), Army HQ.
43. Col Emmanuel Larbi Sarpong Gyadu (GH/2813) – Chief G3 (Operations), Army Headquarters.
44. Col Godson Edekor (GH/3010) – Obs and Gynae, 37 Military Hospital.
45. Col Michael Mawuena Edem Yao Adzo (GH/2815) – Director Outreach and Best Practices, GHQ (Inspector General’s Department).
46. Col Robert Narh (GH/2914) – Commander, Army Combat Training School.
47. Col Bernard Baba Pantoah (GH/2915) – Military Assistant to Chief of Defence Staff.
48. Col George Noble Kwaku Hoenyedzi (GH/2804) – R List – African Union Transition Team in Somalia (ATMIS).
49. Col Eric Annor (GH/2714) – Acting Director Projects and Statistics, GHQ (Defence Industries Department).
50. Col Mohammed Wumbei (GH/2916) – Chief Logistics Officer, HQ Army Training Command.
51. Col Issahaku Beyolteim Mohammed (GH/2917) – X-List Course Local, National College of Defence Studies.
52. Col Ekow Nkrane Mensah-Yawson (GH/2822) – Deputy Commander/Chief of Staff, HQ 15 Armoured Brigade.
53. Col Frank Cofie Adzasu (GH/2835) – Director Logistics Support, GHQ (IPSO).
54. Col Jonathan Kofi Kumado (GH/2837) – Deputy Director Combat Intelligence, GHQ (Defence Intelligence).
55. Col Andrews Oduah (GH/2839) – Deputy Director General, GHQ (Department of Communication and Information Systems).
56. Col Henry Kwaku Badasu (GH/2840) – Army HQ Attached to Ghana Boundary Commission as Director Strategic Operations.
57. Col Gaspard Dan Kwaning Asare (GH/2843) – Commander, 851 Explosive Ordnance Devices Regiment.
58. Col Noble Carl Doe Dei-Alorse (GH/2869) – Chief Coordinator, Ghana Military Academy.
59. Col Mohammed-Mukhtar Ibn-Abubakar (GH/2862) – Officer In Charge, Physiotherapy Department, 37 Military Hospital.
60. Naval Captain John Bekuin-Wurapa (GH/2908) – X-List, Course Overseas, Nigeria.
61. Naval Captain Ramsey Bamba (GH/2910) – Acting Deputy Chief Staff Officer (Logistics), Additional as Director Supply Division, Naval Headquarters.
62. Group Captain Ishmael Tettey Djagmah (GH/2947) – Assistant Chief of Staff (Logistics), General Headquarters (Chief of Staff).

The Enemy Within — Ex-BNI Boss Hints

 Try asking someone to picture Ghana's organized crime problem and you will get the same scene almost every time: a trafficker at a border, a truck with a false floor, somebody operating in the shadows while the state chases from behind. It is a comfortable picture, mostly because it keeps the state clean, always the one catching, hardly the one being caught.

The numbers tell a different story.

In 2025, the ENACT Organized Crime Index scored Ghana's criminal actor categories, and the top spot didn't go to foreign cartels, or the mafia-style gangs that dominate popular imagination, or the loosely networked local syndicates people picture when they hear “organized crime.” It went to state-embedded actors, officials inside the police, immigration, customs, excise, and preventive services, found facilitating drug trafficking, arms trafficking, and illegal mining from their own desks. This is similar to Afrobarometer’s data that has consistently identified some of these state institutions widely perceived as corrupt.  Mafia-style groups scored lowest of all categories on the same list. Ghana's biggest organised crime problem isn't outsiders breaking in. It's what happens once they are already through the door.

Proof arrived faster than expected

The findings didn't stay theoretical for long. On 17th September 2026, following the seizure of 3.9 tonnes of cocaine linked to Ghana at the French port of Dunkirk, President Mahama called an emergency security meeting at Jubilee House. Security chiefs told him ten people were already in custody over the case. Four were serving officers of the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority, one of the most sought after agencies for jobs!

Those four weren't outsiders who slipped past the port's defences. On the allegations as reported, they were the defences, the barrier meant to stop the shipment, allegedly repurposed into the reason it got through. It's the ENACT finding compressed into a single case file: state-embedded actors, not external intruders, sitting at the centre of the largest cocaine seizure Ghana has been linked to on record. Whoever signed off on posting those four officers where they were, and how, deserves as much scrutiny as the shipment itself. Install every scanner in the world. Without a clean recruitment and enforcement pipeline for integrity inside security, the exposure stays exactly where it was.

What the surveillance claim leaves out

Days after the arrests, NACOC added a claim worth reading closely against this article's actual argument, not because it resolves the story, but because of what it quietly leaves uncovered. On 19th September, a NACOC spokesperson told TV3 that the three suspects it had arrested were people the Commission had under surveillance for “between a year and two,” and that investigators deliberately waited for the right moment to strike so that every connected suspect could be taken in one operation.

Notice precisely who that claim covers. NACOC's three suspects are alleged representatives of Jos Leijdekkers, the Dutch fugitive known as “Bolle Jos” external-facing facilitators of an outside network. The surveillance claim is about them. It says nothing about the four Customs officers named three days later at the Jubilee House meeting. Those two groups may turn out to be the same case, or two separate threads that happened to surface in the same fortnight; nobody has said which. If NACOC's two-year effort was built around watching an outside fugitive's local contacts, it tells us little about whether anyone was watching the officers inside Customs at all which, on the ENACT finding this piece opened with, is precisely the higher-risk category.

So a few questions worth asking plainly; Were the four Customs officers part of the same surveillance operation NACOC describes, or identified through an entirely separate process and if separate, was that process proactive, or purely reactive to the Dunkirk seizure? If surveillance genuinely ran for up to two years without the shipment itself being stopped, does that reflect deliberate case-building, or a real gap between watching a network and having the reach to stop it moving product through Ghana's ports? And is there a standing mechanism inside Customs, Immigration, or the ports themselves, independent of NACOC's external-facing surveillance, tasked with the kind of internal vetting and anomaly detection this article argues is missing? Alternatively, did these four officers surface only because an external, reactive investigation happened to reach them?

No clean answers yet, and that's rather the point. A claim of long-running surveillance, aired on television five days after the fact, isn't the same thing as a standing record anyone can check. Enforcement reacts to a completed offence; intelligence is built to catch the anomaly before it or apart from it entirely. A two-year surveillance operation aimed at an outside fugitive's local contacts, however well executed, is still enforcement logic pointed outward. It isn't evidence that Ghana has built the inward-facing capability this piece argues is missing. Until that distinction gets answered plainly, four arrested Customs officers confirm the state-embedded-actor problem. They don't prove the system built to catch it already exists.

Why arrests alone don't fix this

This is the trouble with treating this as purely a law-and-order matter. Enforcement works by drawing a line; the state on one side, the criminal on the other and moving people across it through arrest and prosecution. Against outside threats, that line does its job. Against a threat sitting inside the enforcement machinery itself, the line stops meaning much of anything.

An officer waving cocaine through a port isn't going to be caught by the port's own procedures, because he is the procedure. A customs official clearing smuggled excisable goods isn't going to trip an alarm he controls. This isn't hypothetical, it maps directly onto corruption already documented across procurement, parts of the judiciary, the police service, and land, tax, and customs administration, with billions of dollars in yearly losses attached to it. When some share of the people meant to catch the crime are also the people committing it, adding more enforcement doesn't close the gap. It just puts the fox on a longer patrol shift!

Anyone who has spent real time around Ghana's security and revenue agencies knows a quieter version of this story, and they know the vocabulary for it too. Officers talk openly about “juicy” postings versus “dry” ones, and everyone in the room knows which is which. Airports, passport processing offices, seaports, the Elubo and Aflao land borders, mining communities, and even the anti-galamsey task forces meant to police them sit firmly on the juicy side of that ledger. These aren't postings people easily get assigned to. They're postings people angle for. In a normal institution, remote or demanding postings are the ones nobody fights over; here, the opposite happens, and competition for these slots runs through informal networks and patronage rather than merit or rotation policy. That reversal is itself the tell. Something about those postings is worth more to the officer than the salary attached to them, and that something has to be coming from somewhere. A state serious about facilitation and connivance would treat unusual demand for a posting, the scramble for “juicy” over “dry” as a red flag in its own right, rather than waiting for the trafficking case downstream to explain it.

What only intelligence catches

Enforcement and intelligence solve different problems, and the difference is not academic. Enforcement reacts to a completed or ongoing offence. Intelligence looks for the pattern before it, or entirely apart from it: assets that have grown faster than a declared salary should allow, officials who keep turning up in the company of known facilitators, cases that mysteriously stall or lose evidence around the same desks, money that keeps routing through the same nodes no matter which case file it's attached to, or, as above, an unusual appetite for one posting over another.

You don't need a whistleblower or a foreign indictment to catch any of this. You need a standing analytic capability, walled off from the chain of command it may have to investigate, with a mandate to look inward as seriously as it looks outward. Real vetting. Financial disclosure systems that actually verify what is disclosed. Internal counter-intelligence inside security and revenue agencies. None of this is exotic. Any state that takes seriously the idea that its own institutions are a target, and not just a tool, already has these in place.

Who benefits from staying blind

The obstacles here are not technical, and pretending otherwise wastes time. An agency, or a political leadership, drawing benefit directly or through patronage from illicit gold, drug transit, or customs leakage has little real incentive to build the capability that would expose it. That is why the baseline problem raised in the first article of this series and the state-embedded actor problem raised here aren't two separate stories. They're one story told from two angles: a state that has not built the capacity to see organised crime clearly is, unsurprisingly, a state where some of the people that clearer sight would expose have good reason to keep it dim.

No single reform breaks that cycle. It takes sustained political will to fund and protect internal-integrity intelligence work even when, especially when what it turns up implicates people close to authority. Ghana already has the analytic talent for this. What has been missing is the institutional will to let that talent look wherever the evidence leads, including inward.

The author, Nana Attobrah Quaicoe, is an Intelligence and National Security Analyst, a former Director General of the Bureau of National Intelligence (2022–2025), and writes on national security and intelligence sector reform, risk, integrity assessment, and institutional governance in the Ghanaian context