Ogyakromian Sakalogues

The Cryptic Text

2011-10-25T22:19:00.000Z

The thing about prophecy is that it may be cryptic, begging understanding, yet full of meaning. Just hear the prophet in Isaiah 6

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. ² Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. ³ And one cried to another and said:

      " Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;
      The whole earth is full of His glory!"

⁴ And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.
⁵ So I said:
      " Woe is me, for I am undone!
      Because I am a man of unclean lips,
      And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
      For my eyes have seen the King,
      The LORD of hosts."

Now hear me:

In the year that President Gaddafi died, I saw the gavel, high and lifted up, as my head trembled and knew no restrain.

I threw my body to the floor and wrenched my clothes out of place. Sack cloth and ashes!
Holy Holy Holy the Apostle's garden!
Woe is me for I am finished.
I am a poor man, and I live among poor people and I live in a poor country
Even though I run, Poverty gallops after me and even my abusua panyin he pursues.
Who shall I turn to and where do I find Judas' shekels?
At your mercy! Oh Mercy! For your wisdom o Solomon!
Seventeen and eighteen, your instructions encoded.

And as it is with the prophetic, the generation that owns it, deciphers it. Those to whom it is spoken, understanding comes. If you are not chosen, don't lose sleep of the words.

Arsene Wenger, Time to Join the Cheats

2011-10-18T00:20:00.003Z

Sometimes, we forget that football is a game with only one intrinsic value- entertainment. The extent of fanaticism in the game sometimes borders on lunacy. Without passion and the emotions the game will not be what it is, however, for some people, football is a perfect substitute for stupid sectional and ethnic battles of the middle ages . Arsenal fans chanting that Adebayor should have been killed in the unfortunate attack on the Togo team bus in Angola, to a lesser extent Real Madrid banning Shakira's songs from the Santiago Bernabeu because she was dating Gerard Pique who plays for rivals Barcelona, even though she is a Madrid fan, and the unbelievable pressures team managers bear to produce trophies, beg understanding to say the least.

I am not a gunner, but for me Arsene Wenger is the greatest football manager in the Europe. But as it is in life, the accolades are not reserved for the true heroes, but the pretenders that hoist the spoil. He has consistently made top 4 in the premiership without throwing millions of pounds at pampered egotists who will refuse to play a match because they were not started in the game. As if to prove that the wide gap in salary of footballers exaggerates the gulf between talents, he has achieved great results with previously unknown footballers in the premiership with his ability to organize and impose his philosophy of football on their game.

Why do we love our football teams? Is it not for the joy of victories dished to us in style as the coach, like a master chef, with tenacity and great patience blends his talents and tactics together, spicing them with a winning mentality to produce a team of stars and non-stars that we adore for many years? But alas! The world has exhausted the patience to groom teams . The formula for success is simple, find a billionaire; Russian, American or Middle Eastern, who doesn't necessarily share the club values built over decades, but has a few millions, created in the oil fields rather than the football field to throw at overpaid and arrogant Mega stars groomed under other philosophies, then match them with a coach from somewhere, he may be a megalomaniac like Maurhino but that is ok, and voila we create trophies. To the billionaire, the football project is another toy. He will decide what to do with it once he is tired of it. It is amazing such cheats are not recognized for what they are.

Thanks to Sheikh Mansour's millions, a Manchester City bench is an ensemble of stars that can easily form the spine of treble winning team. It is lighted by the likes of Dzeko, Tevez, Milner, Nasri, Richards, not counting the likes of Adebayor and Bellamy who were considered unmanageable and thrown out. It is just annoying that exciting young talents like Adam Johnson are robbed of games week in , week out, even though they have proven their mettle anytime they have the opportunity to play. Meanwhile, a few miles away, other clubs put out less talented players every week because for those clubs, life is not fantasy rock with billionaire owners. Football fans are thus robbed of the great contests that would have been if only money is used as an agent in the game to fairly distribute talents around. This can only happen if football like any normal business is allowed to pay for football rather than depending on benefactors from the oil fields. The Stars that light up the games should almost always be on the pitch doing just that, rather than warming benches. We want to see the best players first, and when they are unavailable, we will do with the talents a step lower. That is why I consign the projects at places like City, Chelsea and PSG into the same space as age cheating.

For the past six years that Arsenal has won no trophies, they have consistently made top four in the premiership, they have consistently performed well in Europe including an unfortunate 2-1 loss to Barcelona in the 2006 final, a match they mostly played with 10 men, and more importantly, they have always played good football. The reason we stay glued to out TV sets for 90 minutes and throng various stadia around the world to watch football is not to see team captains lift trophies, but rather to feast on the skills that dazzle the eye, the creative passes, the fluid positional play, the breath taking movement along the flanks, the great midfield battles, the resolute defensive work, the spectacular saves, climaxed with great goals that are savoured for years and ultimately crown football as 'The Beautiful Game'. Even the howlers and unbelievable misses push our adrenalins to the right level. Arsene Wenger's teams have given us all that and more. The trophies are just the icing on the cake.

The Arsenal system has an uncanny ability to identify talents even at tender ages and bring them through the ranks. There is no doubt about the talent and ability of Cesc Fabregas , but when Wenger threw him into the middle of his midfield after the departure of former captain Patrick Vierra , many considered it a gamble. But for young Fabregas, there was little motivation required for success than that vote of confidence from the gaffer. Ironically, it is this belief in talent that will cost Wenger the loyalty of the stars he created. Soon, they are household names, and the jackals descend on them with millions of pounds that have nothing to do with football. They abandon their mentor ostensibly because he doesn't invest in big names that translate to trophies. Without the nurturing Wenger gives some of these players, their talents would have been buried under the rat race for big names and trophies at any cost, long before they would learn to spell trophy. These players are not just turning their backs on the system that produced them, but also crashing Wenger's vision midstream. The other irony is that the vision is no different from the aspiration that ostensibly forces these players to leave- to build a winsome side that wins trophies.

The business side of Arsenal's game has also been well catered for. Player acquisitions have been sensibly balanced with youth development, salaries reflect the earning power of the talents on display and they have a great brand. At the time that Wenger was busily paying for the Emirates stadium, Manchester United, bought by the Glazers in a leveraged takeover in 2005, were reported to be considering selling old Trafford to raise money. Today, Barcelona produces the world's most exciting talents from their academy , but even they struggle with managing their finances. When Sandro Rosel took over the club's presidency in 2010, he announced that there were serious liquidity problems which required the club to take a loan to pay delayed salaries of their stars. Wenger has no such problems, but tell it to the fans.

I have no qualms against any player for selling his talents to the highest bidder. Samuel Eto recently admitted he signed for the previously unknown Russian side, Anzhi Makhachkala, because of the profane amount thrown at him. I suggest our own Asamoah Gyan borrows a leaf from his book of honest talk and admit that he joined Qatari side Al Ain because it makes economic sense, and not because he wants to play in Asia. It is the people that run the sport that must fix the relationship between money and the game. It is good to know that UEFA have stepped in with rules that enjoin clubs to abandon the wayward football economics from 2013. But that year might be too far away for Professor Wenger. Let's face it, some members of the team that was drabbed 8 -2 by Manchester United will not be selected to represent Ghana at an under-17 tournament. To make matters worse, it is now official, the soccer pendulum has swung in the direction of Spurs, they are now the Lords of North London. Even though the owners threw their support behind him, there is no doubt that if this trend continues, even the great Wenger, will be a candidate to be fired before the season ends, or Arsenal may even get relegated to the championship.

Unfortunately, just like in all human endeavors, results are celebrated not how they were attained. A graduate will flaunt a certificate acquired by buying exams papers before they were taken, and a football team will celebrate trophies acquired by paying referees and fixing matches. It is therefore no surprise that there is pressure on Professor Wenger to do everything and anything to win trophies. Until someone has the common sense to put a halt to the Abramovic and Mansour revolutions, listen to your fans, break the bank this winter, and buy your supporters a piece of silverware. It seems they will prefer an insolvent club with a cup at the museum to a thriving club with a great future. I believe Harry Redknapp is still a hero in Portsmouth for helping them reap where they have not sown. Sorry Mate, it's time to join the cheats.

The Prophet who failed to Die

2011-07-24T13:15:00.000Z

Prophet Segbene Xenodzi

He was an unknown entity until a few days to the July 9 2011 congress of the ruling NDC. Somehow he managed to court the attention of the media by making the audacious claim that God had revealed to him that the premier first lady under the fourth republic would upstage the sitting president to become the flag bearer of the NDC in the 2012 Presidential election. It wasn't just the claim, but the fact that he staked his own life on the result of the congress. That alone exposed him for who he is- another charlatan ready to ride the wave of a momentous event into fame and prosperity.

He was one person who took the former first Lady's call for boldness seriously. Boldly, he staked the success of his own con game on an event few thought was likely- Nana Konadu's victory at the congress. If the gamble had paid off, he would have won over a good number of gullible Ghanaians who will pin their hopes on a man who gambled on an event with a 50% percent mathematical chance of success. This mass of people would be the source of manner for the prophet. Perhaps the person who christened Segbene Xenodzi has better prophetic unction than the self declared prophet. He seemed to have seen into the future of the baby when he named him Segbene, a name that could mean rebuked by his destiny or denied by his destiny.

Prophets are usually in high demand for reasons not farfetched. What is not known to man inspires fear and anxiety. The prophet is able to speak the mind of God, who has seen what hasn't happened and heard the yet to be spoken. He who speaks for the gods must have his ears with the gods. So throughout history, Men of all persuasions will have a special place for the prophet, be he the Jewish prophet Elijah who executed four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal for failing to prove their prophetic worth (I kings 18:40), or Agabus, who predicted famine in the Roman world (Acts 11:28) and the tribulations of Paul at the hands of the Jews (Acts 21:10-11) in the early days of the church, or Chielo the priestess who declared the oracles of Agbala in the Ibo village called Umuofia (Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart) .

Even in today's world, few will doubt the fact that there are men and women with the gift to tell you of the unknown. But it is a gift with great attraction for con artists whose interests are in the recognition and rewards that come with the office. The foundation for the rewards is laid in Mathew 10:42- receive a prophet and receive a prophet's reward. Many of the Charlatans will fake prophecy and lay the needed emphasis on receiving the prophet, and soon it is the 'prophet' who gets rewards-for-prophets as the gifts come in thick and fast. Some of them will even tell you what 'seed to sow' for the measure of your prophesy.

The truth is that even the bible records many cases of false prophets and false prophesies. Jeremiah 28 Narrates the encounter between Jeremiah and Hananiah, a prophet who prophesied lies about the liberty of the Jewish people. Hananiah broke a wooden yoke that had been hanging on Jeremiah's neck, ostensibly to symbolize that God had broken Nebuchadnezzar's yoke of oppression over Israel. Even the Prophet Jeremiah said amen to his antics before warning him of the consequences of false prophesies. God later spoke through Jeremiah, passing the death sentence on Hananiah and replaced the wooden yoke with a yoke of iron.

The problem with false prophets is that there is no limit to what they would say to promote their self serving agenda leaving in their trail broken homes, battered lives, disappointments and many times death. The usual victims are the most vulnerable in society, old women, the sick, aspiring wives and kids. They freely appoint witches in the family and apportion to them any evil they create in their fertile minds.

There is no better litmus test to identify the false prophet than what was proposed by Jeremiah 28:9. If a prophet prophesies peace and his words come to pass, then we know God instructed him. With this yardstick, it is easy to weed out the likes of Prophet Segbene. Unfortunately, the followers of these charlatans believe in their prophets more than they believe in the bible or common sense. They refuse to spot cases of obvious fraud and manipulation. A lady received a prophecy that she would own a car by her 40^th birthday. When she woke up at 40 with no car, I thought that was enough for her to understand who she was dealing with. I was wrong. She concluded that her parents got her date of birth wrong.

With such unalloyed belief from their followers, the likes of Segbene will thrive for a long time in Ghana. The answers Prophet Segbene gave to the journalist who asked him to explain his prophetic faux pas were consistent with the con behavior of such people. Hear him - "God cannot lie", "She has won wonderfully but the NDC is so intelligent, NDC is a great party, you understand, so they have a way of uniting themselves, OK. So after she has won, they met and then turned the whole thing and put a different result out," – Outrageous!

For the sake of the vulnerable, I pray that the prophet will die. No, not his person, but the lying ministry in him that he calls prophetic. If prophet Segbene will stay true to his words and kill that man, many poor souls will be saved from earthly torture. He asked for a firing squad when he made the prophecy, but all I ask of him is to kill his ministry of lies to save the next victim of his self delusional rants.

The Cradle has fallen under the Rawlings Empire

2011-07-10T11:57:00.002Z

The 9^th of July 2011 shall go into the history books as the day the Rawlings Empire was brought down to earth. It was the day the insipid presidential ambition of the former first lady, Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings (NKAR) took a humpty dumpty fall with a spectacular crash before delegates of the NDC in Sunyani and millions of others following the election on TV, Radio and the Internet. It also brought down with it the myth that no one wins power in the NDC without the support of Mr. Rawlings. Not only did the professor go into the contest without Rawlings's blessing, but took on Rawlings himself. What Konadu's team had portrayed as a battle for the soul of the NDC, ended up as a no-contest as she only garnered a paltry 3% of almost three thousand valid votes against the Professor's 97%. The resounding thrashing should teach the former first lady two lessons. The popularity of one's spouse is not necessarily transferable in electoral politics. Secondly, a fly weight boxer does not take to the ring to fight a heavy weight just because she speaks faster than the big man.

The former first family and the FONKAR led campaign team threw all kinds of invectives at the sitting president to provide justification for attempting to deny him the opportunity to lay claim to a second term, a largess that was enjoyed by all his predecessors in the fourth republic. To Mr. Rawlings, the president has surrounded himself with 'greedy bastards' who used to be his whipping boys. He also wanted so many people associated with Kufuors eight years reign in jail for what they have been rumored to have done. Mr. Rawlings held the President and the judiciary responsible for the failure to deal with his political enemies, his own way. NKAR said the president lack boldness and thought it was time to take the party back to the rank and file. But the representatives of the rank and file delivered a stern rebuke to the former first family. By the massive rejection at Sunyani, they reminded the Rawlings' and the band of novices who championed their campaign that they are entitled to their opinions but not to their own set of facts in an information free society. They rejected politics of vindictiveness and vengeance and exposed Konadu's presidential ambition for what it truly is - an ill advised attempt to perpetuate a Rawlings dynasty to ensure an unending supply of the cult life style of the Rawlings'.

Suggestions that the congress produced no winners other than the NDC are just attempts to make defeat less painful for Nana Konadu Rawlings. But she is not fooled by the humility of the victors even though she failed to reciprocate that gesture by refusing to be gracious in defeat. She has been openly humiliated and she knows it. Challenging a sitting president against the good advice of your friends and wining only 3% does not flatter your political judgment. The defeat is made worse by the fact that you bear the Rawlings name. Suddenly, the illusion that Rawlings can win any election in the NDC is shattered in a moment of political naivety. I found it ludicrous that respected minds like Spio Garbrah seem to endorse such thinking. But today, the NDC has delivered a very important message; the party has outgrown Mr. Rawlings.

The comprehensive drubbing seems to have annoyed the former first lady who walked out on the President before his victory speech. She is not used to being rejected by her 'husband's Party'. Nothing is far from the truth, The NDC made Rawlings, and not the other way round. Konadu, borrow a handkerchief from Alan Kyeremanteng and wipe your tears. It is humbling to be openly rebuked when you think so highly of yourself, but it is good medicine for a haughty spirit.

I'm sure the Rawlings' were expecting some kind of beating at the congress. They set the tone to explain away imminent defeat when they accused the Atta mills camp of doling money to the electorate and intimidation through sitting arrangements and the presence of CCTV. That perhaps would have been the basis of a break away party that will continue to sing the praises of the Rawlings'. If the margin of defeat hasn't taken away the winds out of their sail, then they are the dumbest students of politics. That might be the case as Mr. Rawlings had for many years expressed his disdain for democratic politics which perhaps is too cumbersome for him to get grips of. He wasn't smart to understand that he had lost the political master minds behind his own victories to President Mills, leading him and his wife into a kamikaze political mission in Sunyani. Mr. Rawlings is a class act in double standards. With a straight face he will accuse his opponents of acts he has committed with impunity. Can the Konadu campaign swear that they didn't pay delegates any money to get Konadu elected? They forget the delegates are witnesses. How does Mr. Rawlings who superintended the worst human rights atrocities in our history gather the courage to accuse Mr. Kufuor of human rights abuse and murder? If justice must be sought in this country, the indemnity clause in the constitution should be scrapped so Rawlings can face justice for toppling the Limann regime illegally.

It takes humility to know when one's time is up. The self proclaimed Junior Jesus (JJ) should have learnt from John the Baptist who testified of the real Jesus in John 3:30, ' He must increase, and I must decrease'- humbly accepting that the shine must leave him to another actor in the scheme of God's plans. The former first family seems to have forgotten about their very humble beginnings before fate smiled on them and snatched Mr. Rawlings from jail to the cover page of our political history. Since that fateful event on 4^th June 1979 and subsequent events of notoriety on 31^st Dec 1981, they had created a cult around themselves which was propped up by the State's instrument of terror. Goaded on by praise singers who clapped at every mundane joke by their Junior Jesus. They lost all traces of humility and all but declared themselves as gods. Rawlings slapped who he wanted to slap and kicked who Konadu thought was worthy of a boot. A sitting vice president, the late Arkaah, and Selasi Dzentu , a former boyfriend of one of their daughters, were recipients of their generosity in being mean and vindictive. There were many other grown men and women who were rumoured to have taken their slaps in their strides.

What they hadn't realized was that, the Rawlings phenomenon rested on two pillars- the state terror machinery and goodwill of Ghanaians, mostly NDC sympathizers. After Kufuor took away the former in 2000, it was held up only by the latter. It was not only dangerous but ill advised for the Rawlings' to toy with that good will. Perhaps they were fooled by Konadu's election in Tamale as a vice chairman of the NDC. When President Mills refused to respond to the daily insults coming from the Rawlings household, political common sense should have taught the Rawlings' that they were increasing the stock of sympathy accounts for a man whose very demeanor attracts sympathy. With such a resounding defeat, it must be obvious to the Rawlings' that the goodwill account has been expended needlessly on vituperations and insults. All dreams of a Rawlings dynasty must be shelved for now as the last cradle that props the empire falls flat.

One lesson the Rawlings' should never forget from the congress was eloquently delivered by the Vice President, who proved to be a master of communication, in three words- Taka, Tiki, Gangale. The attempt by Mr. Rawlings to match his wits fell horribly flat and was only outdone by the bigger fall of the presidential ambition. I'm not sure even NKAR understood what the Osu Alata Kolomashi joke was about. The difference in class was telling. Rawlings suggested in his speech that he might be attending his last congress. If he has thoughts of retiring from politics, I can assure him the body politic will not miss his destructive interference, good riddance! If he is thinking of floating a new party, then he certainly hasn't learnt the lesson of the three birds. But for now, the empire has been cut to fit the size of Konadu's scarf, a scanty 3%.

Take him on, Mrs. Rawlings

2011-04-16T20:25:00.000Z

Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.- Prov 16:18

The former first lady of Ghana, Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings announced her resignation from her post as a Vice Chair for the ruling party on the 13^th of April so she can take on the sitting president for the right to represent the NDC in next year's presidential election. It is no secret that the Rawlings' have been planning this move for some time . The former president hasn't relented in his criticism of the government of his anointed successor for almost two years. He has gone to the extent of accusing him of surrounding himself with 'greedy bastards'.

It was obvious to any casual observer that the NDC was suffering from a leadership crisis. The party has been torn between the camp of the Ex President and founder of the party, Chairman Rawlings; and the camp of sitting President and leader of party, Professor Mills. Rawlings has been the more aggressive of the two even threatening to take back his party. There was only one way to end this contest – a leadership challenge. The NDC leadership scored full marks by calling for an early election. It is another way of telling the Rawlings camp to put up or shut up! As the ewe's put it, 'eze wu ze tɔ gbɔ wo kpɔ nƐ le'
(If you want to determine which pot is bigger, get to the river) .The Rawlings camp took up the gauntlet and nominated Nana Konadu for the contest, and hurray! We have a fight on our hands.

It is no secret that the blood of democracy does not run through the veins of Mr. Rawlings. It is to the credit of the success of our democracy, that a demagogue like him accepts an election to assert himself (through his beloved) over the party he is supposed to have founded. I am however worried that the wave of support for Prof. Mills coming from party executives all over the country may just pressurize the fire brand leader of the 31^st December women's movement to chicken out of the contest. Luckily for neutral observers who want to see the contest, the Rawlings' are not the type to be moved by such psychological shadow boxing. They believe the whole of Ghana loves them and the NDC worships them. To them, the former Chairman Rawlings is a larger than life personality, whose rants gets even the attention of the gods. He can do no wrong.

The Rawlings' have an enviable record of power acquisition in Ghana. Apart from the 15^th May 1979 faux pas, the army successfully got Rawlings out of jail on the 4^th of June 1979 to lead the country for three months before inaugurating the third republic, barely two years after handing over power to the late President Limann, he came back to overthrow him in a coup . He survived several counter coups until he handed over power to himself in 1993 after winning the first democratic election under the fourth republic in 1992. He subsequently won a second term under this republic in the 1996 election. He was very instrumental in the campaign that brought the NDC back to power with Professor Mills as the President. At a BBC debate on the university of Ghana campus in the mid nineties, one of the debaters, Dr. Audrey Gadzekpo asserted that the president's (Rawlings) career path was not what many mothers will advise their children to take, but of a truth, if you consider the end game, one can only admit that he has had a very successful career. Who will not feel invincible with such a career record?

What the Rawlings' fail to understand is that, this is 2011 and not 1992. Before the 1992 constitution, Rawlings has snuffed out any trace of dissent in the country. For most part of his eleven years reign as a dictator, most Ghanaians only heard and believed government propaganda disseminated by the state media, nobody was allowed to market alternate ideas. To many, let Rawlings be true, and every man a liar. An election right after this period of our history cannot be fair to anyone unless of course, you are Rawlings. In 1996, the situation hadn't changed much because the opposition stayed away from parliament through a boycott of the 1992 parliamentary election. After 2000, Ghana moved on without Rawlings controlling power, the NDC got used to the idea that they may have a leader other than Rawlings. It is only natural that your stock would depreciate with time.

Fast forward to 2009, and NDC is in power again but the President is Mills not Rawlings. The praise singers learn to compose new songs; the man whose eye you need to catch today is Mills not Rawlings, the signature that gets the attention of a foreign government to accept you as an ambassador for Ghana is that of Mills. If Rawlings goes about, insulting Mills and denigrating him, for once, even the people in the NDC will begin to recognize Rawlings for who he is. They have been in denial for a long time, but like magic, the scales are off. Do you believe you own the Party? Think again, it is made up of people with their own will, you own nobody. Madam, did you say you are standing because people having been calling and urging you to? The same excuse your husband used in 1992? Beware, they will reject you and make the NPP's rejection of Alan Kyeremanteng pale before your big humiliation. For the first time, a Rawlings will face an election without the advantage of incumbency and you don't do that with flimsy excuses. They may end up with a very useful political lesson for posterity- intolerance and excessive self aggrandizement kills a legacy.

Since Mr. and Mrs. Rawlings fail to recognize these signs, one can only encourage them to put their popularity to the test, especially if you want to be their friends. I certainly want to win the friendship of the prestigious former first family, so I say Go Nana, Go Nana, Go Nana…..

The Acts of the finger-thirsty Cavemen from Sarbah Hall

2011-04-09T19:49:00.000Z

I haven't seen the video that made the rounds last week showing Students of Mensah Sarbah hall in the ONLY University of Ghana in a mad frenzy to poke their fingers between the thighs of an alleged female thief, neither am I interested in seeing it. If you have it, please keep it, don't send it to me. Just listening to, and reading the description of how our future leaders in a reputable university scrambled to get access to the holy of holies of a strange woman they knew not from Adam with their fingers, cameras and anything was repulsive ,repugnant, revolting and nauseous enough without the benefit of the pictures. The fact that the senseless act took place in the open and was not deterred by the presence of phone cameras and videos at the scene, says a lot about the IQ of our supposed best brains. This is another good reason to believe that our educational system is not producing the informed intelligent manpower required to operate in a knowledge society. You would expect that students at that level will recognize that what they were doing was a crime, and the cameras will only serve as evidence for the state against them.

The eagerness of the male specie to seek comfort in the holy passage that delivered humanity has long been recognized as potentially abusive to the female specie. Society has since made rules to obtain legitimate access, this fact must be known to every JSS student. What the finger-happy boys from Sarbah hall did is a throwback to the days of the pre-historic man who had yet to come to terms with the fact that he lived in a plane higher than the abode of the animals he shared the jungle with. I have heard arguments that what happened was instant justice rather than a crime against 'womanity', but the truth is, it was more of the latter. Was a single woman part of dishing out that senseless (in)justice? If a thief is polite enough to ask me to choose between losing my laptop and a one man attack , similar to what the lady suffered, on any female member of my family, I will deliver the laptop to his hideout with a tithe offering. The cavemen committed a bigger crime than the lady. The act of the Sarbah cavemen is indefensible, no matter how hard you try. The whole act is reminiscent of the early days of Chairman Rawlings's revolution, when stories that soldiers did not only strip market women naked in the streets but forced men to inspect what was in between their thighs, in the name of instilling discipline, were common. We have been hoping that those events will never recur in our society. But the appearance of computer savvy cavemen in Sarbah hall is a sharp reminder that we seem not be learning from our history. Back in the Vandal city in the days of yore, the boys from Sarbah were described as something police (I haven't learned to repeat the refrain without a prick on my conscience), it seems the Vandals were right after all. With all the faults of Vandals, such acts would be regarded as an abomination that causes desolation, and the perpetrators would pay with their 'blood' at 'Gono' where they will face all the three rudiments of shaboro- face up, face down and sub-marine.

The shameful act and the attempts to justify it by explaining that the lady at the receiving end is a repeated thief who has jumped bail, throws light on two evils in the Ghanaian society, namely , the penchant for instant justice and an overly casual attitude towards sexual violence.

Too many Ghanaians will join a beating party before asking what the chap did wrong. Not too long ago, innocent men were lynched because somebody said they caused their manhood to vanish. There were no attempts to verify that the manhood was gone. We saw people literally razing down a house occupied by a certain Dr. Beckley because the crowd believed he was an occultist who sacrificed children. A man appeared on TV claiming that a child was tied to a tree in the house and an angel came and untied her. The child was never seen, the parents were never known, and the angel refused to appear and testify against Beckley. Yet people were ready to maim Beckley. Even though these people were shown on TV, not a single attempt was made to arrest and prosecute anybody. Many years ago at Legon, we chased a thief from Commonwealth and apprehended him in front of Legon hall. As we attempted to march him to the Legon police station, the crowd grew thicker with every step we took, and so did the beating. Yours truly attempted to stop the beating, but the few lashes that were thrown my way adequately exorcised my foolishness. I approached a security man at the gate for help but he was too smart to fall into such a stupid trap, he blatantly refused. In equal measure, he blatantly denied he spoke to me when I reported him to the university. As for the thief, he was left half dead at the gate, even though the police came for him, I don't think they got anywhere with a prosecution because society failed to help them. 'Enlightened students from Legon chose to exact justice the way of the caveman, instead of respecting institutions of civilization. If the police don't get into the habit of prosecuting the apostles and disciples of vigilante culture, they will never go away.

We trivialize sexual violence. Consciously or unconsciously, it does happen. In my teenage years in secondary school, I noted how conversations about 'gala' (gang rape) were well patronized. If young people get used to making fun out of such barbaric practices, they will do the Sarbah when they get to Sarbah hall. Remember Gyedu Blay Ambulley's song? 'Woman behind, something dey there, wey tin dey there,………' He successfully got ex President Rawlings to sing it at a show. Such lyrics can only serve to blunt the mind about the seriousness of sexual harassment. I hear that my fellow Vandals from Commonwealth hall are focusing the 53^rd hall week celebration on promoting women empowerment. Bravo! My V-mates. Please focus some of your effort on getting rid of all songs from your repertoire that degrade womanhood. That will be a practical demonstration of your good intention beyond the talk. Such songs do not help the course of 'womanity'. The guys in the colonies do not understand the mystery behind your lyrics; it will only spur on guys in Okponglo to get in touch with their animalistic instincts. As always, Truth Stands!

As for all my good friends from sarbah hall, it's time to go back home and talk some sense to those boys. Patrick Adjei (Mr. president '94/95), Patrick de Souza, Barbados, and Elvies Afriyie Ankrah, boys Chaaaarge . To all of us in the larger society, we need to get it into the heads of our sons, nephews and brothers that the residual remains of Oedipus complex will always take boys back to where they came from, but guys, there are rules of engagement, Respect!

The Tragedy of undiagnosed Madness

2011-02-26T20:14:00.000Z

On the Campuses of Legon sometime in the 90s, the student body was excited by the appearance of a claimant to the SRC presidency. Even though the election was a semester away and most students were struggling to come to terms with the newly introduced grade point system which had already classified many students as average performers, news spread quickly of a midget whose pre-occupation was to let everybody know, he was the SRC president in waiting. He underlined his presidential credentials by formally adding the official title and name of a former European leader to his beautiful Ghanaian name. The student body thought he was eccentric or funny, few really gave him a dog's chance of winning an election in Legon , but as we approached election period proper, the final year students thought it would be cute to vote him into office and throw the university into chaos and they made this known especially at the observatory of the Vandal city. Even though he didn't win the election, he gave a good measure of scare to the other aspirants (ask one of President Mill's deputy's) and came a respectful second.

About a decade later, a UK based University in which the young man had gone to further his study had him checked into an institution because he was mentally sick, a claim the young man still strenuously contests. Since the claims were first published in a Ghanaian newspaper, I have wondered if the young man was a sick man begging the system for help through those unorthodox antics on campus, a situation we took for comic relief as we cheered him on to entertain us with his unimpressive additions to the English language. If that was the case, then the system failed him massively.

It is unfortunate that in Ghana and many African countries, mental illness is ignored or trivialized until the sick man strips and takes to the street in protest. Even then, you will only see the consulting room of Dr. Allotey if your family thinks the family name is worth protecting by throwing you out of public view or if you threaten the rest of society with mortal danger. The situation is no different from the way children with learning disabilities are thrown in together with the others in the same classroom with one verdict from our society- 'wa bong' or 'e sha' (he is a dunce ). But unlike their colleagues with learning disabilities, people with undiagnosed and ignored mental diseases who don't make it to the streets have an equal chance as anybody to be successful in our society with the problems intact and locked in the brain. In the past few weeks I have been convinced that if we run the rule on some African leaders , we will find one or two who belong this group.

How else can one explain the sickening craze with which guys like, Yoweri Musevini (Uganda), Teodoro Mbasogo (Equitorial Guinea), Paul Biya (Cameroun), Blaise Compaoré (Burkina Fasso), and Yahya Jammeh (Gambia) try to outdo the longevity of monarchs in their executive offices? Why does Lauren Gbagbo think his personal ambition overrides the safety and unity of Ivory Coast? Ghanaians have for many years put up with the incoherent ramblings of a revolutionary leader who pretends he is God's gift to Ghana. He seems totally oblivious of his own bloody past as he constantly accuses others of human rights violation and calls for justice. How does the octogenarian Mugabe manage to comfortably live in the past totally oblivious to present day realities? Even when he is voted out of power, he craves relevance through violence on his own people whiles pointing fingers at Britain.

When I watched the ex Egyptian president in his last address to the state, I wondered if he is one of those guys who escaped the attention of a psychiatrist. It was clear to every observer that Egyptians had had enough of this guy who had monopolized power for three decades. He couldn't stop the internal revolt by sending security forces to murder some of the protestors. When he had the chance to make a graceful exit in his last broadcast as president, he read out his CV to the people, reminded them that he was their grandfather, recounted war stories that were four decades old, and promised to deal with the people, who he had sent in the first place, who murdered the protestors. He even tried to convince the people who had massed up in the now famous Tahrir Square that they were being manipulated by foreign elements. The impudence of a dying cockroach! Ex president Mubarak was the only one who believed his address and the people made that very clear to him as he was seen off to Sharm El-Sheikh to live with his personal demons out of the public eye.

Muammar Gaddafi is another guy that never ceases to amaze me. After sponsoring revolutionaries in West African countries including Ghana, he embarked on two parallel projects to extend his dynasty. He attempted to revive Nkrumah's dream of a united Africa with him as the champion, and then he had himself crowned King of Kings of Africa by traditional rulers. Not long after, Gaddafi called for the division of Nigeria into Christian and Moslem States . I struggle to understand how a champion of African Unity can be professing for a split of one of the States he wants united. At the time of writing this piece, he has been busily killing unarmed demonstrators in the hundreds for embarking on an Egypt styled revolution to bring an end to his dynasty. Amazingly, he came out to blame Osama Bin Laden for the turmoil in Libya. Is he so naïve to believe that he can court the sympathy of the West and the rest of the world my invoking 'Osama'? Or it is the case of the demons in his head toying with him? May the Almighty strengthen the people of Libya to throw off this yoke of madness that has festered for more than four decades, Insha Allah.

Maybe Africa could be saved from leaders who operate on the fringes of lunacy by improving the mental health delivery system.

Why okada will not go

2011-02-06T20:22:00.001Z

Four hundred bikers under the umbrella of Ghana private motorbike operators union (GPMOU) paid a courtesy call to members of Ghana's parliament on the 1^st of February 2011. They had a simple message. They know very well that the laws of Ghana prohibit the use of motorbikes for commercial transport, but that is exactly what they have been doing. Listening to the leader justify their trade on radio, I'm convinced he could easily have read the following speech to the parliamentarians:

Let Parliament the citadel of Ghana's law live forever. Please be informed that we are law breakers, but due to extenuating circumstances we do not intend to repent. We are here to petition you, and therefore be petitioned, to remove our offense from the law, extricating us from our consciences that we may indulge, in peace. We appreciate the fact that we are a nuisance to most of you on the road, but we're sure you and Ogyakromians, who you represent, prefer this small menace on the road to armed robbery the other appealing option prohibited by the law. Okada provides us with employment and acceptability in society. We can also pay tithes when we go to church, we can do Zakat, the girlfriends can introduce us to potential mother-in-laws without shame, some can take second wives, and after a hard day's work, we can buy a bottle of overtaxed beer. On the subject of taxes, please remember that if you legalize our trade, our taxes will increase the money in the national kitty, and you will have less hassle approving 200% increase in your own salaries. It is worth mentioning that there are thousands of unemployed youth in Ghana who will gladly join GPMOU, and these are all voters. Be reminded of this important fact when you debate our petition, because we will be listening. Lastly, kindly tell the over-zealous MTTU to back off as you consider our petition.

I have never been a fan of Okada for a number of reasons. Firstly, motor bikes were not created for commercial transport. For safety reasons, the rider and the passenger on a bike are required to wear crash helmets. But this is almost impractical in the commercial arena as few people will want to share a helmet worn by thousands for obvious reasons. Neither is it practical to sling a personal helmet on your shoulder, next to your beautiful Gucci hand bag in anticipation of your Okada hops on your journey. The only realistic option is to avoid a helmet with its consequences. I can jump on any public transport without worrying about what I choose to wear on a day, but with Okada, a skirt or kaba slit may create balancing problems that will precipitate the crash, not to talk of the revelations and visions underneath that shall be savored by guys nearby when you attempt the jump that puts you in the passenger seat. Secondly, motorbike accidents break more limbs and kill more people per unit distance than cars. Put a thousand Okadas on street and surely you would have created lots of jobs, not only for the riders but also for the carpenters that will make the coffins. A study in the USA some years ago showed that for every one hundred thousand registered riders, almost seventy will end up in fatal crashes, compared to fifteen automobile crashes for the same number of registered drivers. It is unfortunate that in Africa, useful statistics are difficult to come by, but I will bet my last cedi that the statistic for bikes in commercial transport will be worse. The people who cite Benz 207 accidents to push the case for okada should have a rethink, because Okada will beat those accident rates hands down. Maybe find out from our Nigerian brothers why some hospital wards are called Okada wards.

I do not believe that any Okada association can regulate the activities of their members not be a bother to the rest of society. We shouldn't fool ourselves; Ghanaians are not the best example of order and discipline. We may be doing better than some neighboring West African countries, but these are bad bench marks. Okada will jump red light at will, squeeze into cracks too small for their size in regular traffic, get many decent road users to frequent the parish to confess to swearing and the dozens of expletives they are forced to utter in disgust. Okada will just make tro-tro and taxi drivers look like the long lost Saints of Ghana highways. One Okada will carry an entire family, the father, the son, the daughter and mother with baby at the back, basket on the head. Their union will only serve one purpose- a rallying point for them to gang up and beat up any driver who accidently knocks down an out of control Okada rider, just as they do in Lagos.

With all the 'wahala' okada conjures in any society, why is there no shortage of willing commuters ready to hop on? The answer is simple- Okada is simply goosing into a huge void created by the lack of decent public transport system. Our roads are so congested that, it is not fun commuting to and from the office on any day. Many are forced to leave home at 5 a.m. or earlier, to get to the office on time. The situation is not helped by our un-planned development that has forced residences to be located far from the business district without a public transport system to aid travel. If you attempt a tro-tro ride during off-peak hours, you may have to endure a long wait till the bus is full. The other option is a more expensive taxi ride. What do rational people do in such circumstances? If okada can drastically cut down the hours on the road, why not, and that is the value proposition of Okada. Don't mind the risk, we are very religious, God will take care of that. I have just returned from a funeral in the Volta region. When you mention transport, the first response is 'zémidjan', another name for okada borrowed from our Togolese neighbors. They are doing some 'wonderful' work moving people from homes, to hospitals, markets, schools, and even moving corpses to their final resting place. Many in the population they serve have no other form of commercial transport. In fact there are no access roads to many of the villages they serve. Thanks to technology Okada is a phone call away. Stop Okada, and the villagers will have to walk long distances to access services we take for granted in the city. Okada is simply a common sense reaction to a real problem. In other words, the growth of okada in Ghana is being fueled by demand. Attacking the supply may not get us the result we want.

I hate the idea of using motorbikes for commercial transportation of humans. I will never support legalization of the system, but by leaving such a yawning gap in our transportation system, we are giving a tacit approval to the okada business. Okada is not addictive, if people have better alternatives okada will be out of the news. We need a comfortable mass transportation system that our Ministers and MPs will have no problems using to get to parliament. We must be getting rid of the rickety tro-tros and uncouth drivers' mates and be replacing them with trains and buses whose calls at bus stops are timely and predictable. Under more professional guidance, these same drivers, mates and okada riders could be trained to be the backbone of a decent transport system, a system that makes okada unattractive and at the same time provides jobs. In the absence of this, Mr. Awuni, the MTTU boss, can read the riot's act seven times to all the three hundred okada riders that visited parliament, but it will be an effort in futility. Even the politicians will not back his efforts. For years, I commuted between my Accra New Town home and Burma Camp primary in a mummy truck (bone shaker) we called Agege. As better alternatives appeared on the Ghanaian market, the bone shakers receded into the background. There was no strenuous campaign to get rid of them in Accra.

Yes, I know the Vice President recently cut the sod for a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system in Accra, but the name of the game is result not intention. Even If a successful public transport system is the only legacy Egya Atta presidency will bequeath to Ghana, posterity will gladly borrow the words of the Adisadel College ode and say 'Atta Mills has labored and we share the glory, ours to do exploits and add to his gain….'. Until then, we may have to brace ourselves for a bumpy ride, because there is an okada near you that is goosing into space given up by common sense and good governance.

Actuarial Signs and the Wonders in tow

2011-01-17T19:26:00.002Z

One lesson Egya Atta might have learnt midway through his presidential tenure is not to make promises by heart on the campaign trail. But for another lesson yet to be learnt, politicians would have taken this caution seriously. The Ghanaian electorate is yet to learn to take electoral promises uttered by politicians with a pinch of salt. Knowing the mindset of the people they represent, the Ghanaian politician has grown into a false prophet specializing in two types of miracles- Signs and Wonders. Let me explain.

Before the scientific method emerged as the de facto standard of testing knowledge, our understanding of the physical universe was consigned to 'Signists' who came in various shapes and guises. The wise men of the day were the Astrologers, Seers, Magicians and the ilk who could decipher the signs of the times. Thankfully, that era was upstaged by the appearance of the likes of Isaac Newton. The poet Alexander Pope aptly captured the moment in this heroic couplet;

"Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light."

Somehow, Newton's light failed to illuminate our body politic resulting in over reliance on signs rather than science. There is no better example than Rojo Mettle Nunoo's debacle in Parliament. The NDC made a promise to Ghanaians to implement a one-time premium policy for the NHIS. In March 2010, Mr. Nunoo, the deputy minister of health, told parliament that each Ghanaian will have to pay about GHC600 premium to crystallize this promise. This he said was based on actuarial reports. Subsequently, Dr Kumbour, the substantive minister, apologized for what he described as misleading information given by his deputy. He explained that his deputy only read one of a number of options the party was considering. Determination of insurance premiums is guided by a well defined body of knowledge called Actuarial Science. One would have thought that such a bold campaign promise would have been the outcome of a rigorous scientific study using all the iterations known to the field of study. The deputy minister's assertion and the minister's subsequent explanation, only underscore the fact that the promise was first made, and they are only now scratching their heads looking for feasibility scenarios. If they don't find one, they will make a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea- either implement a bad choice or renege on the promise and blame it on the bad policies of the Kuffuor government and face the people's thumb.

Few people will deny that George Bush bequeathed a paralyzed economy to the succeeding Obama administration, but when the hard questions were asked less than two years on, Obama didn't blame the Bush administration for the slow recovery because he understood that he was elected to fix what was broken, not to pay tribute to his predecessor. As a result of the underperforming economy, Obama's Democratic Party received a thumping in midterm elections. In Ghana, the usual refrain from our politicians is 'we didn't know the past government had run down the economy to this extent when we made the promise'. Yeah, right! You didn't want to know. Any political party with intentions of governing the country, who cannot boast of a vibrant research unit that keeps track of the economy, is not worth its name. The fact is opposition Parties have mastered the act of winning power from a less than critical electorate. Look out for the Signs of dissatisfaction and keep shouting, keep matching, and keep promising, soon you will be in government by default. The problem with wrenching power by 'Actuarial Signs' rather than the Science is that, soon the electorate presents the cheque of promises but solutions are scarce to find in the vault. At this point, many politicians attempt a full re-incarnation of the prophet Joel as quoted in Acts 2:19:

"I will show wonders in the heavens above
and signs on the earth below,"

Having identified the Signs on earth that won them the elections, the revelation is to protect your government with heavenly Wonders. This is the point at which they create solutions that are neither innovative nor found in any text book. In those days, don't be surprised if sometime, somewhere, someplace when you least expect it, a deputy minister steps up to you and says " we have created 1.6million jobs". Don't seek explanation for why you and all other unemployed foot soldiers are still without jobs, you must accept it by faith, it is a wonder from heaven. If they get more disingenuous, they will create National Youth Employment Program - the biggest Sign that the youth is unemployed and at the same time a Wonder solution to provide jobs. So this is the political rule of thumb; in opposition, gather all Signs of discontent among the populace, package them and have your propaganda outfits run riot with them; when in power, seek Wonders that can protect you from every irresponsible promise uttered while in opposition and from the new "Actuarial Signists" in opposition. The winner is produced by the next line in the scripture- the party that produces more smoke to blur the truth.

I find it annoying that an important matter like Fuel is a favorite object of the Signists and Wonderers. The contradictory posturing of politicians depending on whether they are in power or opposition is robbing this country of rationally evolving a policy on how to deal with the ever fluctuating fuel economy. Recklessly claiming that we do not need taxes on fuel when in opposition, and acting contrary to that indication when in government, is a shameful legacy to bequeath to future generations. Blaming your predecessor for your vacillations only demonstrates ineptitude to say the least.

The lack of scientific depth in our political discourse is the bane to our development. I have always struggled to understand why our parliamentarians are asked to approve very complex deals like STX and Sale of Ghana Telecom, which take sitting governments months to finalize, in a matter of days. Not too long ago parliament was almost fooled to approve a 'loan' from a hair dressing saloon in London. Such embarrassments can be avoided if we respect the need for due diligence and arm our parliamentarians with credible research offices.

I yearn for the day when our political parties will invest resources and time into scientific research before they come out with their promises and leave the Signs and Wonders for Priests. But that will never happen until Ghanaians send the message to our politicians that every vote must be earned. A Party in opposition is not worth the seat of government because it replays our problems to us and castigates the incumbent. We must begin to demand evidence that critics who want the seat have a better plan. As for Egya Atta, he will have to account for the promises. Even his Chief foot soldier, the enigmatic former President Rawlings believed them. He expects all politicians who served in the NPP government to be in jail. He expects that Yaa Naa's killers would be found and justice served. Don't bore him with stories about evidence. He is not a law professor, he is a Soldier. He was shown the 'Signs' and as a faithful foot soldier he ran with it. Mr. President, produce the Wonder.

Bayie Kɔɔɔɔ IV- I saw My Mother Glow

2010-12-07T13:19:00.000Z

"I am no more a witch than you are a wizard. If you take my life away, God will give you blood to drink."- SARAH GOOD

Dear Brutus my brother from another mother,

At times like this, the folly of trying to understand the Ghanaian 'Bayiee-sphere' (world of witches) dawns on me. I had to fly thousands of miles to South Africa to escape the "gyratik radius" – the furthest distance at which you can feel the influence of a gyrating witch- of these wicked creatures of unliberated human thought, to compose this mail. I have heard that witches will not chase you when you move southward across the ocean for inexplicable reasons. However, to the extent that these creatures heavily dominate the mindset of the average Ogyakromian no matter how scholarly; my foolishness is excusable. In Ogyakrom, the fact that the widow next door has powers to transform herself into a fireball that glows and lights –up the skyline exterminating any evidence of darkness in deep forests, feeding on neighbours in their sleep, is ebbed into your psyche before you are six, and in many instances stays with you for life. You are given the perfect alibi to refuse to help the frail woman cart her firewood home when you are told she caused your best friend's death.

Like many Ogyakromians, my feelings towards my mother are special. This is borne out of years of sharing the challenges that growing up in Africa throws at you rather than residual ambers of libidinal feelings they call Oedipus complex. How can we forget the love that makes a woman sacrifice her beauty at the prime of her life so we will get educated? The earnings from petty trading were too meager to sustain the demands of modern education. As a result, the gold that has been handed over to daughters for three generations was not spared; neither were the Dumas cloths, the remnant of the bridal price that our late father paid for her hand.

When famine struck the land, many times she will sacrifice her portion so that we have enough to eat; I don't know how she made it through those nights. When I was admitted into high school, she vowed to get the money to put me through. My heart was broken when I saw her on her knees in the night, the bible in one hand and my admission letter in the other. She knelt by the candle and wept to God. She had asked for a loan from Opanyin Jones, a respected member of the community, but he will only give her the loan if she agrees to sleep with him. Of course, she declined the offer, but in three days my admission will lapse. Why is God pushing her towards prostitution? She asked in prayer. She recounted to the Omnipotent all the promises in the good old book, and asked, 'why have you forsaken me to be confronted by failure on one hand if my son's education is cut short, and dishonor on the other hand, if I sell my body to pay his way to school?' I wept throughout the night and she was shocked to see my swollen red eyes the next morning. Her instant reaction was to assure me I would go to school; 'no mama I have given up dreams of higher education'
was my response. She was shell-shocked. What has happened to obliterate all those big dreams in one night? 'We were still dreaming of the greatness that will follow high education only the night before, did you have a night mare?' She wanted to know. In an attempt to assure me there were still opportunities of getting the money on time, she mentioned Opanyin Jones, 'no you won't take the money from that filth' I blurted out. She was stunned into silence with a half opened gape, she suddenly understood why. 'Did you hear me praying in the night?' she asked tearfully. I nodded my head as the tears freely rolled down my cheeks. We sobbed together in each other's arms as she assured me she will get me to school without selling her dignity.

The next day, we went to see the headmaster. She prostrated before him pleading for time to find the money. The man took a second look at my result slip and shook his head. "Just like you, I almost missed out on education because of poverty and no one told me I was qualified for a scholarship" he said as he handed over the application form for a scholarship. Since that day, anytime I see a prostitute I think of a woman heavily disappointed and failed by society, but that story is for another day.

Brutus, you can imagine the emotions that welled up inside my body when I met this Prophet who told me my mother eats up all the children in my wife's womb hence our inability to have babies after five years of marriage. He gave me a handkerchief doused in anointing oil and asked me to rub it on my wife's tummy as he recited prayers in strange languages. He urged me to say the first name that comes to mind. He kept shouting, 'you can see her, you can see her, name her', that is when it happened in a flash, I saw a picture of my mother, there was some kind of fire around her, and instinctively I said Mama? 'Yes she is the one' he quipped. 'She is what?' I asked? 'Tell me what you saw', the Prophet said. 'My mother, there was fire around her', I answered. 'Yes, she is glowing, my brother this is bayie Kɔɔɔɔ , she eats up the children in the womb'. I told him my mother won't do such a thing and he reminded me that I saw her glow. He warned that if I don't bring her to the prayer camp to be exorcised, she will eat me next when the children are finished in the womb. I saw other witches at the camp, they had been shaven clean and chained to trees with no protection from the sun. Old defenseless women, if they are witches why don't they just fly away, I thought to myself. I was confused, angry and sad at the same time.

Against my wife's advice, I travelled to the village and confronted my mother with what I have seen and heard. She denied any knowledge of those creatures and wept so bitterly, I didn't know what to do. I don't think my mother is a witch, but I saw what I saw. I tried to assure her I didn't believe any of it but it was important to hear it from her. On my way back to Accra I made a detour to see the retired catechist in the adjoining town. We used to say he was boring and not as hot as the new pastors and prophets who could 'see things'. At this point in time, he was the only one who came to mind. When I narrated my encounters with the prophet and my mother, he asked; "Son, between you and the Prophet, who knows your mother better?" "I know her better than any living soul". "Then only you will know if she is a witch', the catechist said. 'But why did I see her glow?' I was pleading for an answer. My son, did you and the prophet understand the vision you saw? As I left him, he said, 'remember what I used to tell you, believe the word of God more than you believe any man of God'.

The next couple of weeks were the most tormenting of my life. I couldn't shake off images of my mum glowing in the night sky and feeding on innocent and unborn babies. But why will she attack my babies? The prophet kept harassing us to bring my mother for exorcism. Then I remembered the catechist's advice and reached for my bible. I remembered Paul's exhortation in Ephesians 6:12 'For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.' Where are the witches located? I asked myself. From the description our society paints of witches, they must belong to spiritual wickedness. Then I remembered that the Prophet Samuel accused Saul of witchcraft in I Sam 15:23, 'For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft….' Rebellion, idolatry, wickedness; I know Mama, she won't fit into any of these. Then it dawned on me. Our people describe witchcraft as spiritual. How dare any mortal maltreat another mortal over contentious issues of the spirit? Spirit must answer to spirit. How does chaining a widow, banishing poor women and denying them of their economic and other rights, resolve a spiritual dispute? The prescription to deal with spiritual wickedness was there, there was no physical confrontation. Then I saw II Cor 10:4 " The weapons of our warfare are not canal…" , So what is the position of the cane in driving witchcraft out of people? If these Pastors and Prophets get their prescriptions wrong, can we trust their diagnosis? No. I can't trust them. Suddenly it appeared again. Mama's picture! I could see clearly now, Mama kneeling by the candle with the bible and my admission letter. That is the picture that was played back to me. Oh yes, she is glowing in the lighted candle. Out of the overflow of love in her heart for me she was wrestling with God himself. But why should I have a playback of that incident that occurred many years ago whiles the prophet prayed? It was as if an unseen hand was leading me back one step at a time explaining what happened at the prayer camp. The talk before the prayer was about women and how they influence our lives positively and negatively. The Prophet touched on females; wives, mothers, sisters, rivals, etc, he was leading me on to a conclusion he wanted. Mind games!

I couldn't wait to get back to the village to put things right with my mum. Mama I know it, you're not a witch!, I said excitedly as I burst into her room. She looked emaciated and sick, and I knew the cause. She saw the sincerity in my eyes as I pleaded for forgiveness. Who else can forgive such betrayal? Only Mama, full of love. We both shed tears just like years ago, when she promised I would have my education with her dignity intact, in that same room. I have heard of Christ's love for me, and I have faith in him to save me, but the greatest testament of love I have seen on this earth is my mother, why did I ever doubt her? The love for me in her heart radiates on her face and she glows brighter than any prophet I have known. My next point of call was the residence of the old catechist. "Catechist, thank you for helping me identify witches", I said, "Mama is not one of them", I added almost immediately. "So, who is a witch", he asked? "They are the pastors, the prophets, the herbalists, the juju men, the traditional rulers, the fetish priests, and all others who weigh others down emotionally and torment them physically by proclaiming them to be witches". "Why are they witches?" he asked. "They destroy beautiful relationships of love which perhaps they never had". "That is wickedness of a spiritual order". I continued, "Unfortunately, I cannot deal with that prophet because it is a spiritual matter requiring spiritual remedy". "One day the spirit will answer to the spirit".

God is love, and I know Mama is love, she must be very close to God and far from witches. My wife had a baby two years after this incident without exorcism.

Brutus, Sadly though, I write to inform you that we have just arrested some witches in Ghana. A supposed Evangelist and his cohorts who set ablaze another defenseless old woman who lost her way trying to locate her son in the city. When the graphic reported that her son has disputed claims that his mother was a witch, my heart went out to Madam Ama Hemmah, the victim and Stephen Kwame Ofosu Yeboah, her son. Our society has again failed to protect one of the weak ones. I pray that the laws of Ghana will deal with the arrested witches, be it ever so severely, not for practicing witchcraft, but for being accomplished murderers.

Brutus something eerie happened as I finished the first paragraph of this letter. I had left a web request in my browser to run while I continued to write. A voice suddenly popped out of my computer "hi I am amber, What's your name?" I felt chills down my spine. Do I have a direct response from the witches? I went back to my browser and couldn't find the source of the sound. "Our witches have been credited with many achievements, but none related to technology, this cannot be, a witch can't take over a computer", I tried to allay my fears. I repeated the web request this time with my eyes and ears focused on the browser, then I saw her literally glowing. It is a popup of a beautiful dame asking me for a chat. This witch I know how to deal with. Now I can hear another sound out of the window, is that a bird or a goat? How can the two be confused? The chills have returned. Is that the real response from the witches? Brutus, believe me I am not making this up. I am still an African, when I hear hoots (cry of an owl) at three o'clock in the morning, I can only think of one thing. I have to stop writing.

Soo Long

Ogyakromian

P.S. This is a tribute to Madam Ama Hemmah and the many other supposed witches including the defenseless women and children locked up in witches camps and prayer camps. Their human rights have been and are still being abused because we lack the courage and political will to confront beliefs that should have been buried with the tenth generation before ours. We do not want to upset the sensibilities of those who think they have divine rights to appoint witches into camps. The government can cause the closure of these barbaric camps handing back liberty to the oppressed. That will send a strong message to all and sundry that an era has lapsed and we need to find new reasons for the unfortunate things that happen to us. But I do not expect that it will be done anytime soon. Shame on us all!

The Time to Laugh

2010-11-02T20:39:00.001Z

"I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician."
-Charlie Chaplin

It is not fun when you are the subject of a joke, but a good joke does not only create great fun, it also provides therapy that makes light work of the misery of our living. Growing up in cosmopolitan Accra taught me never to hand ammunition over to a Tease who is bent on having his day at my expense. An unsympathetic Tease will only increase your misery when he has the slightest inkling that you're deeply hurt by his taunts. I don't know what Alhaji Muntaka Mohammed, the former minister for Youth and Sports wanted to achieve by not only bringing up his Kyikyinga Palava but also singling out Ato Kwamena Dadzie for 'praise' on the issue. He has only succeeded in bringing the issue back to the front page. He has just provided every political satirist in this country material to run a dozen programs at his expense before the year ends.

I learnt very early in life that no amount of tears will stop a Tease. I was barely five years old when my parents moved me from 'Kookoase Korase' (Village) to Accra to broaden my horizon. I was thrust into a nursery in Kotobabi called Providence where the Lord's Prayer was said in Ga. As if my language deficiency was not enough my Mum put my hair to the scissor to deal with lice in my hair (Thankfully, the kids don't even know what these bugs look like today). In those days only one man scraped all the hair off his head. He was and is still called Super OD. With every kid including my only friend who happened to be my next door neighbor taunting and screaming Super OOOOOD, I wasn't going to survive the walk home in one piece, and luckily a good Samaritan rescued me from my misery by keeping me in her home until the road between the school in Kotobabi and our residence in Nkansa Gyan was free of all the kids from the school. I have since learnt how to administer a good dose of tease myself and I can tell you for sure that a cry baby is the best target for a good tease, and that the best defense is to join the fun even at your own expense if you want to stop the joke in its infancy. One thing you never do is to run to your Mama crying 'maaa maaa maaa, Ato is calling me Mukyinga'.

I particularly do not understand why some Ghanaian politicians are so sensitive to trivialities. When I tune in to the Weekend City Show on Joy FM on a Saturday morning, I know it is the time to laugh; I therefore place everything that happens there in that context. I couldn't believe it when Mr. ET Mensah rushed to Joy FM to protest the use of a sound bite from a speech he made that sounded like "it is only a fool that does not change his wife". He could just have called into the program with his wife by him screaming 'Rudy, not this wife, not me-love Mercy, I love you Mercy', if he had nothing better to do with his time. Of course, humor doesn't come easily to all Men, but one politician who has it is Dr Charles Wereko Brobbey. In those days when he only wore a mustache (No pirate beard), I paid him a visit in the hideout President Kufuor created for him at the VRA. He had adorned the office with huge frames of different cartoons that had appeared in the media seeking to caricature him in not very palatable terms. If the then president Bush (II) had spent time chasing Daily show host Jon Stewart for making fun of everything he did , even his mannerisms, the economy of America would have been two times worse than he actually left it.

Admittedly some jokes can be very harsh on the recipients. With some people, no subject is off limit for a good laugh. Tribe, race, accent, disability, dentures, mistakes, handicaps, just anything is fair game. At an Observatory Night Special in the notorious Vandal City (Sorry V-Mates), I recall one ethnic sensitive one that I won't recount here. But away from extreme jokes, we must all have a place in our hearts to accommodate some laughter at our expense no matter who we are. Although I do not have any examples of such, I believe our tradition must make room for 'mocking' the King (in the days when they were Kings) without losing your head. My mother tells me that in the island where I trace my origin, it was customary to meet at the community centre and mock people in songs. The system they called 'Halo' allowed rival groups to make fun of each other through songs. I hear the songs could be downright insulting but no punches were thrown. Our politicians must stop playing God and realize that no matter how intelligent one is, a little stupidity slips through at times, and when that happens we all celebrate it with good laughter because it is time to laugh. Taking our laugh from us when the political landscape is dotted with so many jokers is like taking away our tongues when our lips are wet with honey. What do we do when a politician insists he is contracting a loan for Ghana and the lender's address is traced to a hair dressing saloon? What do we do when a man insists God told him he will win an election in which he barely makes 0.1 percent? What about the DCE who says he will close down all the secondary schools in Cape Coast because few Cape Coasters have access to the schools? Oh, and the party Chairman who declared cats as endangered species because his AG is losing too many cases?

In the case of politicians, it is not only the obviously funny acts that lend themselves to laughter, but also the mundane answers they provide when they are caught in their webs of deceit. Naturally we must feel very angry about such insults to our intelligence but really, what can we do about these situations? These are very powerful people who can get away with a slap on wrist for things that lesser mortals will be very hot for doing. There are people whose claim to fame is the ability to stay poor whiles managing the affairs of this country yet they managed to educate their wards in expensive foreign universities because they have friends who took care of the bill. There are those who had a baby with their American mistress and the bill was picked by their friends. Presidential jets were bought in this country that a succeeding government just couldn't find who sold the plane to us no matter how hard they tried. The wife of a head of State sets up an NGO and buys a divested state company and wants us to believe there was no conflict of interest. On the eve of an election plots of State land at prime spots in the city are sold to people very close to the incumbent administration at prices lower than what pertains on the market and we are told these are decent transaction. The ordinary Ghanaian hears and reads such things and knows that somewhere between those lines hides the poverty that consumes this country. He has only two options left – to cry or to laugh. The latter serves a better purpose. Laugh at the people who think they are fooling us because our laws are too short to reach them. Our laughter is a therapy that heals us from all the hardship they have put us through. We can only take them on in 'halo' where we will tell them what we really think about them.

Therefore when I hear Alhaji Muntaka - who sometime ago used his position to acquire a visa that was paid for by the State for a young woman to travel with him even though she wasn't qualified for that travel (an act that was described as 'error in judgment)-crying because we are laughing , I know it is a time to laugh again. Lol!

mail to: ogyakromian@gmail.com

Politically Speaking

2010-10-21T20:26:00.005Z

On qualifications desirable for prospective politician, Winston Churchill said "The ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year; and to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen."

Politicians, it doesn't matter which party they belong to, have two remarkable characteristics- verbal diarrhea and selective amnesia. The former is very important to walk your way into power and the latter is a defense if and when you are asked to account for the byproduct of the former. The first President of the fifth French republic , Charles De Gaulle, is reported to have said, "Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him". When elections brood across the nation, it distributes gifts to all Parties and the politicians speak in political tongues. In those days if a political 'perspirant' ( a man or woman sweating to get elected) promises your community a bridge, don't bother to remind him that there is no river in town, if you do, he will promise you one, after all he was only politically speaking. Parties in opposition easily catch the verbal diarrhea and notoriously refuse a cure. When Edward Langley said "what this country needs are more unemployed politicians", I don't think he envisaged the situation in Ghana where they make radio stations parliament in exile and do three things only, talk, talk and talk. The talk itself is not the problem, but the irresponsible criticisms bordering on dishonesty and the avalanche of promises which they wish everyone forgets as soon as they get what they want-power. Through the magic of radio, the criticisms and promises drown all good judgment, but don't remind them of their speeches once they gain power, because amnesia is a remarkable attribute in politics.

After losing two elections on the trot a few years ago, the NDC propagandists had their work cut out for them. They had to get aggressive and they did get aggressive. When Kuffuor's NPP government presented proposals by the Ghana Air Force to augment the communication squadron with a couple of planes, the opportunity was presented to speak , politically. What we heard continuously was that the NPP had lost touch with the need s of the people. How could a government be thinking of luxury planes when the citizenry were hungry? We don't have good drinking water in the country. Two years after winning the election, the NDC government has taken delivery of a presidential jet and has promised getting a few more for the Ghana airforce. What happened to the hungry people in Ghana? Oh they starved to death under Kuffours regime, so it's okay to get a plane now. What about Water? No problem at all. For God so loved the president, that he provided great shades in the sky, so Ghanaians sweat less and as a result, they need less water than they did under Kuffuor. Ignore me, I was only politically speaking. But more importantly, the NDC communication machine has suddenly seen the importance of equipping the air force with their toys.

Today, the NDC communication machine is straining itself to let Ghanaians understand that the planes are for The Ghana Airforce, of course apart from the one presidential jet. I can swear I heard the NPP make the same argument about the airforce, but at the time that was not the emphasis the NDC propagandists were interested in, they were only politically speaking. Unfortunately for the NDC , they can't wish away the populist argument about hunger, water and electricity, yet the plane has been bought, a luxury jet for the president. I think the president needs the plane, Kuffuor was right in ordering the Jet, and Attah Mills was right in paying for it, and he deserves to use it. If only we had less of populist politics, he would fly it without political talk.

The biggest problem with politically speaking, is when it becomes a substitute for the real job. When you acquire the habit, there is the tendency to continue politically speaking even after you acquire the power you so perspired for. I've never understood why NPP converted three years SSS program to four years and changed the name of the program to SHS, at a time that our systems seemed to have adjusted to the three year program. When NDC decided to restore the status quo ante, they had almost two years to make it right. It was obvious we would need more classrooms whether we stuck to NPP's four years or we revert to the three year calendar. Somehow, this fact got lost on officialdom as we spent too much time talking about restoring the three year calendar to the detriment of implementing an action plan. Soon time caught up with us and it was obvious the schools were not ready to receive the next batch of JHS graduates. Important stake holders like CHASS asked for more time, but the politicians and their bureaucrats won't hear any of that, they asked the school heads to improvise. What they put on the political C.V is more important than the condition of living and studying in senior secondary schools. It didn't matter that the infrastructure was not ready to receive the extra numbers.

Faced with the real situations on the ground, some school Parent Teacher Associations (PTA) decided to impose levies to provide the conducive conditions to support the education of their Kids. The GES quickly renounced the actions of these schools and described the fees as illegal. Threats were even issued in certain instances. I admit that sometimes PTA becomes an overzealous instrument that wearies poor parents with all manner of levies. Asking parents to cough up four hundred extra cedis in two days as was the case in Achimota School, was insensitive to parents who are not so endowed. But the truth is , these PTAs only fill voids left by years of government neglect and political talk. The difference between the PTA and the political class is that, the PTA attempts to solve the problems while the politicians talk about them. What other option does the PTA have? Most of the members cannot afford to send their wards to London to educate them, neither do they have the luxury of owning friends who can cater for their fees abroad, so they have only one focus- fix the local school. After 53 years of independence, I'm waiting to hear our politicians pat themselves at the back that we have ingeniously solved this school headache by sending some kids to learn under trees and in garages, of course politically speaking.

In this age of pluralistic media where the Internet, Radio, TV, Newspapers, etc compete to be the first to deliver the political talk to the homes of every Ghanaian living everywhere, one phrase that will be heard several times in every home is "the President, John Attah Mills…" It is therefore not funny when a primary school pupil mentions the opposition presidential aspirant as the president of Ghana. The incident so infuriated the ruling party that the DCE of Atwima Nwabiagya in the Ashanti Region ordered all schools to display the president's portrait in the schools. This position was supported by the deputy minister of Local Government and the minister of communications. As is usual with our politicians, politically speaking is the solution. I want to believe the boy just got confused or his situation is an isolated case. I hope we are not overlooking the real question -what is the quality of education being offered at our public basic schools? Or perhaps, the boy is ahead of his peers in the game, he was only politically speaking.

Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.- George Orwell

Some cats are Sacred

2010-09-16T19:38:00.000Z

Prov 30 ²¹ "Under three things the earth trembles, under four it cannot bear up"

I love to draw inspiration from words of wisdom that have stood the test of time. The best place to find them is in the good old book. Proverbs 30 :21 says "Under three things the earth trembles, under four it cannot bear up". I thought the fourth republic's scariest day would always be the day some people went into a radio station and called on NDC activists to match on the electoral commission building because they perceived NPP was about to rig the election of 2008. I kept praying that the hawkish elements in the NPP wouldn't join them on the streets around the EC because if they had, Ghana would have joined the African Hall of Shame for undemocratic practices in the 21^st century and perhaps we would have been hosting an African Union peace mission in the country today. But sadly, I have counted three panic-filled fear-stricken moments under which our democracy has trembled with great trepidation in the Prof's less than two year old administration. We do not need a fourth, because our democracy may not bear up.

The antics of the marauding NDC foot soldiers, relentless and irrepressible in seeking vigilante justice, are the ugly side of our democracy. In a misguided attempt to counter-balance acts of political patronage in the previous government, these political infantry brigades run amok, venting their spleen on anybody and everybody that does not wear the red, white, black and green NDC bandana. They takeover lorry parks and desecrate the unholy sanctum of human waste without shame. They lock out legally appointed public servants from their offices and "dis-appoint" DCEs appointed by the president. Some have the audacity to dare the police to uphold law and order. Some NDC loyalists can indulge themselves in sophistry, trying hard to justify this madness, but let the truth be told, it is a big sign that leadership is lacking in their party- perhaps this is the Prof's biggest failing.

No word, spoken or written, conjures images of fear and panic more than the law on causing fear and panic. Who said we have decriminalized speech in this country? When Ticolo got home with Yaa Beauty, the babe he had been hunting down for the past six months, he was full of expectation until the lady decided to make a quick dash out of the house for her own safety. Ticolo's next door neighbor, Kankama was in a more advanced stage with his own project, and the wooden wall dividing the two rooms did little to conceal the screams from the lady in Kankama's abode. Paralyzed by fear, Yaa panicked at the approaching trauma, a taste of which could be heard next door. She left immediately for her own safety. Ticolo is convinced that Kankama caused unnecessary fear and panic and is contemplating contacting the Ghana police. This law has assumed elastic properties stretching from fools who make wild allegations on radio to journalists who refuse to reveal their sources. It is scaring the hell out of our democracy.

Pictures of a slim macho man wearing an Aca P woven in the red, white, black and green, with an enema syringe in hand walking towards the Supreme Court is a nightmare that can force Auntie Georgina to abandon all thoughts of sleep for seven days. Knowing the antecedents of the NDC, threatening to purge the judiciary in the fourth republic is not the smartest "talk" that we expect from an NDC chairman, but when he decides to utter those words at a time when the Parties infantry brigade are on the loose, certainly not only Auntie Georgina, but all lovers of our democracy must be filled with fear, panic, trepidation and horror. Kwabena Adjei's speech of horror underscores one of two things. We either have a terrible judiciary that cannot be reformed using the normal processes or he belongs to a band of irresponsible politicians who talk before they think. Assuming without admitting that the former is the case, any discourse on the perceived bad judgment must focus on the shortcoming of the judgment. Without that, reasonable Ghanaians will struggle to associate with whatever course you want to pursue. Apart from hurling vituperation at the judiciary, Dr Adjei failed to tell us what was wrong with the judgment that necessitated the press conference. Unless of course, there is no real problem with the judgment, and perhaps the judge is right after all; a case is a good as a lawyer's brief. Maybe the essence of the discourse is to execute a coup de grace to rescue the case on appeal by spreading fear and invoking memories of judicial martyrs, to strike panic. Some people may prefer this approach to appointing new judges to the superior courts to rescue a case.

Dr. Kwabena Adjei has brought us to the point where no matter the ruling on the Ghana at 50 Case, there will be political meanings read. It will be " The judge has kowtowed to fear from the NDC" or "we said it, the judiciary is against the NDC" depending on which way the case goes. Recently, a judge in the United States discharged some young Somali men arrested in the gulf of Eden from charges of piracy because he disagreed with his country's prosecutors on the definition of piracy. If that happened in Ghana, Kwabena Adjei will call the judge a pirate. We have successfully politicized everything in Ghana including crime and justice. We do not seem to have values in this nation. Because our opinion on a matter is dictated by who is involved rather than the issue at stake, politicians easily find welcoming hideouts in our society to escape confronting the shame that accompanies acts of adult delinquency. With their penchant to have their way at all times, especially if they control power, these politicians care very little about the dangerous repercussions of their public tantrums. They simply have no shame. In support of Dr. Adjei, some NDC chairmen called for a debate on corruption in the judiciary. I wish to respectfully tell them that politicians are perceived to be more corrupt than judges. What will these Chairmen say, if a soldier, totally disillusioned with corruption and cronyism in our body politic calls a news conference and threatens to clean our politics? Does that remind you of our past? It may sound distant now, but if we encourage this kind of irresponsible attacks on the pillars of our democracy, this can be for real. Our democracy will struggle to bear any such attack.

Under three things our democracy has already trembled, perhaps if we all speak without looking at who is involved, we will have no cause to discuss the fourth. Yes, there are many ways of killing a cat. In the region where the cat is a great delicacy, nobody will touch the cat from the shrine. Kwabena, some cats are sacred, keep away your sack.

.

My Standards Board Mission

2010-08-02T08:19:00.000Z

MTN's Charger sold with Nokia 2630

"When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him."-Isaiah 59:19b

Such scriptures give me the conviction that even the good old book will agree that Standards are a protection to a nation. Similarly, I harbor strong doubts that many will disagree with my assertion that the privileges of technological and market democratization must be tempered by strong regulatory regimes to protect nations from sub standard goods. Even with the knowledge that our markets are full of fake and sub-standard goods, several times have I failed to avoid paying for and picking the chaff home. I don't want to believe that I am the only one who scouts the market moving from one shop to another trying hard to convince myself that a gas regulator I want to buy will meet all safety requirements when used at home, or that the electric fan I'm about to pickup will not pack up before the first spin. Is this not why the Standards Board exists- To protect the ordinary man's exposure to such market derailments?

I admire the enterprise of many Ghanaians as they lay claim to their economic portion of the land by lining shops of different sizes with goods of all kinds from countries big and small once they can be located on the globe. Through these efforts, no matter how little, biblical miracle is recreated as bread is multiplied on the table to feed families too large for the spaces they occupy. I've always wondered how some of our kinsmen live on the petty trading that engage them. But poverty is no good excuse to innocently set our houses alight with substandard cables or to populate the intensive care unit of our hospitals with people burnt to several degrees because the wrong gas cylinders were sold. Our shops are filled with all manner of goods whose usages are not understood by the people who sell them. I hope I am not wrong in thinking that the Ghana Standards Board is the nation's armour bearer that must hold aloft the standards that protects us. This is what I was thinking when in early June 2010 I drove into their office in Accra to clear up a little matter.

I had purchased a Nokia 2630 from the MTN shop at the Accra Mall. That was my third time of buying a phone from that shop. The receipts usually bear the name Sell Phone even though the shop is MTN-branded. Three days after my purchase I realized that the charger included with the phone was a strange one I'd never seen. It has two plucks that look like an 'A' with the intersections removed. I took the phone back to the shop and wanted to know why they were selling phones in Ghana with strange plucks that will not fit into our electric sockets. The lady I spoke to didn't understand the fuss I was making since I could buy a converter in any electrical shop to help use that charger in Ghana. A gentleman stepped in to diffuse the argument by rendering an apology, and I left the shop angry. I can understand buying a phone outside Ghana and getting a converter to charge it, but for phones bought in bulk to be sold by a company like MTN, would that be right? Unfortunately, my many years of education both formal and informal in Ghana couldn't help me answer that simple question, and after making two calls to a Customs Officer and a lecturer who teaches electrical engineering in one of the nation's Polytechnic with the question still unanswered, I decided it was time to increase my knowledge with some basic fact that most Ghanaians should know by the time they go through high school. So I drove to the offices of the Ghana Standards Board not too far from the Mall.

When I posed the question to the first lady I was directed to see and showed her the plucks, she misunderstood it and thought I wanted to import phones that use that charger into the country. She was quick to advice that since that is not the nature of sockets we use in Ghana, why import those chargers into the country? Then I explained to her that I had just bought the phone and I needed to know if MTN had the right to be selling phones using those plucks, because if they didn't, I was ready to make a formal complaint to the GSB. Here again I couldn't get an answer to the question I thought was a simple one. In the thirty minutes that followed, I spoke to six other people , some at the engineering unit who claimed that was not their specialty and some people at Marketing where complains were to be made. The last person I spoke to has a director (or deputy director) designation and his counsel was comforting in deed. He asked me "why not return the phone if you don't like the charger?" to which I smiled. Anyway, since the people who had answers to my question were all out of the office and could not be reached by phone, I was advised to leave and wait for a call. To be fair the last of three ladies that I spoke to actually tried hard to get somebody on phone that could speak to the issue but to no avail. She did call me again after a couple of days, I cannot recall her exact words but my question was yet to be answered because somebody wasn't available. It is almost eight weeks now since I went to the Standards Board with my question and it is still not answered. I still do not know if MTN had the right to import phones with the plucks pictured above, so I'm still not sure if I had any right to assert in that shop to ask for a change. If you know, would you be so kind to send me a response on ogyakromian@gmail.com. As for the Nokia 2630 I bought from the shop, I gave out in protest and know where not to buy a phone again.

The Plug

Moving away from my little question, I think our general attitude to standardization in this country leaves much to be desired. We have a huge informal sector oiling the wheels of our economy and daily lives, yet little effort is expended to encourage them to serve us with the right goods and services. The guys who build our houses, those that repair our cars, those that we entrust our hairs to, can we independently certify their knowledge levels and ensure that without the requisite certification they are kept away from the mistakes that spell doom for us? Can we ensure that the woman who sells tiles next door has the capability to advice on the usage of these tiles? We must get into the habit of driving mediocrity a small step away at a time from our culture by raising the standards.

mail to: ogyakromian@gmail.com

If only I can find Balaam........

2010-07-06T17:11:00.000Z

I have finally been able to overcome the inertia to take to the keyboard after that painful defeat handed our beloved Black Stars by Luis Suarez, the thief of Joburg. In my last blog a couple of weeks ago, I put out a sarcasm titled Bayie Kɔɔɔɔ III- The gods of the Game. I was basically questioning the role of superstition and religion in the game of football. The way and manner Ghana got kicked out of the tournament brought some fresh perspective to the subject through this one question- Did God abandon Ghana?

There are millions of Ghanaians who believe God is closer to Ghana than any other part of the earth. So strong is this belief that people actually dedicate valuable prayer time to make supplication for football victory, and they believe that the prayer of the rival team is discounted in the presence of the Ghanaian 'Shabalala' delivered in a fresh tongues of men and angels emanating from the bosom of the comforter. This strong force of prayer was deployed both on and off the pitch against every one of our opponents. Then comes Ghana Vs Uruguay on that fateful Friday evening. After taking the lead with Sulley Muntari's last kick of the ball in the first half, we thought we had done it again with the last kick of extra-time when Adiyiah's header headed goal wards, that was until Luis Suarez's hand popped out from the goal line with the ball in hand. The referee could have been excused if he had accepted it as a goal, but alas, he wasn't convinced it had crossed the line. Then comes the cruelty of football. After struggling to get the ball almost across the goal line but for an illegality, the ball is withdrawn 12 yards backward, and Uruguay has the luxury of a goalie to defend the resultant kick. I have followed discussions on the web with many arguing that if Asamoah Gyan had scored the resulting penalty kick, the story would have been different. This may be the case, but you cannot equate a penalty to a goal bound ball that is illegally detained by a man with kleptomaniac tendencies. Surely it is time to mend some of the rules of football, especially if the incident is viewed against the fact that Ghana did not benefit from the red card that was shown to Suarez in the last minute of extra time.

To add insults to injury Luis Suarez speaking before the world's media, ascribed his ignominious achievement to the Omnipotent. Listen to him. "The hand of God now belongs to me", "Mine is the real 'Hand Of God'. I made the save of the tournament." His coach Mr. Tabarez gave a tacit endorsement to that view when he said "I'm emotional. We didn't play well, but we've gone through," . "It seems there's something forcing us on..." He wasn't finished, he continues: "Those who believe in fate or destiny they might be able to explain it." From an Ogyakromian perspective Luis Suarez is a cheat, 'dzulor', 'kubolo', 'dzimakpla' and public enemy No. 1. But I'm sure many Uruguayans regard his action as a heroic act that delivered a nation, an action that must have been inspired by God himself. So whiles Ghanaians weep bitterly about an opportunity stolen by the disingenuous act of a gifted footballer, Uruguayans can go to church and thank God for a great favor. This is reminiscent of the story of Jacob and Esau in the bible. Jacob stole Esau's birth right and ended up being the father of a blessed nation whiles his brother was left crying bitterly. In explaining pre-destination, the Apostle Paul expatiated on the situation of the twin brothers thus:

"¹⁰Not only that, but Rebekah's children had one and the same father, our father Isaac. ¹¹Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad—in order that God's purpose in election might stand: ¹²not by works but by him who calls—she was told, "The older will serve the younger."^[d]
¹³Just as it is written: "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated." – Romans 9:10-12. (NIV). I'm sure many Christians have read this sentence many times without a drop of sympathy for Essau. Perhaps when we replace Essau with Ghana, and Jacob with Uruguay, the next time we quote the verse to justify anything, we will remember that Essau was a man and had feelings.

What did Ghana do wrong? We prayed steadfastly and played well and yet victory was stolen from us. If you will believe Luis Suarez, God stretched forth his hand and literarily appointed Uruguay into the semi final of the 2010 world cup over Ghana. It is as if he said "Uruguay I loved , Ghana I hated". So that leads me to my big question, Did God abandon Ghana or this is evidence that God does not play football?

For the answer why don't we draw inspiration once again from the bible. In the book of Numbers, we are told that as the Israelites journeyed from Egypt to the promise land, the Moabites got jittery and their King by name Balak called for a man named Balaam to curse the intruders. No matter what Balaam did, he did not find a curse tailored for the Israelites. Before he finally gave up, he declared in his second oracle in Numbers 23:23

'There is no sorcery against Jacob,
           no divination against Israel.
           It will now be said of Jacob
           and of Israel, 'See what God has done!'

If only I can find Balaam, I will ask him to search all the books of divination, if he cannot find a curse against Uruguay, then I will conclude that like Israel, Uruguay is a favored son of God. Then we can say, the Lord has done this thing to Ghana. He has blessed Uruguay, and who he blesses, stays blessed. But if we find just one curse, then I know it is not the Lord. If God hasn't done this, I will gather all the curses I can find against Uruguay, and like the Ghanaian that I am, I will hurl all at Uruguay; that they will never qualify for the world cup for the next 70 years, Let Uruguay snatch defeat from victory seven times, What Uruguay has built in fifty years may the hand of Suarez pull down in a day, Kaita shall be the portion of Uruguay, Let the male Uruguay team lose to their female counterpart. As for Luis Suarez, may he carry seven portions of Asamoah Gyan's shame when he lost the penalty kick.

Ah , I'm beginning to feel better. The curses have assuaged my anger, I'm a Ghanaian indeed, an Ogyakromian.

Bayie Kɔɔɔɔ III- The gods of the Game

2010-06-10T09:02:00.000Z

Dear Ogyakromian,

Reports on some websites claim that the injury that ruled out Ghana's football Superstar, Michael Essien, from the 2010 World cup is a result of a spell cast by his own father in revenge for being neglected by the Chelsea star. I have gone through your earlier mails explaining the power and the wonders of witchcraft in Ghana, but I don't see how this supposed curse fits. You may be cursed by enemies, soothsayers and all, but not your own Dad. Does the man hate his son so much?

Then there are reports that this world cup is jinxed as many high profile players keep falling before the games. Apart from Essien, Ballack, Drogba, Mikel, Robben , Ferdinand, Pirlo, and Nani have either been ruled out of the world cup or have been declared doubtful. Ogyakromian, what is going on in African witchdom as far as the world cup is concerned?
Yours from the North Pole,

Brutus.

Dear Brutus my brother from another mother,

There is little I can say about Essien's case, but what I know is that, the curse of a parent is not taken lightly in Ogyakrom. When your mama tells you don't step at my funeral if you marry that girl, you may have to choose to stay celibate for the rest of your life. It is worse if she shouts your name as she sweeps the sandy red floor with her bare buttocks, 'you will never turn well'. The confusion in Essien's matter is that, the father claims he has been fasting for his son. But does that matter? In this part of the world, when society says you are a witch, then that is what you are. For me the bigger question is, have the witches of Africa cursed the tournament?

The day FIFA declared the World Cup in South Africa as an African world cup; I knew they were courting trouble. For most of us in West Africa, hosting the football festival in South Africa doesn't bring it closer. It doesn't only take the same number of hours (six) to get to Johannesburg and London, but also costs us much. With an economy that is slowly but surely moving to the beat of the President's orchestra, there is little chance of going to South Africa to experience the World Cup. But that is the case for most of us. This leaves our neighbors who exist in the fourth dimension- the witches (lower your voice). In their world, time and space exists on one horizontal plane, meaning South Africa is closer to them than for the average Ogyakromian. They can afford to participate in the world cup with little or no hindrance, and with FIFA's invitation, the extent of their participation will underscore the usual role they play in African football. The tournament would have been challenging enough with only the witches from South Africa participating, but it is another ball game if you call for an ensemble of African witches. Let me give you an indication of their role in football as I have come to understand it.

In Western Europe, there is only one way of fixing matches - compromise any of the agents of the game. In Ogyakrom, there are three ways of influencing the outcome of matches beyond the relative abilities of the two teams on the field. It is either by God, juju or compromising the human agents. You may combine them as you wish. You are quite familiar with human intervention in the system, I will tell you a bit about the other two.

The God factor in the Ghanaian game is phenomenal. Ghanaians believe that we must win all games regardless of the strength of team we present because God is on our side. I do not envy God in these circumstances. What is the bearded old man expected to do when two teams compete in a game and both call on him for help. How does he resolve this conflict? By doing what we did as kids when we had to make a choice? "Cee, cee ,cee. Cee nana…"? Many times in the past, I tried fixing some games using the God method myself. I used to sit behind the radio or TV monitoring the fortunes of Asante Kotoko or Black Stars, and for the duration of the game, I will be stopping balls from entering our goalposts in the name of Jesus! I overcame that stupidity when I asked myself, "Why should God be interested in the result of football matches?" "There are real problems like incurable diseases confronting the descendants of Adam that need his attention, why should he be bothered by a game to determine who earns the bragging rights on a day?" Since that day, I got my liberty and I enjoy my games better. I have been waiting for the day a Ghanaian coach will soar with the Black Stars to prove that the colour of a Man's skin is irrelevant to the game. After winning the world cup with Ghana's supposed youth side, I thought Selas Tetteh was the one. But when the man confessed that the selection of the final game was done by a certain Prophet T.B . Joshua, I didn't know how much of the success to attribute to Coach Tetteh's soccer prowess.

Unlike the God factor which is generally considered to be positive because the aim is to get your team to win, the juju factor can be very destructive. That is where the witches pitch their camp. Brutus, you should have been in Ghana during CAN 2008 soccer fiesta. Many nonentities gained popularity by their ability to convince a huge number of Ghanaians that they had the ability to see into the crystal ball and win Ghana's matches. All manner of prophets appeared on radio and TV programs claiming that God revealed the scores to them during a church service. I saw a few of these wanabes holding chickens at the stadium to symbolize the score line in a game. Even when the number of chickens didn't reflect the actual scores, they explained away the discrepancies. But at the end of the day, new prophets and new juju men are discovered. Their churches and shrines will burst at the seams, and their fame will travel with the game.

In Accra New Town where I grew up, tales of how Juju and witches influenced the game at the colt level were not difficult to find. Rumours that boys, many below the age of sixteen, were taken through all manner of rituals including passing the night in a cemetery to fortify them for a game of football gave me the jitters. The Mallams had a field day 'crafting' the career of many of these youngsters with talismans. When a footballer seems to have lost his scoring boot, it was common to attribute it to what his rivals had done to him through Juju. It was at one of the colt games at the SWAG Park that I realized that my Physical Education teacher in school worked as a part time juju man. I saw him reciting incantations as he paced up and down the field and he didn't appear to have noticed me when I attempted to speak to him. A friend later told me he "worked' for one of the teams. It was common practice for owners and coaches of some colt teams to pick up boys from the street and nurture them into good footballers. The coach of one club in Kotobabi had a few of these players in his house. One of them rebelled and left him to join another team. Unfortunately, the boy later fell sick and died. Guess who killed him. After spending on this player for years and getting no thanks for it, the poor chap gets tagged as a wicked man who kills through Juju. On the way to the cemetery, the crowd sang and chanted, calling on the spirit of the dead boy to avenge his death.

With that kind of introduction to football at an early age, the footballer's belief in juju stays with him for life. It therefore didn't surprise me when Theophilus Jackson a goalkeeper for the then premier division side Sekondi Eleven Wise turned Samuel Affum , an Accra Hearts of Oak striker into a punching bag because the latter dropped an object in the former's goalposts. Recently, there had been calls to find a successor to one of the national teams' goalkeeper. A new goal tender who was tried in a friendly match performed so poorly that rumours were rife that he had been 'worked'. By who? Only the witches can tell.
The story is told of a cup match in a neighboring West African country that was rudely interrupted twice because the Juju men were not happy with the results. In the first match, The Juju Man for 'Team A' caused the flood lights to go out when his team was two goals down, and the game was rescheduled. The second game didn't have better luck because 'Team B's Juju man conjured heavy rains to stop the match midstream when his side was losing the match. Before the game was called again, the football association called all juju men for a meeting and appealed for clemency for the game. In the Democartic Republic of Congo, lives were lost over a witchcraft allegation in a game in 2008. The story is also told of a club playing in the the final of an important competition. A rival management faction within the club, who feared that success delivered by their rivals would obliterate their own chances of running the club, hired a juju man who sent word around that the player that scores the first goal dies. They lost the cup.

Brutus, if there is a force in Africa that can influence the outcome of football matches, shouldn't that force be working to get an African State to win the World Cup on African soil? Shouldn't that force preserve the African Greats in the games to showcase our greatness? If in its destructive fervor it consumes Michael Essien, Mikel Obi and Didier Drogba whiles threatening the likes of Sulley Muntari, what can we say about that force? From an Ogyakromian perspective, I can only conclude that it bears all the vestiges of 'Bayiee' or witchcraft (remember to keep the voice low). It is the only force known in Africa that destroys its own. 'Bayiee kɔɔɔ; threatening to glow'. Personally, I'm not surprised the story of Essien's curse and the world cup jinx caught up on some very popular websites. That is the image the western media wants of Africa- the Dark Continent with self destructive tendencies. Poetic imageries, that question the Continents suitability to host the competition for the football World Cup. As usual, the ammunition for such stereotyping is provided by no one else than Africans.

I believe mind games are important to winning in the modern game. Teams use it to great effect to create a winning mentality and to deflect pressure away from the playing body. However, when the team that is supposed to benefit from these psychological antics become a victim of these tools, then, it goes beyond psychology. It doesn't matter if it exists or not, neither does it matter if it can be seen or not; it is called witchcraft. When players attribute loss of form and injuries to juju, when supporters are made to believe that some weather patterns spell doom for their team, then juju hangs over our game like the sword of Damocles. The gods of football are created on the field of play, they are not formed in a shrine . It is a tragedy for young people aspiring to greatness in the game to grow up with the belief that there exists an enchantment that is a fitting substitute for talent, hard work and discipline . This fact is well expressed in the old Jama song in Ga, that says "all that matters in football is what you can do with your legs, not juju". The game was made for men and played by men.

So Brutus, in South Africa, we will chant the psalms and declare the oracles, but play the game of men.

Soo long,

Ogyakromian

Much Ado About A Vandal

2010-05-11T16:32:00.000Z

Their anger must have been bursting at the seams as they sat to deliberate the matter. There must have been a feeling in the room that they were positioned in history to get rid of a perennial irritation that has overgrown the average working life of a Ghanaian. They must have felt righteous in taking a decision that perhaps they had the power to. I presume there might have been a Vandal or two at the round table. Even they, might be tired of the antics of the current generation. Some may even express surprise that the problem has outlived many generations of the powerful Council. The centre piece of the debate and the fiery language in the room was The Vandal. Who is he? He is the occupant of the commonwealth hall of residence on the University of Ghana Campus at Legon. An enigmatic young man whose claim to fame is pushing the boundaries of what many consider as decency and decorum. He may even be the son of one of them. His presence on the campus may be a first step to earning some of the fanciful titles in the academia conspicuously worn by most of them at the round table. But today, he stands accused of heckling the chancellor of the University in the person of Busumuru Kofi Annan, the former Chief of the United Nations Organisation. The Executive Council of Legon has had enough. The meeting has come to a conclusion. The problem of the Vandal City is excess testosterone, it is time to calm the wayward hormone by injecting a dose of Oestrogen and Progesterone. Effective next academic year, the hall which has remained an only male hall for decades will become Coed and will be reserved only for postgraduate students. Ostensibly, the decision was taken to forestall further embarrassment to the University.

If it is just for the purpose of maintaining tradition, I wouldn't care a hoot about lining the wardrobes of Vandal City with skimpy skirts. In fact, that may be the joy of the sons of Bacchus assigned to the Waste Management unit of the hall. The choir master will bear the only complication arising out of the move as he has to decide what to do with the lines in the stupid songs that refer to Volta Hall. Under these conditions the position of the hall anthem becomes untenable and he may have to replace Volta 'Basia' with Vandal 'Basia' in many other songs? I believe traditions should be jettisoned once we have no more use for them. But in this case, I hold the view that the Executive Council's attempt to silence the Vandal tradition is high handed and misplaced. If it was a policy decision with stated aims, one would lend his sympathy. But this is borne out of rage and anger. They are not only hitting a fly with a sledge hammer, but they are doing so at a time the harmer is needed to fix the dining table without which dinner won't be served. There are many more important things in the university which require the intensity of the attention they devoted to the issue not to mention the publicity it generated. For many years the University has been crying for radical and innovating ways of dealing with overcrowding, filth, attracting motivated young lecturers, outmoded courses and a sinking image among African elite Universities. These and other problems which have been nursed and nurtured by various university administrations over the years are the real dent on the image of the university. The stench that hits you in the corridors leading to overused toilet facilities which lack regular flow of water is improperly located at the nation's premier University in the twenty-first century. These problems would welcome some real punch that puts them not only on the front page of our newspapers for days but also on the minds of every Ghanaian until resolved.

There have been no shortages of assaults on Vandalism over the years. Among other things, Vandals have been accused of using profanity in their songs, practicing occultism, and being excessively boisterous; and they cannot totally plead innocence to these charges. Meeting Vandals for the first time is a rude awakening. For many, this happens when they first join the Legon community. The reaction varies. For the Charismatic and Pentecostal Christians, Vandalism features highly on the prayer list. I prayed many of such prayers in the hall chapel when I was a bona fide member of the Commonwealth Hall JCR. Don't ask me what I prayed for because I can't be sure that what is happening is not the answer to some of those prayers. For some people, their encounter with Vandalism creates a total revulsion towards the Hall which they carry decades after student life. When such people sit in council over Vandalism, what do you expect? Skin Pain 'sonnnn'. So right from the first year, Vandals are used to being cursed and criticized from within the hall and in the colonies. But I doubt if anybody expected the mega assault ostensibly coming from the Executive Council. The punch is power laden and devastating in two directions. First, they will get rid of all Vandals who presently occupy the hall. Then they will bring in post graduate students who I believe will be sieved to make sure that no ancient Vandal finds his way back to his roots. This is tantamount to robbing the hall of its memory (like an induced computer disk crash). With the memory goes the culture and tradition. This is exactly the kind of solution required to change the bad and damaging cultures in many Ghanaian institutions, the University not excluded. But alas, such a powerful tool used on 'small boys' whose youthful exuberance doesn't endear them to some powerful dons. Secondly, making the hall a graduate hall minimizes the chances of the culture sneaking back through the backdoor. On the average, graduate students spend less time in the University and are occupied with other matters other than building camaraderie in the hall. Within one or two years most are out, and most of that time is spent between lectures, family and work. I don't know who mooted the idea, but his genius can be better deployed elsewhere in the university. Not even the direct assault on the soul of Vandalism, which I suspect was carried out by the Christian fraternity, when the brass statue of the so called Father Bacchus vanished inexplicably in the mid 90s, could be more devastating. This new attack touches the spirit.

Coming from the Christian charismatic circle, I'm aware that the belief that Vandalism is occultism is strong. This belief is fueled by activities that herald the inauguration of the Chief Vandal. Personally, I do not believe that the young men are possessed. It is just a play that goes too far. I have had major challenges with the profane songs. I will never forget the year (93/94) in which I had to abandon my room at the A-Block when the PAWA (Profane Association of West Africa) competition was held at the observatory. In the year that followed, as the hall President, I had to live with about half an hour of profane lyrics anytime I had to Chair a hall meeting. Luckily for me, the music writers were so lazy they never wrote original songs, it was always an adaptation of well known songs. To block my mind from capturing the unwanted lyrics, I always hummed the true words when they get intoxicated with the profanity that flowed freely from the LPs. But I do not believe that these songs or the antics that go with them bring any disgrace to the University. In fact, most of the criticisms of the songs stem from the fact that they are sang in a local language-Twi. I have heard similar descriptions in songs written in English and no eyebrows are raised. I don't know why we are so hypocritical when we speak our local languages. The other day on JoyFm, a young man was accused of raping a girl he had earlier saved from being raped. The word sex was used several times without trouble in the exchanges. When a lady police officer used the same word in twi, some colleagues in the office couldn't repeat it. They had to whisper it to each other. In any case, if profane lyrics merit throwing out thousands of students from a hall, then let's disband the Ghana army. There are many Christian s today who serve in the security services. What songs did they sing when they were in training? Praises and worship? ' Awala'. Oh, and we sang some of those songs in the secondary school too. I recall my days in West Africa Secondary School when we declared ourselves the Jama Lords as we took trophy after trophy in the Interco competition. The only difference then was that most of the songs were in Ga not Twi. Maybe the students should be dismissed.

Admittedly, some of the acts attributed to vandalism are indefensible. You may get away with profane lyrics and call it freedom of expression, gloss over libation and suspected occultism and call it religious freedom, but how do you justify the attempted burning of another hall? What can you say about S..t bombing of colleague students? Try making sense out of nudity in the form of BWT and others on a University Campus. Some of them border on criminality. The good news is that such acts have been internally resisted by decent minded Vandals for decades. Over the years there have been skillful maneuvers to redefine Vandalism from its original meaning (the dictionary vandal ) to an acronym- Vivacious Affable Neighborly Devoted Altruistic and Loyal . As a hall president, I openly took on the chief Vandal over the 'Nibinson & Dibinson' affair for an act that I felt he should have taken responsibility for, though not entirely his fault, in an article titled "Wither Drifts Vandalism?" The Old Vandals Association has had cause to openly reprimand Vandals over excesses. These efforts demonstrate that many of us are on the side of the university council to get rid of the excesses in Vandalism. That is why their decision is a smack in the face of partners they had to uphold. To hurt the bad and the ugly, they didn't care about offending the good.

Bluntly put, these excesses are youthful exuberance wrongly expressed. I want to believe it is the responsibility of the University authorities to mold the young men and women who pass through the university into useful assets for the nation. That is the spirit with which they should engage the Vandals. The university code of ethics is clear. People who breach it, must be identified and dealt with. It sends a very important message to these young men that you're free to express yourself in society as you want, but you must avoid breaking the rules. This is one thing Legon has done quite well in the past. The resort to totalitarianism this time is unnecessary. Throwing these young men out of the hall is defeatist and a sign of failure. It's like a father who throws out a fourteen year old son because he can't rein him in. Many young men will still come into the university with that same energy. In the absence of Vandalism, they will find new outlets to vent them. Rather than rally round a defined group with structures known to all, underground groups may emerge with totally wayward leadership, then will the greatness of this idea to quash Vandalism burst forth. When the university has to deal with ninja style disruption of congregations, they will recall the days of heckling with nostalgia. If anyone thinks it is farfetched, take a look at the gangs that reign in Nigeria's universities. By the way, doesn't Vandalism provide the psychology and sociology departments a good laboratory to study and propound interesting theories about humans? Sounds funny huh?

One cannot also discount the positive attributes of Vandalism in this matter. There are way too many timid Ghanaians. This is partly a result of our upbringing in our educational institutions. You're suppressed and not allowed to express your thoughts if the authorities are not comfortable with them. Instead of engaging you in reason, to show why you are wrong, you are tagged disrespectful and undisciplined. By the time you leave the Vandal city, you learn to express your thoughts without fear or favour. It doesn't matter if your diction is sick or you suffer from vocabulary epilepsy. Nobody cares about the village secondary school you attended or how broke your parents are. We all sit on the green grass and eat Daavi's banku whiles trading ideas, unflattering remarks about each other and anybody, and encouraging each other. Your confidence is fully built by the time you walk out of the place. It is one place to find a family bonding that lasts for years. It is not by co-incidence that for decades, Commonwealth hall has remained the centre of student resistance. Of course, some universities administrators hate their guts. They prefer docile students who will succumb to any poorly constructed policy because they're too scared to speak their minds. Why won't they throw out the Vandals and then Okponglo will follow since the introduction of ladies in that hall didn't succeed in taming anybody, then maybe KNUST will follow with Katanga and so on ….. Is it any surprise the university has almost become a glorified secondary school?

To my younger V-Mates, I say, there is a time to fight and there is a time for diplomacy. This is a time to be really smart and use diplomacy to achieve an end. Disrupting examinations and petulance will only serve to erode all goodwill your course has attracted. Many voices in the land including those from the colonies have screamed in your support. Hopefully, the dons shall see reason. They will not choose the path of creating a monster bigger than what they think you are.

As always, Truth stands!

PS: Is it true the Kwatroit is behind theses wahalas? He is one Don I've admired since childhood o.

Chieftaincy, an Albatross We Can Do Without

2010-03-21T22:32:00.003Z

Chieftaincy is a revered institution in Ghana, but I belong to a minority of people who think it has outlived its usefulness. It doesn't matter if it is chiefdom or kingdom, it is simply incongruous with what we want to achieve as a people- Statehood- that is what Ghana stands for. A king is the ruler of an independent State (according to Oxford's dictionary), while a Chief may be the ruler of a tribe. To the extent that there is only one independent State called Ghana that we belong to, I get amused by the claims to Kingdoms in Ghana. I have heard arguments asserting that one traditional leader is a King and another is not. That might be the case three hundred years ago, but they lost that title from the very moment they couldn't defend their territories against the white man who merged them with other States and tribes to form what we know today as Ghana. Lesotho and Swaziland are States that exist as kingdoms in Africa today, but the same cannot be said of Ghana. If nations had been created from the former states of Asante, Anlo, Ga, or Okyenman with monarchs at the helms, then we could be talking about kingdoms.

Whether Chief or King, in the period when they had some relevance, their function was to provide leadership and governance for their people. They made laws, they passed the death sentence, and they banished people from their territories because they had the authority and power to do so. The idea that blood qualifies you to exercise such authority provides nature with the platform to mock humanity. Putting a moron in line is a scary proposition that may compel some king makers to look elsewhere for a successor in order to rescue the stool from the games of nature, but these acts only lead to another dangerous game called war. Luckily, the power to govern has been taken away from the chieftaincy institution and handed over to a system that provides opportunity for all citizens so willing, to stake their claim to leadership regardless of whose DNA they carry. If monarchs cannot fulfill the purpose that defines them, why do we have to keep them? It is not surprising that many of them think they can still wield these powers, once we keep them, they must fulfill their function.

A few years ago, a group from the Asante region declared Kumasi as a no go area for some journalists because they said unpalatable things about the Asantehene. Assuming traditional authorities still retain the authority to banish people from their traditional areas, and the Ga Mantse decides to exercise that authority in Accra, people will clearly be robbed of their right to make a living in Ghana. How ludicrous does that sound? But now and then, we hear of traditional leaders banning people or groups from their areas. We cannot preserve the sanctity of our State in this manner. Clearly Chieftaincy is an albatross we can do without.

Those who argue that chieftaincy is relevant in our context because it is a tradition that defines us as Africans, forget that Chieftaincy is not a Ghanaian or African invention. There were empires far bigger than any in Africa, with Kings at the helm. Most of these empires have been reformed into modern democracies. In fact, there are still monarchs who preside over independent states in Europe and the Arab world among others. These monarchs are the heads of State not the heads of a tribe that is a subset of the State. Ironically, many chiefdoms existing in Ghana today were spared the violent overthrow that consigned some of their counterparts in other parts of the world to the dustbin of history, by the actions of the colonialists who took away their powers and formed modern African states. If that hadn't happened, some of the existing chiefdoms would have been abolished by their own people who would have gotten tired of the undemocratic and dictatorial nature of this system of governance. Others would have fallen to other empires, and maybe some of them would have reformed into great democracies. Africans wouldn't have put up with practices like sacrificing their children to accompany dead kings or chiefs forever. But the reality beyond these ifs is that, Europeans intervened in Africa and demarcated it into States made up of former States.

Beyond colour, I see little difference between the invading Europeans and our own Kings. They were both spurred on by greed and notoriety to conquer and establish empires. They even collaborated in selling our kinsmen as slaves. But on the flip side of the coin, the States created by the European invaders created a stable condition to conserve the various chiefdoms. The stability created, combined with our own irrational emotional attachment to the past, is responsible for the sustenance of these chiefdoms up to date. If they had been left to the law of the jungle that created them, many of them would have been history.

As an agent of development, Chieftaincy is superfluous. With all the problems we have with democratically elected leadership, it remains a better agent of development and accountability than Chieftaincy. At least there is no law that forbids citizens from criticizing the way elected leaders apply our taxes, and we can fire them if we're not happy with their performance. But our chiefs love to live in the tenth century. They are 'beyond reproach' and can do no wrong. Try criticizing them and you will slaughter a sheep. Reality is that we pay taxes to the State of Ghana, why should we pretend we need Chiefs to develop our towns and cities?

Whiles we romanticize with the past by tenaciously holding on to an institution we do not need, the institution itself is loudly calling on the museums to prepare a place for it. Succession is still guided by outmoded rules carried along by oral tradition and different people have their own version of the tradition, with little room for reform. The senseless war of attrition among gates in the north, the needless deaths resulting from attempts to install an Awomefia in Anlo, the question of allegiance between Techiman, Tuobodom , Asanteman and the aftermath are indicators that beg the relevance of the institution in our modern world. I admire the efforts of three big chiefs namely, Okyenhene, Asantehene and the Agbogbomefia, to bring relevance to the institution. But the mission impossible nature of their endevour is underscored by the Techiman- Asanteman palava.

The Chief of Techieman arrests another chief from Tuobodom, who claims allegiance (what does that mean in the 21^st century Ghana?) to the Asantehene, and is alleged to have abused him in his palace. The chief of Tuobodom reports this to the Asanatehene, who is enraged (rightly so) that the security system failed to address an obvious injustice. What does he do? He asks the President to choose between him and the Techimanhene, and also threatens to serve the chief of Techiman with a dose of his own medicine (kidnap him) if he sets foot in his traditional area. All these would have made perfect sense in the year 1810, but we are in 2010. But not exercising the authority the Asante stool is known for will undermine the myth surrounding the office. So the Great King Solomon is caught up between pre-medieval practices of his ancestors and the reality that he doesn't wield the powers his ancestors enjoyed. Unfortunately, threatening to kidnap another person is an offence under the laws of Ghana. Will anybody dare to drag Asantehene before a court of law? The answer is no. Will the Techimanhene be called to answer to the charges of kidnapping? Possibly so. Chieftaincy has led us into a trap. The chief of Tuobodom is before a court of law for an alleged offence. If the Chief who is alleged to have kidnapped and molested him is not charged, that is a big problem. However if he is charged, but the Asantehene is left off the hook, we have another problem. The situation will degenerate into inter tribal bickering with accusations that some tribes and their Chiefs are treated differently even though we are all supposed to be equal before the law. This is my biggest problem with Chieftaincy.

The institution does not only emphasize our tribal differences but exaggerates them. At a time when we need to focus on integrating Africa into one powerful unit, we are busily dividing the already small national components of the continent along tribal lines. Most discussions on Internet message boards and other places quickly degenerate into inter-tribal insults. Chieftaincy plays a big part in dividing us along tribes when we need to foster a sense of national identity. It courts allegiance onto itself rather than Ghana. Some of these Chiefdoms and their followers delude themselves into believing that they are so popular around world, and that is their claim to fame. The truth is that the State of Ghana itself is not that popular. Your tribe may have been mentioned in history books in Africa but that is all there is to it, many forget the name before they graduate and as for the rest of the world, you never existed. Asia accounts for over fifty percent of the world's population, I will be surprised if 0.5 percent of Asians have ever head of Nana Osei Tutu I or Togbui Sri I, or the States they represent. Ethnicity is one great danger to the stability of our State. Rwanda Burundi and Kenya are examples that should deter us from threading the path of the unthinkable. Unfortunately, we have an institution called chieftaincy which is revered by too many, which either consciously or unconsciously draws us to the precipice.

Politicians have latched on to the confusion created by the position of Chieftaincy for cheap popularity. Ministries have been created to look after chieftaincy. The constitution contains phrases to massage the egos of some Chiefs. But if we want this nation to thrive, we must rise above these attempts to placate an institution that is begging to be buried. I'm hoping for a time when the institution will be consigned to the museum, so Ghana can move on.

Fools Denigrate Martyrdom

2010-02-28T16:32:00.000Z

"Like a thorn which falls into the hand of a drunkard, So is a proverb in the mouth of fools"—Proverb 26:9

The first president under Ghana's fourth republic is passionate about many things including discipline, albeit defined in his own terms. His passion for discipline saw three ex-military heads of state and five generals dispatched to the otherworld to 'cleanse' the military. For him, Solomon's admonishing expressed in Proverbs 22:15- Foolishness is bound into the heart of a child, but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him- is profound. As a thirty something year young officer who shot his way into power twice, he is used to being referred to as 'the oldman' even by much older men as a sign of respect. So when it comes to discipline ala Proverbs, he is the oldman and everyone else his son. For many years the rumour mill had it that he dished a few slaps to this and that minister at the castle to straighten them out. I only believed them when he pounced on his own vice-president a man far his senior in age at a cabinet meeting. President Mills has received a verbal lashing from him for not living up to the Rawlings standard of discipline resulting in too many 'twits' perambulating the corridors of the castle.

So it happened that a certain 27 year old Nana Darkwa thought the shortest path to fame was to talk his way. At a time the whole country was commiserating with the former first family for losing their house in a valentine day blaze, he alleges on a radio station I personally didn't know still existed that ex president Rawlings set fire to his own house. He goes ahead to throw down the gauntlet inviting the Ex president's aid to challenge his facts. Kofi Adam, haven been schooled in the Rawlings discipline doctrine, picks up the gauntlet the Rawlings style. He gets the police to storm the radio station, arrest Nana Darkwa, present him before a judge who remands him for two weeks under a law that most advocates of free speech didn't know existed, all within a matter of hours.

After he was admitted to bail by another court the next day, Nana Darkwa granted interview to JoyFM. Listening to the interview I couldn't help but admire how martyrdom easily opens its doors to fools once it can find foolish conspirators. Like a beautiful piece of art placed in the wrong setting, lovers of free speech had to rally round Nana Darkwa, an epitome of what we don't want free speech to become, to assert our right to speak. Nana Darkwa's speech on radio was not only irresponsible but reckless and repugnant, and must be condemned by all opposed to gagging our society. Ironically, such reckless commentary on radio provides ammunition to those who think our freedom of speech must be criminalized. If we allow the likes of Nana Darkwa to run riot with speech terrorism on our airwaves, we run the risk of reversing all the gains chalked in our quest for a free speech society. It behooves all lovers of free speech to condemn such irresponsible use of our priceless freedom to maintain its sanctity and scare off the likes of Nana Darkwa. I understand he went to church with his parents to thank God for his bail. If I was the preacher for the day, I would have read him Proverbs 18:6 – 'A fool's lips bring him strife, and his mouth invites a beating'. Criminal libel may be off the statutes but people who feel defamed by unsubstantiated allegations may seek their pound of flesh in a civil court. Going on radio and swearing to things that be not as if they are is not the smartest thing to do. Mama, please call your son at dawn as our elders used to do and find him some words of advice, surely there is something left in the pot for him at 27.

What do we say about the other conspirators in this saga? Kofi Adams says Rawlings didn't know about his actions and I say, Yeah Right! When it comes to making unsubstantiated and wild allegations against people high and low, Chairman Rawlings stands tall. Where are the names of the people who murdered dozens of women in Ghana? Of course we need a lie detector and Atoa Nyama to bring them out. Between what Nana Darkwa said and the many things the ex president had said, from which commeth fear and panic? Would Kofi Adams have found it prudent, if his boss had been dragged before an over-zealous regional police commander when he made wild allegations against President Kufuor and many other people? The last time I checked, the 'twit' Ludwig said he never used a police escort home. Rawlings and Co are the last to throw stones at Nana Darkwa. They live in a tall glass house. If Chairman Rawlings finds a dose of his own medicine too bitter to swallow, perhaps it can help reform him. Unlike Nana Darkwa, there is little advice left in the pot for him at his age, but maybe a dose of his bitter medicine will be more successful. I hear he will be praying for the young man. So are many men slandered and called thieves by him praying for him. It will be interesting to find out from the police commander what she thinks in retrospect. Were all the resources and efforts spent in the dramatic arrest of Nana Darkwa worth it? The melodrama only popularized Nana Darkwa's allegations. Before Nana Darkwa opened his mouth too wide for his own good, I'd read a humorous piece on Ghanaweb that claimed Yaa Beauty saved Valentine by the blaze. Many contributors told the author what they feel about his piece and they were not all complimentary. Because Auntie Rose didn't create operation Cyber Storm, the good majority of Ghanaians never heard the ludicrous meaning the author read into the blaze. I believe if Kofi Adams and the police had acted differently, not many souls will ever have heard of a certain Nana Darkwa or his nonsensical ramblings at the station. How many Ghanaians listen to that show on Top Radio? But I guess now that they have a star panelist, many more will listen including Rose Atinga, Kofi Adams and a certain judge Wilson.

Legal experts like Ace Ankomah have delivered informed treatises on the contribution of our laws and the judicial system in creating this avoidable saga. From a lay man's perspective, I'm just at a loss as to how our laws allow a judge to send someone to jail for two weeks even before his case is heard just because he shouted arson! Are we serious about decongesting our prisons? I find it difficult to understand how shouting arson can create panic and fear. How come some people can get a battalion of policemen to execute such a needless operation with alacrity whiles majority of the people will be lucky to get one police man (woman) to defend them when they are really under attack. Is somebody running a parallel security system within the state security apparatus?

The real heroes in this drama are all those who stood to be counted when our freedom was under attack. The message has been succinctly delivered; Ghanaians cherish our freedom of speech and will rise to defend it even if the speech belongs to misguided commentators like Nana. Kudos to the GJA, NMC, Prof. Karikari, Kwesi Pratt, His Excellency President Mills (who doesn't respond to Atta anymore) and many ordinary Ghanaians who told Kofi Adams, his employers and other conspirators that we frown on flagrant abuse of power, even if the perpetrators have unfettered access to the State security apparatus. Had it not been for these heroes, Nana Darkwa would have achieved undeserved martyrdom. I find this particular thought very offensive. Fools denigrate martyrdom, but the truth is they can easily achieve it once they find conspirators who have 'it' in equal measure. When the role call of Ghanaian martyrs is made and we hear Nana Darkwa's name, it should be for reasons more noble than his post valentine day babble. This generation have no business soiling the achievements of Sergeant Adjetey, Lance Corporal Attipoe and Private Odartey-Lamptey who we salute today on the 28th of February.

When Will The Horse Stop Dancing?

2010-02-21T18:22:00.001Z

Once upon a time, the Kings of a city called gold had to occupy the city square. The perimeter of the square was adorned with the great fromtomfrom drums draped in the city's colours that depicted blood, riches and food. The king calls the tune, and as the master drummers pounds the cow skin at the head of the drum, the king will dance and dance and dance. The fate of the animals in the city was dependent on how well the king dances. That the animals prosper, go hungry, are healthy or happy depended on the dance. Among the animals were the horse, elephant, tortoise, cockerel, and the dogs.

Twenty-two years after the three- lions was forced to abandon the city, a dog occupied the square. The king like other dogs of war before him had no royal blood but apprehended royalty by shedding blood. They shared the horse's military tradition, but were soon to share the royal destiny, except that the horse was very ruthless in dispatching the dogs before him to the ancestors. One by one three kings and five advisors were forced to swear eternal loyalty to the gun as they faced their nemesis at the stakes close to the Atlantic Ocean. Who born dog?

The horse was not the most intelligent of animals but his shear bravado won him great following and his ruthlessness inspired trepidation among foes and friends alike. The horse's dances became a great source of worry to many. He galloped, he stamped, he screamed and with great tantrums he remonstrated his dissatisfaction with everything but himself. He made war dances even when a new baby is being christened. He danced Atsiagbekor, he danced Adzohu, he danced Takai and he won't stop dancing Gadzo. He soon acquired messianic status among his followers. Even foul invectives spewing without restrain from his mouth became a religious creed. He couldn't do wrong and he considers himself infallible. He tolerated little descent, to the extent that he beat up his own drummers playing to his tune, to instill discipline. Nobody dared tell him he erred; he was larger than life, who born dog?

After years of dancing unchallenged, the horse grudgingly accepted the will of the animals- A dance for a king, two dances no more. The horse anointed the tortoise to take over the mantle from him. The tortoise was a very learned animal by all standards, but the animals preferred the elephant for a king. So the elephant occupied the square and danced, and danced and danced. Unfortunately the horse couldn't watch the elephant dance. 'An elephant cannot dance' he screamed. 'He is too big to move like I did'. The horse stayed outside the square but never stopped courting attention away from the elephant, so as the elephant shook, the horse danced outside the circle. Even the dogs of war I dealt with, who fears an elephant he assured himself. Who born dog?

As he danced outside the square, many of his followers who knew he was dancing amiss refused to call him to order. More intelligent animals in his fold always appeared to rationalize his rants and pants outside the square no matter how nonsensical. The elephant and the elephant's followers screamed at him, but who born dog? So the horse danced and his sages rationalized his actions as the tortoise and others cheered him on to the chagrin of the elephant.

The animals had decreed, 'A dance for a king, two dances no more', so the elephant had to leave the square to be replaced by the tortoise according to the will of the animals expressed in a vote. Many had been worried about the tortoise occupying the square, because he had sworn openly to seek the counsel of the horse by the minute. But the animals this time had called on the tortoise to dance so he must dance and so he danced and danced but alas the horse is still not happy. Ah, did the tortoise forget his oath to seek counsel? Why is he making the horse mad? The horse is still dancing even with the tortoise in the square. The learned tortoise was too intelligent to attempt to take on the horse in fight; it would be the height of folly to attempt such a feat. So he ignored the horse and went on with his dance. But as the tortoise danced, the horse kept dancing even at a more fervent pace. He prophesied doomsday for the tortoise, poured out vituperations at the drummers who beat the tune of the tortoise. 'Your dance moves are too slow Mr. Tortoise', the horse kept shouting. 'Didn't you see how I danced when I had the square?' The tortoise and the tortoise's advisors are in a fix. 'We followed him to dance in the square, we cheered him to dance outside the square, now we have the square but he won't stop dancing, we have created a monster, the beast within is more difficult to tackle', they pondered over their predicament.

In another mad moment of rage, the horse described the tortoise, who stood a couple of meters away from him, as only fit to take care of dead bodies, what did the tortoise do? He smiled. But the horse won't stop dancing. Now he chided the tortoise, 'you're not man enough to beat your followers as I did mine' 'you think you have a seer that protects you, bring him from the city called Oil and we will teach him about God.' God is angry with you, he will kick you and your undisciplined, insatiable and fatherless followers out of the square and don't think I will ever leave the square with you, I will always be here dancing and kicking and screaming because I am God's gift to the city called Gold and no one deserves the square but me." By the way, the Horse is calling others fatherless, does anyone know his father?

Even the elephant went from being amused to being worried. He called the tortoise and asked the learned tortoise, "How do you watch this un-concerned?" "Do you need a psychiatrist?" The tortoise replied firmly, 'NO, I don't need one'. "Ponko Abo Dam A, Ne Wura No Dze Ommbuo Dam Bi" (to wit a mad horse doesn't determine the owner's sanity). 'Take this from me Mr. elephant, if you jump off a mad horse, you'll be trampled to death'. 'Hold tight until it is tired and has no energy to jump and kick'. 'Gently get off the saddle and walk away to safety when it lies to catch its breath'. 'My horse may be mad , but I am very sane'.

The moral of the story is simple, when you encourage evil because it feasts on your enemy's flesh, after your enemy is consumed, evil feats on your flesh.

I'm curious to know how this story will end if I have to tell it to my grand children many decades to come. When did the horse stop dancing? Will he ever stop dancing?

Disclaimer: this story is not about any animal, four legs or two legs, living or dead. Any resemblance to any event is a mere co-incidence. It isn't meant to create fear or panic so the police need not bother to visit. It is a story, told the way our grandmothers taught us, to keep the story telling tradition alive.

Yank Them Off, Mr. Joe Gidisu

2010-02-08T18:04:00.000Z

Living in Ghana is like running a steeple chase. When you overcome one hurdle, another one is thrown into your path. Koo Santana grew up living in a slum called Maamobi. The location in the middle of the capital was great but he hated every other bit of it - the lack of decent toilet and bathroom, filth, poorly ventilated rooms, taps that don't flow, etc – and couldn't wait to get out of the place once he started earning his own money. He struggles out of the mess and finds himself a little self-contained house in Sakumono. To overcome the transportation challenges, he gets himself a second hand car which spends a fair bit of time with mechanics. A good number of the mechanics are Junior High School dropouts who cannot read any manufacturer's manual, yet the engineering monster is at their mercy. Trial and error is their faithful methodology, except that such ineptitude translates to unnecessary cost, downtime and sometimes avoidable accidents for the owner of the car. From Sakumono, any of three routes will get him to his office at the central business district. The route through Nungua is a traffic legend. The Spintex road has fast out-paced its cousin in Nungua. Set off at 6a.m and you will get to the office at 8:30 am already late for work. The third option, through Tema township via the beach road and then across the Tema-Accra motorway clocks over 40km on his odometer daily in one direction, but is the only route that gets him to the office before 8 a.m. This distance was reduced by a few kilometers as motorists forced the authorities to give a tacit approval to the use of a bypass with direct access to the motorway. The damage to his pocket was in the form of high fuel bills which he bore quietly.

He knew he couldn't keep pace with the astronomical increase in rent in this middle class area, so he got himself a piece of land in Afienya , more than 10km from Tema, to put up a three bedroom for himself. This was after his attempt to get a plot of land in Tema which is nearer to Accra was thwarted by the US dollar price tag set by Tema development Corporation( Is it company?) (TDC). When he complained about putting dollar tags on Land in Ghana, the marketing staff at the Ghana government owned TDC scolded him for talking too much and reminded him that TDC serviced plots were meant for people living and working outside Ghana. He was forced to admit that good things, even those provided by the government he pays taxes to, were not meant for him because he chose to live in Ghana after his education. Monkeys, they say play by sizes so Koo Santa moved two towns away to Afienya where he put a little cottage from where he commutes daily to work in Accra. He escaped the huge rent advances demanded by the market but racked up his fuel bills. The longer journey meant he increased his carbon foot print and the environment suffers. Between Afienya and Accra are two toll booths which he had always taken for granted, but alas, no more. A 900% hike in tolls means he must set aside 40GHC (400,000 old cedis) for tolls every month just to commute to and from the office.

My little narration above is about real people and real events. There seem to be some punishment for every step taken to better one's life in Ghana. I have just spent 30 minutes on the motorway between Action Chapel and the Toll booth, a distance less than 2km. A bad situation is exacerbated by the many drivers that lack proper upbringing ("dzimakpla") as a result, they have no conscience-check when they drive on the shoulders of the roads to avoid a civilized queue.

First, the toll booths were creating heavy traffic on the Tetteh Quarshie and Motorway Circles so they were moved. Then electronic gates were introduced to eliminate fraud at the cash point and immediately, traffic conditions worsened, and now the new tolls didn't make it better. Has it occurred to anybody that the toll booths have outlived their usefulness on the motor way? The demarcation between Accra and Tema is long gone. It is not the fault of the average worker that Accra has escaped planning and we must live so far from the business district. It is enough punishment having to spend more on fuel and drive long distances , increasing our stress levels is a price too high for a nation as poor as Ghana. I couldn't believe it when the last government created more toll booths around Accra. I think our governments are just insensitive to our needs because we always turn out in our numbers to vote for non-performing leaders.

The argument that the toll gates are required to collect tolls to improve the road network is neither here nor there. We all know that like the street light levy which we have been paying for ages, there will be no correlation between the tolls and our street conditions. That said, I believe there are better ways of raising these tolls. It is the right of every Ghanaian to drive on decent streets, the cost of which must be borne by all. Tolling particular streets is not helpful to this course. Distribute the cost among all cars, this can be charged once a year when the cars are presented at the DVLA for examination. Foreign cars that enter Ghana through the boarders can pay a road toll before they enter the country. With this arrangement, few roads will need tolling. The toll booths that surround the city of Accra like Trojan walls are unnecessary bother to citizens. Mr. Gidisu, it's time to yank them off. If the gates go, you don't have to worry about who steals the tolls. The money spent on electronic gates will be saved, and the tolls will be deposited straight into your accounts by the banks that operate at the DVLA office. The only loss I see here is that politicians will lose the opportunity to put their "foot soldiers" at the gates in the name of providing them with jobs. Even then, the money saved can be applied to expand the economy to absorb them. Please go ahead and tax away all our earnings as you please, but Koo Santana pleads for his health. The bad traffic situation in Accra is the number 1 stress factor for most of us in Accra and other cities. They may be better here than in some other countries, but we aspire towards greater heights. It is the responsibility of our elected leaders to ease this pain. Stacking us behind toll gates will only make it worse.

By the way, when it comes to taxes, when is enough, enough? When I earn money I pay PAYE, when I buy fuel I'm taxed, when I use my cell phone or browse the Internet I pay communications tax, for daring to use electricity I'm hit with street light levy, drinking packaged water earns me a tax wrath, driving to the office from Kasoa, Afienya, Tema etc is punished for my inability to rent a house in airport with tolls, If I own a cottage I pay property rates , ignore the fact that the roads around my property will never see development in decades and I have to find more money for zoom lion to collect the rubbish I generate, and above all I pay 15% VAT directly or indirectly for all other goods and services. So under all my heavy burden of taxes, I throw my hands up into the air and decide to forget all my problems with two tots of local gin but that doesn't go well with the tax professor president so he gives me a stern rebuke with an alcohol tax. What next Mr President? Please spare the air that we breath. But do I get anything in return for all these taxes? Is that what they call the social contract? I can only concur with Kwaw kese, ABODAM! CRAAAAAAZY! Hey, I hear another tune on the radio. It's a gospel by Ron Kenoly,

"I still have joy
I still have joy
After all I've been through
I still have joy"

Somebody asked me why we're so religious in Ghana. If you take away the con that comes with that too, it is the only avenue to escape the madness.

A Lament for the Eagle- A Pentalogue

2010-01-28T22:26:00.002Z

On the 28^th day of Jan, 2010, Ghana presented a collection of gallant young men in the absence of the regular black stars to pip Nigeria 1-0 in the semifinal of AFCON 2010 in Angola. As a friend of Nigeria, I write this lament as commiserations for my many great friends and colleagues in Nigeria.

Out of Angola, ululations all over

Out of Nija, a call to the mourners

Cry my beloved Country, weep daughters of eko

Who shall believe our tale, to whom shall we tell our story

A humble pie for dinner o eagle, not so super

An eagle so entangled, its gaffer so beleaguered

The wings robbed of span, the eyes robbed of vision

Blindly it flaps for space, dazzled by the light of miniature Stars

Deliciously baked by a Chef, Gyan is his name

Here is your humble pie o eagle, not so Super

150 million voices so silenced, for once NEPA can be forgiven

The darkness is a solace, it hides our grief

Out of 150 million, we failed to find Men

To mend the wings of the eagle, to put the shine out of baby Stars

Eat your humble Pie o eagle, not so super

Where is the lamb, sacrifice him for this abomination

The Gaffer the gaffer, Yes Amadou the gaffer

The most successful Gaffer, who jumped higher than Vogts

Yet he stands accused, because the eagle contends with chickens

Eat your humble pie o eagle , not so super

A reprimand from Aso rock, a rebuke from Saudi Arabia

A sacrifice for Agbala, or a meal for Amadioha

Give him to shango , Maybe Oduduwa

East to West, even the gods reject him

Eat your humble pie o eagle, not so super

Who shall lead our battalion, who is the commander

Kanu, or Yobo

Ayigbeni, or Odemwinge

We miss you Okocha, find us a successor

Eat your humble pie o eagle, not so super

Fight not against your destiny, it is inscribed in the stars

The eagles rest on the mountains, but the stars are in the heavens

They rise in the east, and set in the west

No more controversy, the stars rule the west

Eat your humble pie o eagle, not so super

The Way The Cookie Crumbles

2010-01-10T16:44:00.000Z

Professor Mills' presidency is already a year old. He has already given rave assessment of the performance of his government during the period. Rather uncharacteristic of lecturers from Legon, he was also very charitable with grades when he assessed the first one hundred days of his stewardship. He might have taken a cue from the proverbial lizard that jumped from a tall tree and decided to praise himself if no one will, but the President and his advisors are very much aware that a good self assessment counts for little, come judgment day. Under the young fourth republic, Ghanaian voters have twice dragged out sitting governments from the castle with the latter screaming and touting what they consider as great achievements of their stewardship. Sitting governments have the tendency of falling in love with beautiful macro-economic statistics until they become opposition parties, then they become street champions and start measuring economic gains in the micro sense- the effect on the man in the street. For some reasons, many citizens have argued that the expected "trickle-down" from macro to micro never happens, and it is this perception that eventually makes governments and unmakes others. This fact is underscored by the hammering the one year old administration has received from the most unlikely of sources- the ruling party. Before the President's rave assessment, his former mentor, party founder and former President Rawlings had scored the administration poorly for its performance over the past twelve months. He believes the Party's goodwill has depleted under Mill's leadership.

It should have dawned on Uncle Atta by now that with the kind of friends he has in the ruling National Democratic Congress, he has no use for enemies. Several times in the past fifty-two weeks, he has been hit by a barrage of criticisms from NDC party-people who claim that instead of hitting the ground running as he promised, his government has been too slow to take off. It started with the so called foot soldiers grabbing toilets and demanding jobs that were promised during pre-election campaign. In no time, they were joined by the founder of the party, and then the former presidential aspirant, Spio Gabrah, pissed in. At that point some Mills loyalists thought "wait a minute, Rawlings we know, but Spio, who are you?" So they broke their silence and pissed back at Spio reminding him that his "cheap doctorate" cannot be compared with what the professor has earned. But that did not stop other party heavy weights like the majority leader Alban Bagbin and MP for Ashiaman Alfred Agbesi from having a go at their own government.

In reality all this talk from the NDC about slow government, neglect of foot soldiers, access (or lack of it) to ministers and other presidential appointees is nothing short of demanding that the President should fire everybody appointed by the previous administration and replace them with NDC supporters. It is not enough that almost all boards and state affiliated organizations have been filled with NDC sympathizers and caterers of the school feeding program have been replaced; they have to rid all public offices of people employed during the Kufuor days and overhaul the personnel working with National Youth Employment Program (NYEP). Somebody should tell these so called foot soldiers that the president is managing taxes contributed by all Ghanaians including those who didn't vote for their party. Sometimes I get the impression that they think the country belongs to them and them alone. They tend to forget that we are all partakers of the pie that the president has been busy with in the kitchen. But are they to blame?

The seed for the President's woes with his foot soldiers was sown a few years earlier when the Party was in opposition. The strategy of opposition parties seeking to wrestle power is to criticize anything the incumbent does and promise the moon when they are clueless on how to get off the ground. When they grab power, reality sinks in, but to the masses whose expectations have been hyped, they want their pound of flesh, no matter the difficulties. Add a scent of corruption to the dashed expectation, throw in arrogance responses from a couple of ministers and the die is cast. The news will be everywhere, the government does not listen, the party has been hijacked by a few, let's teach them a lesson at the ballot box. These perceptions matter more than any high scoring self assessment exercise. At this point, you can forget about all the macro-economic theories. The writing is on the wall, "MENE MENE TEKEL URPHASIN", you have been weighed and found wanting; the days of your government are numbered. That is the way the cookie crumbles.

In a moment of mediocre brilliance, the NPP created the NYEP to answer the cry of their foot soldiers. They were sent to institutions like hospitals and the police MTTU after being enrolled into the NYEP. If the police needed them and had money to recruit them, why didn't they do so? If the chaps were qualified, what stopped the nursing training schools from training them for direct employment into the hospitals using the usual channels? Why didn't the GES directly recruit them as pupil teachers? What is the use of the intermediary organization called NYEP? It is simply a political answer to an economic question. When you promise to create hundreds of thousands of jobs, you must create them. I'm not surprised they are always crying for their salaries. NYEP is a creature of politics not economics. After all this, the NPP still lost the election. The lesson is simple, mediocre solutions won't solve complex problems.

One excuse I hate to hear is that "when we made all those campaign promises, we didn't know the other Party had ran down the economy this much". I don't buy that excuse. You didn't care to look. Your only interest was to find the right words for a gullible populace to change governments, the solutions could wait till then. It is called playing politics, but I think it is mediocrity. The careless promises, including those not written in the manifesto, which take parties to power will also bring them down.

Professor Mills won't admit it openly, but his wahala is exacerbated by the fact that Rawlings is not on his side. Only time will tell if the strategy of ignoring Rawlings is a master stroke. The Prof said Rawlings is not a pain in the neck but didn't exclude other parts of his body. He also said he knows what Rawlings is capable of. Yeah right, Prof! This is his CV. He has criticized every government since 1979 (apart from his) for under-performance. Every government he criticized, he helped to bring down. The Professor's job is cut-out for him. He has two broad options- do what he promised after the Swedru Declaration -consult Rawlings day and night; or force a leadership contest in the NDC between him and his mentor. The latter option is suicidal and with the Prof's personality looks unlikely. But does he want to lead a party without being in charge? Faced with a headache similar to the Prof's, the president of Malawi, Bingu Wa Mutharika, broke away from the ruling party and formed another party even before he ended his term. But his predecessor who anointed him heir, Bakili Muluzi, is not Rawlings. Prof, wish you luck. If you choose that path of legends remember to consult with the Seer T.B. Joshua. The coming congress is perfect opportunity for a proxy war.

Sour grapes might have motivated Spio Gabrah to piss-in into team selection, but the Prof must admit that some of his ministers are not fit even for the reserve bench. A useless suggestion Prof, take a critical look at your team sheet, whoever you won't hire to manage your own company, throw them out. I think you can start with Mark Wayongo, the Upper East Regional Minister and Kofi Opoku Manu, the Ashanti regional Minister. The former's justification of human rights abuses by soldiers in his region and the latter's call to supporters to slap political opponents are a throwback to the dark days of our history. Opoku Manu's misguided call, reminiscent of a call by a certain force Sergeant Major in the Rawlings days for the freedom to slap to counter balance the freedom of speech, cannot be ignored because he said it at a part rally. Such talks have led to civil wars in other countries in Africa. Politicians must learn the art of speaking responsibly even at party meetings to preserve the unity and sanctity of this country.

One can't overstate the fact that the government's success is hinged on the quality of human resources deployed. Where political considerations weigh heavily, not only in ministerial appointments, but every other job with direct or indirect government oversight, Ghana can be the only loser in the long run. Will the NDC tread this path after accusing the NPP of nepotism in job distribution?

If the events of the past twelve months are anything to go by, Professor Mills may set an unenviable record- The first government under the first republic that didn't make a second term. That is if the NPP can overcome its own mess created by the quest for personal aggrandizement. But that doesn't rule out the possibility of losing his party's nomination if things don't change quickly.

With all the criticisms coming from within his own party, and what is yet to come from the slumbering opposition, the President is under pressure to produce quick fixes. That is when politics takes precedence over any other science. Such mediocre solutions only make the Pie crumble even faster. Mr. President the unborn generations of Ghana are crying out to you, Make a difference! Raise the bar! Eschew the temptation to use benchmarks set by Rawlings and Kufuor. They are too low. Posterity yearns to celebrate a real hero, fill that gap. Look beyond satisfying foot soldiers and ensure that Ghana produces employable and confident youths who will be assimilated into a well structured economy. If most of our youths are employed, they will be so busy that they will not be enlisted into the foot army of any party. With few foot soldiers, you can concentrate on baking our pie, Ghana's Pie not NDC's Pie. If NPP couldn't hold on to power by giving state jobs to party-people you won't. If NDC couldn't retain power in 2000 by showing off the supposed achievements of institutions like 31^st December movement, it won't work now.

Happy One Year Anniversary, Mr. President.

The Christmas Hamper the President Cannot Despise

2009-12-26T07:49:00.002Z

The president of Ogyakrom Professor Evans Atta Mills has asked all presidential hamper wielding Ghanaians to look for other destinations apart from the castle to deliver their goodies. He simply doesn't want to be indebted to anybody because of a hamper. Unlike Cain, he is not selling his birth right for a meal. He needs a free conscience to crack the whip when he has to, not even the celebration of the good news of the birth of Christ will take that away from him. In the coming year, I expect him to Fast Track a couple of Kuffuor's appointees either to Nsawam or Freedom Square, fire a few of his predecessor's appointees and replace them with loyal but hungry NDC faithfuls and maybe throw a few of his own ministers out of job. It is all part of his calling, some decisions are not nice but they must be taken.

I believe that if we are to tackle corruption in Africa, we must deal with gifts in very unconventional terms. I do not believe that ordinarily a Christmas hamper will corrupt a president, but with the disingenuous use of gifts to oil the wheels of the corruption train in Africa, only God knows what people have done in the past and were preparing to do with Christmas hampers. For that reason, I congratulate Uncle Fiifii for derailing the Africa Gift Train this Christmas. Unlike his predecessors he has rejected any ride on the train. Rejecting Christmas hampers resonates loudly in a country like Ghana where it is considered rude to reject a gift. If you lose track of time, three signs appearing at the same time can tell you that Christmas is near; decorations including the Christmas tree which doesn't grow in Ghana, Christmas carols some of which are meaningless in our context talking about snow fall and white Christmas at a time that we are experiencing dry harmattan winds, and of course the hampers. The gifts always cause the greatest controversies. My Jehovah's Witness colleague, Santa Rob had a problem with the Christmas prefix, so he had to rechristen many items to ensure he doesn't miss out of what we have all toiled for. He will say end of year party instead of Christmas party, hamper instead of Christmas hamper. If Christmas hampers and gifts are given in the spirit of Christmas, how come they are mostly given to those who do not need them? If you take a tally in any office, the people lower down the ladder like the messenger hardly receive any hamper from suppliers, they are mostly delivered to people of influence like the CEO and other managers who have the power to switch suppliers. For the receptionist, being female, young and beautiful enhances your hamper receiving status. The driver who is always in the view of the so called business partners throughout the year is totally forgotten at Christmas. There must be more to this hamper business, Mr. President is right! If you think God has touched your heart this Christmas, please send your gifts and hampers to the Osu children's home, they really need them.

Regardless of these controversies associated with gifts, I am proposing a gift to the president that he cannot refuse. My vote come 2012. I will present this gift on one condition- Sack the Hawkers!

It has become an urban myth that if you clear our streets of hawkers, you will lose an election. I haven't yet seen any poll backing that claim, but it is one that politicians hold dear and hate to love. I suspect it has to do with the numbers that brandish all manner of goods at you on the streets and pavements. If all those numbers are converted to votes, either for or against, what a difference it will make at the polls. But the politicians seem to forget the other critical mass that drives on the streets of major towns and cities and is tired of having to dodge hawkers every day of the week. There is also another group who just wishes the pavements will be used for what they were built for- pedestrian walk. The good news is that they all have votes. The day the NPP government stopped Adjiri Blankson from clearing hawkers off the streets of Accra , I made two decisions; to stop shopping in the central business district until we learn to be civilized, and to withhold my votes from the short sighted politicians who couldn't see beyond cheap popularity. I have since carried out those decisions but unfortunately for Professor Mills, he didn't benefit from the second decision because I blamed his party for some irresponsible campaigning leading to the election. But I am assuring the president of my vote if he takes the tough decision of making the streets of Ghana look like it is part of civilization.

Sincerely, I appreciate the dilemma Politicians face when the issue of hawkers and our streets rear its head. It sounds like common sense, the market is created for shopping, the streets for driving and the pavement for walking. Why should the shops move to take over the streets and the pavements? The answer though simple, raises difficult problems. This is the result of decades of poor governance. We have an educational system that creates armies of youth mostly from rural Ghana who are only equipped to buy and sell. Sacking them from the streets means you must find alternate employment for them. Employment for unemployable youth is a promise every government has made but failed to deliver. That is the real headache for politicians when they hear "drive the hawkers away". The easiest solution is the ostrich approach; turn a blind eye to the problem on our streets. But politicians must balance this headache with my right to walk on pavements constructed with my tax money without being harassed and pushed by people who think it is their right to sell and my right to drive safely on streets constructed for that purpose. I don't want to add to my stress level dodging running hawkers on the streets after a stressful day in the office. There is only one way a politician can win this battle; satisfy the ever growing army of youth and satisfy me. The solution will require short, medium and long term measures that have been carefully thought of and crafted. Providing such solutions is the reason we elect leaders and we must task them to provide the answers. Politics is not just another avenue for employment; it is the embodiment for our hopes and aspirations as a people. For us in Ghana and Africa, we have a long way to go to actualize those dreams. Therefore ostrich solutions will not suffice.

Mr. President, I want my street back and I want my pavement back. You may have ordered Mayor Vandapuije to stop decongesting Accra , but please note that he has my support and the support of many road users who will not necessarily congregate to show our support. Also note that we also have votes. I will consign my vote to you as a Pre-Christmas present in 2012 if you deliver the streets back to us, and I suspect many other people will do same. This is one hamper you can't ignore.

PS: Is the President, through State Protocol, giving out hampers this Christmas?

The Kinapharma Raid: Just Another Assault on Rights in Ghana

2009-12-24T21:04:00.001Z

The Ghanaian pharmaceutical company KinaPharma found itself at the end of a practical joke when the might of the Ghana police force descended on it to kick some pharma(medicine) out of their Kingdom because the police had "reasonable suspicion" that the company was dealing in banned narcotics. With adrenalin pumping, the law enforcers did not only move drugs that had supposedly tested partially for cocaine out of the company premise for further testing, but also arrested some of the company's managers for "possessing substances prohibited under Ghana's Narcotic Control Law" even before test results were ready. Almost a week after test results proved that neither the company nor its directors did anything of that sort, they were still struggling to get the police to say three words- "We are sorry". Instead, the police through the director of CID, DCOP Frank Adu Poku, justified their raid on one of Ghana's success stories as far as indigenous businesses are concerned, emphatically stating that they owe the company no apology. It doesn't seem to matter that their 'reasonable' action and the indiscreet manner it was carried out, needlessly almost destroyed a company's reputation and impugned the reputation of its directors and officials some of whom were arrested when we were not even sure a crime had been committed. In another country, beyond rendering an apology, the police will re-examine its intelligence and other processes to avoid repeating the KinaPharma fiasco. But that is not the Macho Ghana Police Force, they are without regret.

What befell Kinapharma brings to fore a worrying truth that confronts every civilized society. The processes that ensure law and order are susceptible to both institutional and individual errors, and sometimes abuses. When the institutions that dispense justice are faced with such failings, they easily choose the path of bullishness and lies to hide the truth. In so doing, our attempts to seek justice end up perpetrating injustice on many citizens. For countries like Ghana, the situation is further blighted by the indifference of citizens towards such abuses. These institutions are therefore under little pressure to improve the processes to minimize such frailties. In fact, compared to others without the wherewithal to garner public interest in their cause or to hire the best lawyers and experts to prove their innocence, KinaPharma had it lightly. The police raids a neighborhood arrests the homeless, parades them as armed robbers, they are remanded in prisons around the country and forgotten- no prosecution. The police guns down ten young men and presents them as armed robbers, the dead stay dumb. This sad narration does not only indict our security system but also underscores the attitude of our society to the rights of people.

Seventeen years ago, I learnt that, when the police are involved, it is important to apply Jesus' admonishing in Matt 5:25 (Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison), if you value your freedom. It doesn't matter if you're right or wrong. On that day, somebody pulled my wallet from my back pocket while we were struggling to get into a "tro-tro" at a bus terminal close to a police station in Accra. I got down from the bus shouting for my wallet to be returned. Then I saw this giant of a man walking away from the bus holding a polythene bag. His demeanor appeared suspicious and his huge frame scary. I mustered courage and asked him to return my wallet. He swore that he hadn't taken my wallet, but I convinced him to walk to the police station for a search to prove his innocence. He grudgingly followed me to the station. That is when the show began. Before I could finish narrating my story to the police officer at the counter, another officer approached from behind and gave this guy a good slap, even I was taken aback. Of course, the thick tall man returned the favour after which three or four police men pounced on him, subdued him and threw him in the police cells. I was totally stunned. Is that how easy it is to get somebody locked up? The man stayed locked overnight without admitting to the theft, neither was my wallet found on him. Somebody claiming to be his brother visited the station and paid the amount of money that was in the wallet, the police advised me to take the money since there is little evidence to tie him to the crime in a court. However, they were sure the guy was an accomplice to the theft, because they found out that he had a previous record. Whoever stole my wallet dumped it somewhere near the station without the money but with my id card, a biker found it and dropped it in my hall of residence. The scar of that incidence remains on my conscience till today. What if the guy was innocent? Maybe he is a jailbird but does that mean he took my money?

We have handed over authority to institutions like the police that allow them to curtail our individual freedoms for the common good of society. How do we ensure that these powers are not exercised for the wrong reasons? Yes, the police have the power to detain me for 48 hours but at what point do we know when the power has been exercised recklessly? I was once stopped by a policeman who I had always admired from a distance because of the enthusiasm with which he directed traffic. He accused me of jumping a red light, and I knew I hadn't, and if I had, from where he was standing, it would be difficult for him to swear to it. His point was that another car in the dual lane stopped whiles I didn't. I explained that that car was well behind me. The policeman gave me a simple advice, if I continue challenging him, he will waste my time. He was right. The traffic lights had no cameras to prove who was telling the truth. He will ask me to sit at the police station for hours before he takes my details. I will spend more hours at a court over a traffic incidence. The judge will believe him because of who he is and impose a fine after all the hours spent trying to prove my innocence. Time was one commodity I didn't have, so I took his advice, I stopped challenging him, but he lost my respect that day.

In more serious cases, limbs and lives are lost as a result of "reasonable actions" by law enforcement agencies. In 2006 policemen shot and killed four people they mistook for armed robbers. In another incident a 26 year old man was mistaken for a robber and killed by the police. In both cases the police had initially insisted that they killed armed robbers until loud noises in the media forced them to back track. The fact that even with the most noble of intentions, law enforcers may end up injuring innocent citizens makes it imperative for our police to exercise circumspection especially in the use of lethal force. The only way to ensure that the police get into the habit of exercising such care is to inspect what they do. Humans will only do what you inspect and not what you expect. Any police action that results in the death of any human being must be examined by an independent body. Those found to have acted recklessly or criminally leading to the loss of human life must be withdrawn from the force and other sanctions applied as stipulated by law.

The expression of machismo by the police will never stop until the covert and overt endorsement of such acts cease. Human rights activists are subjected to all manner of vituperations, especially on radio call-in programs, when they raise issues with the number of people killed in police operations. The impression is created that human rights activists love 'criminals' more than they love the police, but that is not true. I am an advocate for the respect of everybody's right including armed robbers' but I detest armed robbers especially those who maim and kill innocent people whose property they have no right to take. In fact, I am not against the death penalty for willful murderers in principle, but I am more scared of an imperfect judicial system that wrongly tags innocent citizens found at the wrong place at the wrong time as killers, and committing murder by putting them to death in an attempt to seek justice. For this reason, I will drop my support for the death penalty. A black American has just been released from jail in the USA after spending over thirty years behind bars for a crime he didn't commit. If the death penalty had been applied, restitution would have been impossible for this man wronged by the society. This is what many Ghanaians including law enforcement officers lose sight of- not everybody who looks like the culprit really committed the crime. If we exact our own kind of justice before the truth emerges, we may end up with blood on our hands.

I sympathize with the management of KinaPharma, but they will be lucky to get an apology from the Ghana police force because to our macho police, their pain is business as usual. DCOP Frank Adu Poku couldn't have delivered the message better.

Contempt of Toilet in Ghana

2009-12-14T16:04:00.002Z

Some subjects cannot be broached without profuse apologies. As we say in Ghana Taflatse seven times for my Sakalogue on something so smelly.

I was driving on the motorway one morning when a woman declared on Joy FM in impeccable fante inter-laced with the queen's English, "yede contempt atu tiefi nudu" to wit she has placed contempt on toilet. I received half a dozen calls from friends in the next couple of minutes asking if I was listening to Joy FM. Truth be told, the government and the people of Ghana have been treating this important byproduct of the digestive system with great contempt . We understand that to keep the body alive we need to expel the stuff (it will come out any way if you refuse to), and when out, storage is very important if we want to avoid an over-charitable distribution of disease causing parasites in our society. However, symptomatic of our failure in resolving our problem as a nation, we have done a bad job of collecting and storing away those lumps from the stomach.

Huge deposits of the substance have been scattered in all manner of places that have nothing to do with the stuff. The gods of the sea have not signed a toilet pact with Ogyakromians but the beaches are popular with people seeking quick stomach downloads. Open gutters, rivers, forest reserves, backyards ('efitsire') are popular with many stomach surfers in Ogyakrom. The men, women and children who desecrate the beautiful beaches are not savages- simply put, there are no decent toilets at their places of abode. Where available, they're either over-used or not worth the name, or both. District and metropolitan assemblies have failed to enforce their own laws that make it mandatory for landlords to provide toilets in their houses. In certain parts of the capital, Accra, many landlords converted their pan-latrine toilets into extra rooms and asked the tenants to use public places of convenience. To live successfully in one of these houses, you must have total control of your bowels under the most turbulent stomach conditions. If you don't, your opprobrium is beyond salvage. Apart from having to hold it in until you get to the public toilet that can be any distance away from your house, you have to contend with a long queue of surfers, some holding soap dishes half filled with enema in one hand and enema syringe ("bentua") in the other, all waiting their turn to download. Unfortunately for you, there are no emergency procedures to take care of your circumstances. Under such circumstances, your best bet is to look for any place more convenient than this place of convenience, this could be anywhere- the beach, the bush, behind that house, a carrier bag in your bedroom if you live alone- alas, you've joined the savages.

Why do we call these public toilets places of convenience? You can actually walk in with your father-in-law-in-waiting and finish negotiating the bride price for your fiancée, whiles at it. The stench emanating from the place can have devastating consequences on the nerves that control smell if exposure is not minimized. In fact, a couple of these toilets imploded under its own methane (or whatever gas it is) a decade or so ago. Some chaps in Kumasi attempted to improve these toilets by inventing the KVIP- Kumasi Ventilated Improved Pit Latrine. I never understood why these chaps invented the KVIP at a time we had been used to WCs for decades. I was even more baffled by the way politicians loved to inaugurate these toilets. If you have ever used the so called improved pit latrine you realize it is no technology at all. However, after an encounter with a mobile toilet in the middle of London, I revised my notes on the technology.

Whiles shopping on the high streets in London in February 1998, I felt a strong call of nature. Incidentally it was on that trip that I adopted the name Ogyakromian. Luckily I located a mobile toilet right there in the middle of everywhere. As soon as the door moved to close position and Ogyakromian prepared to dialogue with nature, I saw a note on the closed door advising users of the system that the door is programmed to open AUTOMATICALLY after 15 minutes. What? "What if the system mistimed my session and flings open after 2 minutes?" "I wasn't wearing a watch, what if I misjudge 15 minutes?" As these thoughts flushed through my mind, I decided that was it, I wasn't going expose myself to an opprobrium of this magnitude, I was out of the place before you could cross the last 't' in the word toilet. I don't know who put an upper limit of 15 minutes on a session with nature, but with the KVIP system, the owners of the toilet didn't have to worry about such issues, you will only stay in that room if you have to be there, the stench will kick you out, no electronics required.

Sometimes I do wonder why people in certain areas in Accra queue to vote for politicians who cannot even guarantee them a decent place to exercise one of the most private rights of a citizen. The approach to solving this problem has always been half-hearted. For instance, in the heat of Rawlings' revolution, he is reported to have said that people with two WCs in their homes must transfer one to the people of Nima. Brilliant Solution: It is more difficult to bring dignity to the millions who need it by providing them with toilets, why not strip dignity off the few who have it by taking toilets away from them to create equality at the baseline. Other solutions have been capitalist in nature. Long before the Internet was invented, toilet hotspots were
created in
densely populated areas to serve the needs of the populace. This approach has served politicians in more ways than one. Some of these toilets are out sourced to party faithful who have been promised jobs. This is so important that daggers are drawn when governments are changed without change in the management of the toilets. It is one of such incidents that prompted the woman to call for "contempt on the toilet". Secondly, with the pressure for politicians to show evidence of development, why not keep building these public KVIPs? A toilet here, a toilet there, and your votes are banked! If every home has its own toilet, what will the politician do for development? Roads? That is hellishly expensive.

Dr. Charles Wereko Brobbey and his Ghana at 50 attempted to solve some of our toilet worries. Though good intentioned, the celebration ended with no visible toilets on our highways, what a shame. Even if it had been successful, his project will not solve the real problem with our toilet or lack of it. Our people really understand the importance of toilets in the affairs of men but we simply have failed to address the matters arising. In the Anlo tribe for example, a man on the way to visit the toilet is exempted from greeting anyone along the way. Of course, with the greetings are exchanged, asking after every object in the house in turn, if you insist on greeting, there shall be a performance. So we recognize the fact that toilets must be accessible without impedance, not even cultural impedance is good enough. So why have we for many years watched queues buildup at these toilet hotspots that have become business ventures and have refused to insist on a simple rule- every house and its own toilet(s)?

Let's face it; in the court of the toilet judge, we're in Contempt!

Bayie Kɔɔɔɔɔ (II) - The Witches Congregate

2009-12-07T18:30:00.009Z

"The witch cried yesterday and the child died today, who does not know that it was the witch that cried yesterday that killed the child who died today" Yoruba proverb. (http://www.iheu.org/node/2856)

Brutus, My brother from another mother, what will you do if you see a temple in the middle of the forest, and you are told that it is hosting the annual conference of global witches at that moment? Coming from Europe, you may be tempted to draw near the building to see for yourself. But if this happens anywhere in Africa, don't attempt to access anything from that temple using any of your five senses, flee immediately. In my earlier Sakalogue on the activities of the witches of Ghana, I told you these chaps are not friendly, they are deadly. The people of Hyiawu-Besease in the Bosomtwe Kwanwoma District of the Ashanti Region of Ghana are dead worried because the Association of Witches in West Africa (AWWA) has scheduled its annual conference for the town. The chief and people of the town are doing everything under the sun to scuttle these eerie creatures even before the meeting begins.

Dormant prayer warriors have suddenly found the fuel to energize their wheels. A day of prayer and fasting was declared at which the people came together and called on Jehovah to send down warrior angels to scatter the heretic breed. Some intellectuals in the adjoining towns have contacted celebrated mathematicians to calculate the "gyratik radius" – the furthest distance at which you can feel the influence of a gyrating witch. They plan to be outside the "africamotive field" of influence (determined by the gyratic radius) of the conference as a safety measure. Dan Blocker, the chairman of Hyiawu Besease Macho Men (HBMM) has organized his boys to show courage in a way that has annoyed many animal rights activists. The Macho men will take turns in keeping vigil in the forests of the town. Any owl that is seen in the forest must be kicked, crashed, shot or stoned to death. Conspicuously missing in these activities is a libation ceremony to invoke the protection of the ancestors. Our elders are very smart people in Africa. Why invoke the spirit of the ancestors against the witches when every ancestor including my 79 year old grandfather was killed by a witch? They will be no match for the witches.

As I mentioned in my first Sakalogue on witches, the easiest way to identify a witch in a village is to look for a defenseless woman whose face is battered by want, leaving little beauty to be cherished. It is believed that a witches spiritually fly out of their body frames taking the form of owls as they hounds their prey. They leave their human body in a coma-like state without the ability to respond to stimulus. Based on this knowledge, witch-hunters all over Ghana will pay nocturnal visits to identified suspected witches, whoever fails to respond to loud bangs on the door will be moved from the suspect-list to a list of certified witches and will be dealt with according to the law of the village.

The question on the lips of the people of Hyiawu Besease is "why this town?" In fact, this is the second time in two years that a conference of witches has been scheduled for a town in the Ashanti region. Nobody really knows what happened to the first conference. There is a deity in the Ashanti region called Antoa Nyama, I'm surprised nobody has asked it to make the conference 'nyamaaa'. The problem is we can't tell if the meetings happen or not because nobody knows the form the meetings will take- Physical or spiritual. More interesting is the fact that seemingly, this organization has neither a spokesman nor any identifiable human executive. Their address, both globally and locally, remains unknown, yet their meeting and the agenda has been widely circulated beyond the wildest dreams of any advertising organization for nothing- such a feat can only be chalked by principalities and powers beyond this realm- these must be witches of Africa for sure.

Brutus, you can feel the trepidation in the air. The people of Hyiawu-Besease have already seen some signs. A middle aged woman died shortly after brushing her teeth. A seven bedroom house collapsed and burnt to ashes- I know what you're thinking, shouldn't we withdraw the license of the contractor that put up the building for doing a shoddy job? Hmmm, you see, this one, it is not his fault. It can't be. At a time that witches of unknown origin and indeterminate address have promised the loss of almost a million lives in an operation dubbed "blood galore", every death must be consigned to their account.

I have some personal challenges in my family and some colleagues have advised that it could be attributed to the things I say and write about these awe inspiring creatures but "tofiakwa" with a finger-snap over my head. As Balaam said of Israel to Balak, Numbers 23:23; "There is no enchantment against Ogyakromian, neither is there divination against my family".

Sometimes my bones quiver with great trepidation at these things. No, not of the witches or what they do or do not do, but of the thousands of Ghanaians who do what they shouldn't do, and do not do what they should because of such unsubstantiated stories- opportunities lost!

Yours truly,

Ogyakromian

WHY PRESIDENT MILLS MUST FIRE THE UPPER EAST REGIONAL MINISTER

2009-11-27T13:57:00.001Z

If I had the President’s ear, I will advise him to fire Mr. Mark Wayongo the Upper East Regional Minister with immediate effect. This gentleman has proven, by comments he made after video evidence emerged showing the extent to which military offices tortured and dehumanized suspects in Bawku, that he is not cut for that important position. In an earlier article, I criticized the action of the soldiers who stripped two suspects naked and paraded them in the street of Bawku. At the time, the soldiers had attempted to rationalize their action in a most uncanny way, albeit unsuccessfully. The video provided proof that the soldiers lied through their teeth when they claimed they didn’t molest anybody. Faced with this evidence, the President’s representative in the region, Mark Wayongo is asking Ghanaians not to “over-flog” the issue for the following reasons:

i. The soldiers will feel unwanted and disillusioned. They will take a back stage when things are going wrong leading to serious consequences.

ii. Stripping the men naked is “better” than attempting to kill people (the crime the two men have been accused of)

iii. The treatment is justified in Bawku because of the “abnormal” situation in the town. It would have been un acceptable in Accra

iv. Criticizing the soldiers will prolong the conflict.

Mr. Wayongo has demonstrated that he doesn’t understand what constitutional rule is about. Perhaps he was one of the people who enjoyed the “good old days” under military rule and is relishing the prospects of a return to the lawlessness that characterized those periods of our history.

It may be pardonable if ordinary citizens call into radio stations and suggest that it is ok to abuse the rights of people in conflict zones, but it is totally unacceptable when a minister of state tows that line. Mr . Wayongo and anybody else who thinks like him must understand that you cannot teach the soldiers one way to behave in Bawku and another way to behave in Accra, no matter the circumstances. Perhaps he will understand my point if he pictures a hypothetical scenario where soldiers take up arms and usurp political power (as they did in 1981) and they decide that that parading ministers of state like Mark Wayongo naked on the streets will restore discipline in the country. He should just picture himself being paraded naked in his home town for whatever reason, and rethink his stance. I do not have to remind him that the soldiers actually stripped women naked in Accra during the so called revolution.

I will be quick to stress that like any decent Ghanaian, I want the Bawku crisis solved pronto. In fact I made the point strongly in an earlier article, Bawku’s Bunkers and Baulkers. But in our attempt to get rid of impunity up north, it makes no sense to encourage a more dangerous kind of impunity in which the military are made to feel they can take the law into their own hands when they deem fit and get away with it.

Mr. Wayongo should also understand that a suspect is not a criminal. What will he say if a court of competent jurisdiction looks into this case and realizes that the suspects have had been wrongfully accused? Does he know of any way to restore their dignity in Bawku?

Mr. Wayongo asserts that soldiers will get disillusioned if we insist they behave right in a conflict zone. I wish to remind him that it is such trail of thought that has kept the murderers of Issah Mobilla out of jail till this time, a situation the minister’s party made campaign capital out of. Let me also remind him that American servicemen in Iraq haven’t remained aloof because some of their colleagues are serving time for abusing prisoners’ rights in Abu Ghraib prison. When we deploy our soldiers anywhere, the least we expect of them is professionalism and discipline that upholds our constitution and international law. The soldiers only abdicate these values because they know their commanders and politicians like Mark Wayongo will come to their rescue. If the message is sent throughout our society that we abhor such barbarism as took place in Bawku, the soldiers will behave. Why do you think our soldiers earn all those accolades when working under UN instructions on peace keeping duties? They only follow the standards. Do our soldiers live up to their international reputation when working in Ghana? I think no. And this is because our society makes apologies for unprofessionalism of the kind exhibited by the soldiers in this instant.

Does the regional minister actually believe that the impunity in Bawku will be curtailed by further impunity? Sending soldiers and policemen to Bawku to “discipline” suspects before a competent court of law has an opportunity to assess their guilt will only draw the military into the fracas in the north. They will lose support of innocent citizens who should be strong allies in stopping the conflict. Winning hearts and minds is key to the to a resolution. Encouraging military brutality will only entrench the conflict. If President Mills wants to solve the protracted conflict in Bawku, he must get rid of this man, he lacks the skills to bring peace to the town.

I am not a fan of Spio Gabrah, but he was spot on when he said some of these ministers should never have made it to the substitute bench. Mr. Mark Wayongo has demonstrated that he is one of such. He has flaunted the opportunity to prove that he is belongs to Team A.

The military is a very important institution in Ghana’s development. We love them and we want to be proud of them at all times. Therefore when such infractions occur, we expect the leadership to come out and assure us that as an institution, they haven’t given up our shared values, and that they will rein in the deviants in their fold

The ilk of Wayongo must understand that human rights are universal non-negotiable rights that differentiate us from animals. That is what guarantees each of us the sanity we enjoy in Ghana. If we contrive to give it away as we have done in the past, we will live to regret it. For a minister of State, he must understand the constitutional position on such things. That is why Mr. President must get rid of Mark Wayongo from his government to show that we care about our own rights.

Chukwudi, How old are you?

2009-11-23T22:16:00.002Z

"Cast your years on the coaster that rolls behind you and after many football seasons they will overtake you" - Ogyakromian

One of the questions we are taught to answer very early in life is “How old are you?” Therefore when you see an adult struggling to answer this simple question then you know that “matter don come”. This was the situation Fortune Chukwudi , the captain of the Nigerian under 17 team, found himself in when a journalist asked him, Chukwudi How old are you? A brief background will be helpful.

A few weeks to the commencement of the 2009 edition of FIFA’s under 17 world cup competition, Team Nigeria had been thrown into confusion when they were forced to drop fifteen players after MRI scans indicated they were over-aged . In a move reminiscent of what happened to team Ghana before Korea 2007 when Ghana dropped six players after FIFA promised scans to weed out age cheats, Nigeria preempted FIFA’s big stick by carrying out its own scans. This action notwithstanding, during the tournament itself, Adokiye Amiesimaka, a nations cup winner with Nigeria in 1980 and lawyer decided to use his column in the Guardian to attack the age cheats when all eyes were on Nigeria. According to Adokiye Amiesimaka, he once ran a football club somewhere in Nigeria and he recruited a footballer who claimed he was eighteen years in the year 2002. Today in 2009, this young man by name Fortune Chukwudi is the captain of Nigeria’s under 17 team . Assuming he used his correct age in 2002, Chukwudi must be twenty-five now. How did he make it into the under-seventeen team that had been pruned by Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) . In the storm that followed his publication, Adokiye Amiesimaka the man who stood for truth was subjected to all kind of vilifications for being ‘too-known’. This is the bane of Africa’s under development. But let’s leave that for another day.

After Nigeria deservedly lost the final match to Switzerland, a team that really looked under 17, the captain of the Nigerian team was asked a simple question by curious journalists - Chukwudi, How old are you? The young man’s answer was, “I have put all these issues behind me”. Many people missed the revelation in Chukwudi’s answer. Remember when Christ was tempted by the devil three times? He told the devil after the third attempt, “get thee behind me Satan”. The sermon is clear - when you face obstacles in your path to stardom, put the obstacle behind you. Like many more before him, Chukwudi had the opportunity to play for a national team, get a contract in Europe and bye-bye poverty. But one thing stood against him- Age. What did he do? He took the extra eight years or so that ensnared him and put them behind him, only then did he become 17. If the journalist had asked “how many years are behind you?” Maybe he would have told us.

Fortune Chukwudi is not the only player with a few years behind him. I lost interest in FIFA’s aged competitions years ago when I came to the conclusion that the competition has been over-abused particularly by countries in Africa led by Ghana and Nigeria. As far back as the eighties I wrote a letter, that wasn’t published, to the editor of Graphic Sports , a Ghanaian sports weekly on this subject . My letter said Ghana was cheating and I cited examples of some players. I have since decided not to celebrate any star from these tournaments; I’d rather wait and celebrate them when they become real stars at the senior level. For these players, excelling in these tournaments is a once in a life time opportunity to be seen by scouts of European teams. A contract in Europe translates many from the dominion of poverty to the glory of riches. The stakes are therefore very high for them; it doesn’t matter if they have to cheat to be in a squad. But for sports officials who condone and connive with these guys to put as many as eight to ten years behind them, I don’t know what motivates them. It is no secret that ages on passports and birth certificates in Africa are what we say they are, but we all know what a 16 year old looks like in our community and it is very easy to verify these ages if we want to. Most of these players would have played for various teams from the colt (real under 17) league to the premier division. The football associations have these records and can easily make a good guess of a player’s age from his history. Most of them were once enrolled in schools where age records are kept. Getting such data on 98% of these footballers is a no brainer, therefore for an FA official to suggest that we go ask the parents of these footballers to confirm their ages , is to say the least , ridiculous.

In my early teens, Yaw Preko was my favourite player in the colt league in Accra. He played for Kotobabi Power lines. At the time (Around ’84), some competing teams felt he was above the 16 year limit for the league. In 1991, Yaw Preko played for the Ghana under-17 team for the second time at age 16. After giving a good account of themselves at their maiden world cup appearance, the senior national team of Ghana will be carrying the expectations of Ghanaians into another world cup in South Africa. Judging from their ages in 2006, the Black stars team is expected to peak around 2010. However, the high expectations of Ghanaians is being tempered by one difficult question- How many years do they have behind them? Recurring injuries to any of our heroes is viewed with suspicion in Ghana- Could that be the sign that the years have overtaken him from behind? The fitness of Laryea Kingston, John Mensah, and Stephen Appiah still gives me the shivers. I made a sign of the cross when Michael Essien recovered from that knee injury in less than six months and came back firing on all cylinders. I don’t believe he is 26 years but he must be close to that (less than four years from the fact). I still pray that Asamoah Gyan’s current form continues and the injuries that plagued his career last year remain behind him too. Is he 24?

When I realized that Julius Agahowa’s back flicks that characterized his goal celebrations have abandoned him at age 24, I knew the pace forward have finally been out paced by those years behind him. Does anybody in Nigeria remember Nwanko Kanu’s educational history? When measured against his football age of 33 what does it say? That Kanu was 2 years old in what class? I hear his team mate David James, the England goal keeper, has challenged the assertion that at 37, he is the oldest player in the team. He reserves that honour for 33 year old Kanu. His former coach Harry Rednapp thinks Kanu is 47.

If the age cheating phenomenon was bringing benefits to Africa, few people will lose sleep over it. But apart from making a few players and their families rich, it has no other benefit. If winning under 17 trophies does not translate to winning the real world cup, of what benefit is it? However, if we feature true under-17s and true under-20s in these age competitions, the scouts will still find the talents from Africa. These true youths will benefit from the youth training system in the European clubs, they become better players, our chances of winning the senior world cup are brighter and guess what, they will earn lots of money for many years to come and lift the family yoke of poverty. Every age cheat just steals the opportunity of this true talent. Africa is the loser.

Chukwudi, whose place did you steal in the national under 17 team? Chukwudi, How many years did you cast behind you? Chukwudi , How old are you?

WHEN THE LIES FALL FLAT

2009-11-17T13:05:00.001Z

"Truth is the safest Lie"

There are times when lies are simply not helpful and insisting on your lines make you look silly. Many a time, governments’ PR machines get chided for doing a bad job of defending their government when in reality, the actions taken by their employers are simply indefensible. In such circumstances, intelligent men and women are made to look like over-indulged adolescents who are just oblivious to reason. Our security institutions get caught up in this situation a lot when they exceed their powers. They claw at any scrap they can find, for example, to explain why a suspect in police custody is swollen-eyed even though he was not manhandled.

The military detachment in Bawku took custody of two guys, teachers by profession, for allegedly shooting indiscriminately in the highly charged town. The veracity of this allegation will soon be determined in a competent court of law. However, reports that the soldiers stripped the teachers to their birthday suite and paraded them stark naked in the Bawku Township, totally demystifying all trajectories protruding from the groins, cannot be taken lightly. Thanks to the actions of these soldiers, the mother-in-laws of these two chaps do not have to imagine the measure of trauma their daughters bear in carrying out wifely duties; they have seen it ‘fiili fiili’, they can even make comparisons to their own crosses. If these two guys ever make it back to the classroom, they will not dare ask the pupils to write an essay describing their teacher. In these days of technological proliferations, these guys could one day walk into an adult theatre and get shocked to the realization that they are the key actors in the latest porn movie .

Of course, the military has vehemently denied stripping the guys and parading them in the streets. According to Captain Frank Abrokwa, the commander of the military detachmentt, one guy was already half naked (without a shirt) when they attempted to arrest him, and in his attempt to resist arrest the trousers shriveled into nothingness. When asked what happened to the suspect’s under wear, he struggled to suggest that the suspect, who had just returned from a shooting spree, was walking around “anti-pe” (no under pants). He further explained that they had to walk the naked suspect from his home to the waiting military vehicle which was some distance away creating the impression that the suspect was paraded naked.

I believe that in typical Ghanaian military style, the soldiers stripped the guys naked and paraded them in the streets of Bawku to serve as a deterrent. I also believe that Captain Abrokwa’s version of what took place is far from the truth, in fact he is a bad liar . The Captain’s story falls out in the face of two facts:

i. It doesn’t convincingly explain how the second suspect also got naked.
ii. Being that they arrested one suspect in his own home, they could have clothed him before walking 10 km to their car if they did not intend to parade him naked.

I have heard many people call into radio programs to support the action of the military in Bawku because they believe such high handedness is required to stop the people of Bawku from annihilating each other in a stupid ethnic conflict. I have similarly heard many Ghanaians castigate human rights activists for speaking for the rights of armed robbery suspects. Such people speak out of ignorance. When people demand rights for suspects, they do so to protect innocent citizens who will be caught up at the wrong place at the wrong time, not criminals. The human rights groups are fighting for the rights of the people who ignorantly castigate them on air. If any of these guys find themselves at the other end of the stick, they will learn the hard way to appreciate what the concept of human rights is all about.

Growing up in Rawlings’ Ghana in the eighties, I saw and heard enough of military style justice in this country to say that no civilized nation needs it. Through fear, it chalks some successes in instilling discipline, but the excesses far outweigh any benefit. Women stripped naked, loss of innocent life, torture of ordinary citizens, arbitrary justice is too high a price to pay for discipline. We have cheaper options in staying loyal to the rule of law.

It is important to note that even prisoners of war are entitled to rights. When some American soldiers conscripted prisoners in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to act porn movies similar to what Captain Abrokwa and his men produced, it generated uproar in the world. Some soldiers were discharged from the army and others are currently serving jail sentences for those actions. We appreciate the sacrifices of our Men in uniform, but they must understand the times. The days of the banana republic are gone. In this dispensation, there is a soldier and his role, and there is a judge and his role, let none usurp the role of the other.

Bawku’s Bunkers and Baulkers

2009-11-11T21:59:00.001Z

Dedicated to The Innocent Victims of Unchecked Criminality in Bawku. The State must silence the guns up north!

In the early part of 2008 as the then Senators, Barrack Obama and Hilary Clinton tried to outshine each other to get the nomination of the Democratic Party as its presidential candidate, the latter landed in hot waters when she made the infamous claims about sniper fire in Bosnia. The former first lady of the United States of America said of an earlier trip she had made to Bosnia, "I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base." She was forced to beat an embarrassing retreat as she downgraded her heroic Bosnia tale to a “misspeak”.

The Upper East regional minister Mr. Mark Wayongo will have no such problems if he makes the big decision to succeed the asomdwehene as the next NDC president. His account of what happened to him in Bawku, as he narrated on the Joy FM’s Super morning Show, hasn’t been challenged so it must be the truth. He has seen enough on the battle field to describe the guns used in battle and give an estimate of the number of enemy combatants. There is enough material in the story to spawn a movie, maybe his strategists can take that up. The movie can end with Mr. Wayongo advocating for a Presidential Special Initiative (PSI) to build bunkers in Bawku since it has become apparent that Ghanaians are not interested in ending these conflicts up north. The bunkers will be dotted around the Bawku Township providing politicians with immediate refuge when their political tours are interrupted by gun fire.

It begs saying that, the recurring war of attrition between ethnic groups in Bawku and other parts of the northern region, is fast becoming a big embarrassment to this nation. Sometimes, those of us far from the conflict zones struggle to understand the reason for these battles and I sometimes wonder if the combatants do. Millions of Ghana cedis that could be channelled into development are spent to protect people from their kith and kin, while the real enemies- poverty and under-development – cool off in the stands. I seek a soothsayer that shall declare how much greatness shall emanate from the North of Ghana; if peace replaces war, if opportunity replaces poverty, if tractors replace the guns, if compromise replaces contest and dialogue replaces distrust? Surely, my folks up north recognize this truth better than I do. So who stokes the flame?

When the guns that had been silent over Bawku for sometime went blazing over the weekend of 30^th October, I asked myself

Who is the peace baulker in Bawku?

a. The People

b. The Politicians

c. The Police (Security)

d. All the above

Who gets my ‘vote’?

Surely, the people of Bawku must have a say in the battles. Who burns the houses? Who pulls the trigger? Who hides the combatants? Certainly, there is a beast within. The art of war, especially in a functioning state like ours, must be difficult to plan and execute. Raising the funds to buy the armour, doing the actual purchase, smuggling ammunition to the right destination, organizing the clan to fight and other tactics of war require a man or woman with great influence in our society. I dare say this war lord is a citizen of Bawku. Who can name him? It is my belief that one word from somebody in Bawku will collapse the world of these war lords. Who wants to bell the cat?

It is a sad commentary that there are few good things happening around us that we can attribute to our politics. But Ogyakrom politics never fails to provide the spark to create controversy and sometimes notoriety. Such cynicism stems from the mediocre treat dished to us year after year by our elected officers. It is just not possible to extricate our politicians from the troubles up north.

It is no secret that warring factions have aligned themselves to the two major political parties in the country. There is the growing perception that factions aligned to a ruling party at any time get audacious in their attacks for obvious reasons. Recently, in an extension of the battles up north, some men were butchered in cold blood at the Agbogbloshie market in Accra. They were NPP sympathizers who had lost control of the market because NDC had regained power. The culprits are still at large. Which party do they belong to?

During the eight years of Kuffuor’s government, there were many infractions up north, where NPP sympathizers were fingered as culpable. Is it for lack of evidence that we didn’t see a single successful prosecution, or the guys were just untouchable? For some reason, sitting governments tend to exhibit great inertia in prosecuting their own. Signals that one can get away with impunity if he is properly connected cannot augur well for fighting crime and lawlessness anywhere.

Former president Rawlings made several statements on the northern conflicts that perhaps got NDC some votes but did little to stem the tide of the wars up north. Is politics all about power and all other things secondary?

The police force has a lot to prove that they are on top of security issues in this country. I do admit that they share responsibility for fighting the crimes up north with the military, but responsibility of internal peace lies with the ministry of interior rather than the ministry of defence. The Bawku crisis has spanned the tenure of a number of IGPs. It will be of interest to see what these police chiefs record on their CVs and auto biographies regarding what they did in Bawku. It is a shame that the whole State apparatus hasn’t been able to get big convictions to halt these small intra ethnic battles. There have been tough talks warning people to surrender arms- how many did we collect? Why can’t we craft an intelligence network to unravel the source and paths traversed by sophisticated armour to get to Bawku? When institutions like the BNI and National Security are in the news, I’d rather it is about such exploits than bravado against wives of former ministers at the airport. Sometimes I do wonder if political powers prevent the police from doing their lawful duty. If it is so, what does a police chief worth his title do? Kowtow to the dogs of war or remain professional and earn his medals? I hope none of these police chiefs was mis-decorated with Kuffuor’s medals. The blood of the innocent from Bawku shall stand in their faces if they don’t return them.

So, is it the People, the Politician or the Police? Who is your choice?

If we find the baulker , lock him in Wayongo’s bunker, Bawku may never brawl again.

The African Gift Train

2009-11-02T16:46:00.000Z

In a chat with some colleagues in the office last week I cited a bribery allegation brought against Ghana and Nigeria by Liberia in 2001 and the defense put up by Nigeria, to illustrate a point about corruption apologists. Events in Senegal over the week resonate with what happened in the run up to qualification for the FIFA 2002 world cup.

Ghana, Nigeria and Liberia among other countries had to fight for one of Africa’s five slots in the FIFA 2002 world cup. After the penultimate matches in the group, it became clear that even though Ghana’s chances of representing Africa were gone, it would act as the king maker in the group to determine whether Liberia or Nigeria qualifies. If Ghana gets a draw against Nigeria in the last match, Liberia goes through to represent Africa from their group. In the match itself, Ghana fielded a weakened team and lost their goal keeper through a needless act that attracted the red card from the referee. Ghana lost the match by three goals to nil (Nigeria 3: Ghana 0), and Nigeria qualified from the group. After the match, a Nigerian governor from Rivers state presented a gift of $25 000 to the Ghanaian team at reception he held for both teams. Liberia reported this incident to FIFA’s disciplinary committee. In its defense to the disciplinary committee, Nigeria explained that it is a local tradition to give out gifts to visiting teams; FIFA accepted the explanation , case close. How did I miss that tradition in Africa?

Last week in Senegal, the Government was forced, after initial denials, to admit that it gave a gift of two hundred thousand US dollars ($200,000.00) to Alex Segura, an IMF official, after his tour of duty had come to an end. . According to the Prime Minister, Souleymane Ndene Ndiaye, the money represented a goodbye present - part of an African tradition. He said, "We in Africa have a tradition - when someone visits you, you give him a gift at departure". The tradition again! It is just not fair that some of us have lived in Africa for so long but have managed to miss out on the most lucrative African tradition. On a continent that conjures memories of hunger, famine and extreme poverty, a tradition of dollar denominated gifts is a powerful tool to restore humanity to many. But somehow, our society has contrived to conceal this great tradition from the people who need it most.

I have realized that the ubiquitous African gift train travels with engines powered by tradition or friendship. When the history of Ghana’s 4^th republican adventure gets chronicled for posterity, I am sure there are many who will want the former president, J²R, credited as the greatest Apostle of Probity and Accountability. It is worth noting that this gentleman, whose supporters claim made no fortunes for himself when he superintended the affairs of Ogyakrom for almost two decades, took a coach on the gift train. When Ogyakromians wanted to know how the former first family managed to educate their kids abroad, they were told that the expensive educational bills were funded by friends. As if on cue, a former minister in that government who was convicted before the fast track high court for causing financial loss to Ghana also claimed to have benefited from a gift train powered by friends when he had to educate his kids abroad. A couple of years later, it was the turn of a health minister in K4’s government to announce that the gods of Africa have blessed him with a ride on the golden rails. This gentleman had misplaced a condom whiles attending a conference on AIDS, resulting in a bouncy baby boy. He was asked to justify how he raised over ninety thousand US dollars for the upkeep of his son, you guessed right, from friends.

I am particularly upset at the gods for denying me a ride on the train. But I have planned my revenge. If any young man mistakes my head for ‘Odomankoma’s’ wisdom pot, and he asks me, “Ogyakromian, what can I do to be rich?” My answer shall be

“Find the African Gift train. Get on board. The engine driving it may be tradition or it may be friends, it makes rich anyway. The consequences are yours”. If he understands my wisdom and asks “How do we make Africa rich in the midst of Africa’s riches?” There I have my revenge. My answer shall be “Derail the African gift train!”.

Combating the Invading Army of Charlatans

2009-10-12T21:25:00.004Z

But these speak evil of whatever they do not know; and whatever they know naturally, like brute beasts, in these things they corrupt themselves. ¹¹ Woe to them! For they have gone in the way of Cain, have run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit, and perished in the rebellion of Korah. -Jude 10-11

They may not lay claim to the swiftness of Julius Caesar’s marauding battalions nor the coordination of the allied forces but they are as tenacious in their campaign as any purposeful army. Except that their goals are not ideological, they are materialistic. Through the magic of radio and TV, propelled by microwaves, they invade the sanctity of our living rooms. Not only do we have to protect our children from violent and lewd movies, but also some supposed Christian services. But for the grave consequences their actions have on ordinary Ghanaians, we would have consigned them to the world of comedy and allowed them to jostle for space with the likes of Agya Koo.

They masquerade as anything that is noble in scripture, Prophets, Bishops, Reverends, and more. They murder the scriptures without mercy, shock our sensibilities, and pollute the atmosphere with profane insults that I don’t hear anymore in the streets of Accra, yet they still command large followings. Out of the abundance of their hearts flow curses that even though of no effect, will not be acceptable in any heathen shrine. Yet they lay claims to the only Lord that is Sovereign. If this is not the abomination that causes desolation (Mat 24:15, Dan 11:31) then what is?

That our society tolerates these charlatans is ample evidence of the fine balance we have to tread between personal liberties and public order. But I believe these guys have done enough to at least attract a caution from a court of competent jurisdiction. Since Joy FM aired some of the ludicrous outbursts of these characters, there have been calls to restrict religious liberties because of these bandits, but it is my opinion that we should jealously guard the freedom given to us by our constitution to worship freely. We cannot throw out the baby with the bath water. We can weed out the chaff through other freedoms guaranteed by the constitution.

It is important we recognize the fact that religion by its very nature is amenable to such grave abuses. Because God has no physical address accessible to mortals to go and clarify arguments about divinity and divine instructions, he has become subject to human interpretations of a myriad of scriptures and revelations purported to have been seen over the centuries. Out of this deep valley of confusion, has sprung various religious sects and denominations. Unfortunately, some scoundrels have identified Man’s inclination to seek his Maker as fertile ground to ply their scams and have decided to take advantage of our deep religious bearings. The mass following Christianity enjoys in Ghana makes it most vulnerable to such abuses. It is therefore no surprise that most of these unbelieving villains who have no respect for God or his son Jesus Christ confer holy titles onto themselves and parade the corridors of spiritual notoriety incognito. Through unsubstantiated miracles, they amass a following of gullible Ghanaians who throng their services by day and night. They get away with their nefarious acts because many Ghanaians refuse to question anything that purports spirituality. How many people can attest that the deaf man who was healed was deaf before the church service? I have always argued that the rate at which we hear reports of miracles, it should be easy to find Ghanaians who actually know a cripple, who lived among them, that was healed in a crusade or service. It should be easy to find a community in Ghana who lived with a man born blind, who went to a crusade one day and the next day he could see. Try looking for any of these and you will be better off finding a hawk that has a chicken for a girlfriend. Simply put, most of these miracles are faked! Hardly a day passes without hearing strange things from these scam artists; “A man of God sells canes to whip the devil”, “A pastor washes genitals of a woman at the beach” , “One prophet sleeps on a woman on TV to heal her”, “A preacher inserts his fingers in a woman’s private part whiles her husband stands next to her, in the name of healing a barren womb”, Aba! Can’t they even fake the decency that the office they usurp deserves?

I think identifying a fake man of God should not be difficult. I propose three simple rules.

i. Character before charisma
ii. Common Sense (Yes Common sense)
iii. Congruence

Charisma refers to spiritual gifts and powers, more importantly, it can be faked. People fake healing, tongues, prophecies etc. Character however, is more difficult to fake over the long term. The bible is clear about what constitutes the fruits of the spirit in Galatians 5:22 - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. It Goes further in verse 26 to state what they are not - Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another. How can we then ignore the characters openly exhibited by these men as they curse, boast, fight and openly challenge each other? They even go about threatening to change people into vultures. My proposition- Character first, charisma next. Identify them by their fruits not by their gifts.

Many people believe common sense cannot be applied to spiritual things, but I beg to differ. Many preachers encourage that train of thought because they know that with your thinking caps on you can easily decipher between a miracle and a ruse. When Moses saw the bush on fire yet not consumed, it was common sense that made him take notice. When Jesus Christ healed blind people and lepers, there were always people who attested to the fact that the people had been blind from childhood. There were times Christ asked them to show themselves to the priests. If a “preacher” asks your wife to strip naked and asks you to look away, please listen, your common sense is right, this is supposed to be spiritual healing not a medical examination. Clothes are no barriers to the spirit. If a preacher appears on TV to say he has raised the dead, please remember, the stage was set by him, take it with a pinch of salt until you have reason not to. If we do not exact the highest level of proof from miracle workers, we will remain pawns in their carefully hatched schemes. God gave you the brains and the senses for a single purpose- to use them, please do so without feeling guilty.

My last anti-Charlatan dose is Congruence with scripture. If the man appears and says he is working miracles based on the Christian bible; then use the bible as a meter rule to measure his deeds. The bible describes the people of Berea as having greater nobility because among other things, they used the scriptures to authenticate the message they received (Acts 17:11). The bible explicitly warns Israel against Necromancy (inquiring of the dead), yet one of these “Men of God” appeared on TV and claimed he was speaking to a woman’s dead husband. The fact that he still has a congregation says a lot about the scriptural foundations of the people who sit at his feet.

Religious pretenders have led many to their deaths in tragic circumstances; some of them have destroyed families and many lives. The fact remains that you are the only one who can save yourself from these charlatans. The law is inadequate.

Combat the Charlatans with Character, Common Sense and Congruence.

How Much is Your Blessing?

2009-10-07T18:27:00.003Z

Dear Brutus,

Did you watch Adebayor against Arsenal in the English Premier league? He picked his spot, delivered a stunning header that beat Almunia who was manning the posts for Arsenal, It was a goal!. He took off like a cheetah that has spotted a prey in the forests of the Kalahari. I don’t know if anybody timed the run but I suspect it will be the envy of many world class sprinters. He had one aim, to present himself to the arsenal fans who have thrown unprintable insults at him before and during the game. They wished for his downfall but “tofiakwa”, his God is a God of judgment. He has promised in his word “My head will be lifted up above my enemies around me”. He ended the run with a skid in front of the agitated fans from London, he didn’t utter a word but his posture said it all- enemy shame! See what has become of me. Many from his homeland in West Africa praised God for their beloved, but that is when they were thrown into stupor. It must be a culture shock. All the press in England went crazy. Senseless, Silly, and nonsensical were some of the adjectives used to describe his 90 yard dash celebration. What has he done wrong? He just celebrated a goal.

Brutus, some background will be helpful. In this part of Africa, governments provide us with nothing, so we learn to depend on God so much. Things you take for granted in Europe are miracles in our world. To hold a simple election in Ogyakrom for instance, we have to start fasting one year before the election so that only a few people will be killed in isolated incidence of madness. Malaria is a well known disease with a well defined cure yet thousands die of malaria. Through the hard way we have learnt to depend on God. That is why we don’t play with our religion. Majority of Ogyakromians believe an ensemble of witches have been assigned to orchestrate nothing but destruction against them. These witches are usually unassuming people during the day but suddenly metamorphose into powerful owls that sore to heights that confound the eagle. It is therefore very important that all Ogyakromians keep a diary of people who “look at them in some way”. They will be the subject of their prayer topic during the next retreat.

So when it comes to dealing with enemies, we don’t spare a prayer against them. It is common to see phrases “like let my enemy live long and see what I will be in future” boldly inscribed on vehicles. We love to “pepper” our enemies with our success no matter how small. When a woman gets a new cloth from her daughter, it is not only flaunted in the face of other contenders in the village, but the message is made complete through lyrical finesse laden with innuendos. Simply put, our success is incomplete if our enemies don’t see what has become of us.

In this light, when we saw Adebayor’s celebration, we knew his blessing was complete. In fact Pastors wrote new blessings for their congregations.
“Your feet shall be anointed as Adebayor’s and you will run before the enemy and you will not faint”.
“May the blessings of Adebayor over take you.”

But alas, before they could deliver these great blessings to their congregations everybody went hey wire in England. And the biggest shock, Adebayor has been fined £25 000 for his celebration! Is that the cost of a blessing? Even the bible agrees that we celebrate before our enemies. Do you remember the very popular Psalm 23:5? “Thou prepared a table before me, in the presence of my enemies”. So why are the guys who showed us the direction to the bible putting such a high cost to a blessing?

The English FA has caused a lot of commotion in Ogyakrom. My bosom friend called ‘Thy Will Be Done’ came home downcast the other day. He was just returning from a Pastor who has been praying with him to find a beautiful wife. The pastor has got a new revelation. Every Blessing has a cost, and the Pastor has published the price list for various blessings.
A blessing to overcome your enemies: ¢25 000
A blessing to buy a new car ¢1000
A blessing to Pass Exams ¢2500
A blessing for a wife: ¢10 000

At that point he stopped reading. His whole world collapsed instantly, he will never be able to afford a wife. Brutus what consolation could I offer him? I could only say, “Oh God! Thy Will be Done, it is well”. And I hope it doesn’t come with a cost.

Sincerely yours

Ogyakromian!!!

Building Bridges, Our Core Business- Mabey & Johnson

2009-10-01T16:51:00.007Z

This is a statement from the management of Mabey & Johnson to explain events leading to criminal conviction of the company in Southwark Crown Court in London on 25^th September 2009. We wish to submit that we were put under pressure to plead guilty to charges of paying bribes in Ghana by an English court that used Anglo-Saxon definition of bribery with little understanding of the culture and norm of the West African country.

We wish to state without equivocation that our core business is to build bridges and that is the exact mission we pursued in Ghana. We arrived in Ghana at the early stages of the country’s adventure into republic hood for the fourth time. At the time, the country was led by fiery former revolutionary who was having a hard time adjusting to the pace and beat of democratic governance. The then president, who felt let down by the British crown for teaming up with other western powers to lure him into a political process totally out of pace with his training and genetic makeup, loathed everything British. It was believed that this country which had been selected by the Western powers and Breton Woods institutions as a model state was in danger of falling back into the hands of the friends of the defeated communist regime. The likes of Gathaffi and Castro were trying hard to convince him that he made a mistake by rejecting their philosophy of the State. Against this backdrop and the fact that many British company’s were in dire need of new markets to sustain economic growth, the lot fell on Mabey and Johnson, to get into Ghana, you guessed right, to build bridges between the two economies.

This is a concept well understood and practiced by communities in Africa for centuries. To build bridges to the King, you enter his gates not only with thanks giving and praises but with a gift of hard liqueur under your armpit. As you pass on the bottle to the King through his advisers, and once the content of the bottle goes round the palace, your connection is established – a firm bridge is built to carry your message to officialdom. This is exactly what we did in Ghana.

We wish to put it on record that the actions of Mabey and Johnson were in the interest of North – South cooperation, a relationship which is well understood and eloquently espoused by Tony Blair the British PM at the time who actually christened it NEPAD. The fact that Ghana stands to benefit over two billion pounds sterling attests to the strength of that relationship.

We are in no way endorsing the actions of the people who took the money, in fact we don’t know what they did to the money, but we believe that we did no wrong we merely executed our mission in Africa- Building Bridges.

PS:

Maybe Mabey and Johnson gives us the opportunity to examine our public procurement system. I do not believe that the canker of bribery that underlines most procurement decisions was touched by the so called procurement law. Speak to any business man who participates in a government contract and he will tell you “the ways and means” that fraught the process of selecting suppliers. The situation is such that companies that win tenders fairly (I dare say it will be easier to clean the filth in the Korle lagoon than find one) are under pressure to say “thank you” even when they haven’t been asked to. We need radical solutions to uproot corruption. What about banning the giving and taking of gifts in any form? It’s a thought.

Yaa Asentewaa’s Cry from Beyond - Run my Baby Run

2009-09-23T17:56:00.002Z

Dear Odikro Fiifii Atta,
I have been compelled to file this protest to you from “nsamando” over a rather curious matter. Since you took over the reins of power in Ogyakrom, we in the “world of ghosts” have watched in amazement as you work hard to transform your country into the greatest prayer camp on earth. In one of the many prayer meetings, as the gathering extolled Odomankoma in melodious harmony, the great messenger of Odomankoma breezed through the gathering as the worshipers cried for Elijah and his fire. At this point, a new and very strange prayer topic was introduced. “As we Pray for the return of Elijah, let’s also pray to the Almighty to look favorably upon our president and release Yaa Asentewaa back into our fold, otherwise our President’s desire to see forty percent of executive positions occupied by women cannot be met”. “Many of our women today are either too scared or have blatantly refused the call to serve”.

Ei President Fiifii ! Please pray and eschew play but don’t attempt to procreate the world with your ancestors- It is an abomination! I have stayed away from the politics of mortals since I made my journey to the village, but since I have been provoked by the attempt to recall me from eternal rest, I will say my piece.

Who says there are no more women like Yaa to fulfill operation 40? They are there, but they are refusing to be tainted by Ogyakrom’s meaningless politics. Many descent Men and Women of our great country will simply not touch your politics lest it tarnishes their good names. The women, being more sensitive to what happens to the names they bear, have decided to walk away from the trap of politics. If you speak to the few that brave the terrain like Auntie Bettie, Sister Hanna and Maa Zita, you will appreciate what great sacrifice they have made by rallying round operation 40.

Enthusiastic young men and women resign from well paying jobs to serve in Ogyakrom’s public service, but immediately the government that appoints them changes, they are made to proceed on very long leaves not supported by any labour decree. And do you know how difficult it is for these people to be employed again? Which business wants to employ people who have been clearly tagged as “enemies of government”? The situation leaves very few professions amenable to such appointments - Lawyers, Lecturers and Retirees.
Odikro Atta, how come our nephew Obama can convince his predecessor’s defense secretary to stay at post when he became president of America, but you must fire anybody who touched anything public during the reins of your predecessor? “Taflatse” even the man who touched the public excreta must be fired. Ebei! Odikro, Ogyakrom is under a curse! The curse is called Politics. Politicking has even turned the abomination of the pit (latrine) into a trophy.

I am not oblivious to the fact that my cousin’s great nephew Odikro Agyekum who preceded you bears a huge responsibility in this mess- point to an elephant and you have a job. Even jobs that required strict selection processes were not spared the theory and practice of “ebusua ntse fa”. He set up a board to find brilliant young people to work in the Foreign Service, when the list was handed to his minister with the recommendation to appoint the first thirty in order of merit; the bloke started picking a new set of thirty from the bottom of the list. What were these people thinking? Didn’t they care about the quality of staff that will represent this country in the world? Faced with the misdeeds of your predecessor, I understand your dilemma. But does that suggest that all Odikro Kuffuor’s appointees are not qualified for the jobs they hold? Are you sure all his appointees have nothing to offer this country in the capacity they serve in? Martin Mireku, GTB, Esi Ano Sackey, Ghana Airports company, Prof Ken Attafuah, NIA, Jude Adu-Amankwah, ECG, Robert Ahomka-Lindsay, GIPC to mention a few. Assuming that these are all NPP card bearing members, does that disqualify them from their positions?

If your beef is with the partisan nature appointments were made, one would think that you will setup clear guidelines and procedures to insulate such appointments from political interference. But that was not to be, cheered on by Odikro Boom and your so called foot soldiers, you replace all these “elephantizers” with your own umbrella wielding appointees. From the board room down to the kitchen of the school feeding program umbrellas now stand where elephants used to graze.

With this kind of politics, you want the daughters of Ogyakrom to resign from decent and respectful jobs to join you to build Ghana? To what end? You know the reward? A kick in the ass, after the next change in government. Your emissaries have contacted my great, great daughter Akosua Dufie, who works in Gyamine to bring her rich expertise to help her motherland. You’re kidding aren’t you? I have sent her this message in her sleep- a job in Ogyakrom’s public service? Run my baby run, for your own good run!

The President was startled out of his afternoon nap. “Sir, Any problem ?” Ayariga asked as he closed the door and walked towards the president. “I thought I heard you shout “Yaa it’s not me, it’s not me”. His excellency was in deep thought. He took a glance at his spokesman and said, “Ayariga” . “Yes Sir” the president’s aid responded. “Where is the list? Who did we plan to sack next?”

WHEN OBAMA COMES TO GHANA

2009-07-09T20:36:00.009Z

The usual bright Ogyakromian Sun may be concealed behind dark clouds most of the day. Heavenly showers may just be the harbinger of pain and agony, as they have been in the past couple of weeks, for many families who have the misfortune of locating their shelters on courses claimed by the waters as they head to pay obeisance to the mighty Atlantic Ocean. But as the skies darken, the crowd shall grow expectant, with their eyes fixed on the receding skyline looking out for “Air force One” draped in the colours of the Unites States of America. However the excitement is not about the plane, but who it carries in its bosom - The most powerful Man on Planet Earth. Barrack Hussein Obama, a man shamelessly claimed by Africa as her own. The only thing Africa in his makeup is a single sperm donated by Barrack Obama Senior. His birth is like many in Africa. A man proves his fertility by donating a sperm and then goes AWOL. The woman bears the brunt of their little dance in the privacy of their intimate moment. Most times the offspring will not turn well; but not this one. He was born in a continent of opportunities. Opportunities created by Men and Women of vision in a continent less endowed than ours. The crowd will be waiting for the touchdown with bated breath as ‘Air force one’ with wings sprawled out like the eagle in its majestic glide makes its approach. Everybody wants to claim a piece of him. His father comes from faraway Kenya, but that will not stop Ghanaians from calling him their own. His decision to touch bases with Ogyakrom on his maiden voyage to Sub Saharan Africa as the president of the world's surviving super power hasn't gone down well with some neighbouring countries, but who cares. He is here! He is here! I can see him! Weizor Looo Efo Barrack (Welcome Brother Barrack).

The government's conductors will orchestrate men, women and children from various parts of the country to sing the welcome chorus as the armoured vehicle makes its way through the streets of Accra. The scenes will be reminiscent of the famous "America eba bie" in the days of Jerry John Rawlings and Bill Clinton. I hope the streets are not lined with kids from our public schools as we did in the Rawlings era. Even if we do, Obama may not realize the exploitation of kids from poor backgrounds to honour him. The routes will be carefully chosen to avoid the streets that could not hold their tar against the recent floods. The houses along the routes were donned with paint only yesterday, for his eyes only. Ogyakromians love to leave a good impression with their guests, even false impressions. Shouldn't we expose him to the bad roads to facilitate quick release of the green bucks when we go to him cup in hand? Never mind, he is here, his presence has glorified our presidency. We will line up all our living ex presidents (thank God we stopped tying them to the stake and making target practice out of them at the Teshie shooting range) to welcome him. Papa Jerry may even lay a report before him, as he did (or intended to) when George Walker Bush visited Ghana, detailing Kuffuor's attempt to give himself an undeserved retirement package. He may even confound the great orator (Obama) with his bizarre philosophy only understood by himself and admired by his aides. He may try to explain why Kuffuor should be in jail and not at the airport. Ogyakromians are worried because the two gentlemen are at loggerheads, but why should I be bothered because the egos of two old men are the vehicle retrogressing them into their adolescent years. Their petulance is not worth a drop of ink. Don't worry too much Barrack; state protocol will keep the CDS standing in between Kuffuor and Jerry to avert any un-presidential calamities

It is our way of saying Welcome to ‘skin pain’ Ogyakrom. Akwaaba President Obama!

Among the dignitaries to welcome him are the bosses of many American sponsored aid organisations and Non Governmental Organisations. These men and women carrying titles like "Chief of Party" will grant interviews to radio stations to reiterate what America means to Ghana. Their activity map draws Ghana; their sector penetration will create a quorum to hold President Attah Mills' cabinet meting. What they won't say is that there are many Ghanaians who can do what they are doing for far less money. They live in mansions they won't dream of in their own countries. They employ for next to nothing maids, garden boys, drivers etc- luxuries they won't contemplate in their country, but more importantly, these are paid for by the funds voted as aid, grants and loans for Africa . If we had our own way, we will employ Ogyakromians for these jobs for less, leaving a lot more for the purpose for which the funds were voted. If that happened, rent in Airport, East Legon, Labone would have been within the reach of Ghanaians. But for now, these areas are the preserve of expats who have driven the price out of our reach so we can only live tens of kilometers away from the city. Does it matter anyway? The Chief of Parties will make the guest list at the private meetings; Obama may even part them on their backs for sacrificing so much for the sake of a continent which remains a scar on the conscience of the world. Welcome President Obama !

Many Ogyakromians, of their own volition will defy the soggy weather to see him in flesh, but many more will be bussed from all over the country by government conductors to create the orchestra atmosphere. The latter group has nothing against Obama, but given the option they may choose to be elsewhere. But who won't want to be part of a history making event? "I was there when Obama visited Ghana". "Does that put money in your pocket?" "Not really but they will feed us the whole day ".

A day's meal is enough incentive for many in Africa to put their lives on hold for others. They will attend your political rallies, they will do the dirty job for the party in power, because they have little else to do that will pay more. Sometimes I have the feeling that political animals in Ogyakrom will keep them "down trodden" so they can use them to do their bidding. But does it matter at all today? This is just the view of a cynic. What matters is Obama in Ghana. Welcome to Ogyakrom.

I have heard the question being asked “what is in it for Ghana?” The question smack of our usual begging mentality but it has been asked anyway. Most Africans tend to confuse the president of the USA -United States of America for United States of Africa. Obama first and foremost, seeks the interest of America NOT Africa. We also tend to forget that he is more of a white American (Because he was brought up by white grannies and mummy) than an African American. Maybe fate took him away from his father to fulfil his destiny. Will Barrack be Barrack if he was raised by his father?

What is in it for Ghana? If you ask many ordinary Ghanaians, the answer is obvious but many have refused to mention it. They want visas to America.

Yours truly will ask Obama for a single favour. President Obama, please deliver this message to our leaders;

Africa is rich. What the continent lacks is not aid and grants. Africa lacks leadership and fair trade. The former leads to the latter, but not vice versa.

If Africa's leaders will do what leaders are elected for,

If Africa's leaders will make corruption a very expensive venture

If Africa's leaders will stop plundering the resources of the continent to benefit themselves and cronies from within and without the continent

If Africa's leaders are willing to lead the continent to pay the price of development

Then Africa will eradicate malaria, provide food and water for every citizen, build good roads and infrastructure, provide a health system worthy of note, and create an educational system that equips Africans to negotiate with the world.

Yes! Yes! Yes you can!

Welcome to Ogyakrom Mr. Barack Hussein Obama.