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Dear Brutus,
There is a good reason why I joined the PAMBASS in my teens. Fighting was forbidden for a PAMBASS. Too
many of the neighborhood chaps along the corridors of Accra New Town and
Kotobabi were too eager to settle misunderstandings with their
fists. In these circumstances, you must be well equipped to dish out blows and
take them in equal measure. Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t endowed with those
muscles and tissues that thrive in such environments. Wearing my PAMBASS cap
was a dignified way out of a duel. When I receive the first blow, I simply walk
away, ostensibly, because I am a PAMBASS. I am spared the follow-up punches
which graduate in severity as the number increases. I learnt very early not to
use being a Christian as the reason for not fighting back. If I do, the
dude will demand the other cheek for the second slap to fulfill scripture.
Even fools understand that they must pick their fights. It
is sheer idiocy to pick one with a spirit. The great Chinua Achebe in the book,
Arrow of God, told the story of a chap who beat every wrestler in town and
threw a challenge to the spirits. They sent him his Chi (personal god) and he
was floored one time. I don’t know what came over that smart dude, Jacob, in
the book of Genesis. He struggled with an angel all night and left the battle
ground with a crocked hip. Sadly, you do not always pick the fight, the fight
picks you. That is the situation confronting the Ghana Institute of Languages
in Accra. The learned director of the institute Dr.
John Rex Gadzekpo, told a radio station “We have been having very serious
nocturnal strange happenings at the Institute of late. It’s becoming very
alarming, threatening the life of security guards. I am talking about ghosts
and evil spirits who have been coming, banging doors and struggling over doors
with the security guards and at times strangling them…”. Brutus, this is no
laughing matter. The erudite gentleman consulted all the knowledge that earned
him a permanent head damage (PhD), and came to this conclusion, “…We do not
know what is happening. It is exoteric and cannot be handled normally…”. So for what his long years of education hid
from him, he got a traditional priest, who I suspect has wasted less time in the
classroom, to expose and exorcise the spirits. Some guards told reporters that
the ghosts have asked for a fowl, but Dr. Gadzekpo went a step better. He
has sacrificed a whole goat to quench
the insatiable appetite of some bad ancestors who still demand meat from the
grave. I don’t envy the Institute’s accountant. How will he describe this
transaction in the books? What will be the reaction of auditors if he opens a
ghost account? Parliament’s account committee will be livid at the sight of
that entry.
Brutus, while Dr. Gadzekpo was
working hard to extricate his Institute from the grips of the spirits, some
loonies have unwittingly walked into a big fight with all manner of deities. It
all began a few weeks ago when an obscure online publication called the New
Free Press made a ludicrous accusation that the great traditional ruler of the
Asantes, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II was a conduit for a 5 million US Dollar bribe to
sway the verdict in the supreme court ruling that affirmed President Mahama’s
victory over Nana Akuffo Addo in the 2012 election. If you rule out mischief,
anybody with a modicum of common sense should realize that the publication
wasn’t worth the bytes it occupied on computer memories. But some chaps in
Kumasi (capital of Asante Region) of all places, went on radio, obviously
possessed by Gbeshie, and elevated the online thrash into a publication that
was worth a discussion. After doing what
we do best in Ghana- talk, talk, talk- the original authors of the publication
remain unknown and cannot be held to account.
I am particularly pained by the fact that with
all the IT knowledge in Ogyakrom and the coercive power of the state, we cannot
smoke out some un-savvy cyber hoodlums who manifest mischief by sending emails
to Ghanaweb. Some have even suggested that these chaps are ghosts. But the
great monarch is having none of it. The power of our traditions and the richness
of our historic culture are vested in our traditional authorities. If anybody
should know a thing or two about spiritual kokonsa, the glue that binds our
mindsets to ancestral thinking, it is our traditional authorities. You see, Ogyakromians have always been
suspicious about technology. The highlife musician AB Crentsil believes these
iron birds that fly people across oceans is nothing short of white witchcraft.
The telephone is a lying rope (ahomatrofo).The monarch will not allow miscreants
practicing white witchcraft to get away with it by parading as ghosts. So he tree-struck
(duabor) them. It has widely been reported in Ogyakrom dailies that the
Powerful One has summoned these chaps before three different spirits- The smaller
gods, the golden stool and the Omnipotent himself. My brother, these chaps are
finished. Their path to appeal a verdict has been blocked because different hierarchies
of spirits were co joined to arbitrate at the same time. I strongly suspect
that common law will frown at this behavior, probably describing it as triple
jeopardy, which is not fair to the cyber kubolo boys.
That is the difficulty in
relying on the gods. The rules are spiritually discerned and the human brain
has no capacity to rationalize them. We will not even know it, when a verdict
is given. This is unfortunate because I want to see justice done. Nonetheless,
I will keep my ears to the ground. After the date of the tree-strike, when I hear
that the fingers of a man are withered without cause, and that man once used a
computer or other devices to send an email, I will know that the gods have struck.
These miscreants have successfully
united an academic and a monarch in the palace of the gods. Perhaps the meeting
place is more important than the union. Our ancestors have been there several times
before us. Those visits were a powerful line of defense against invading
colonizers from Europe who sought to enslave us on our land. The outcome is
enshrined in our history. But the similarity between the visits and my behavior
in the eighties at Accra New Town is not lost on me. Just as I joined the PAMBASS
to abdicate my fighting duties, a visit to the gods is a perfect alibi that
excuses us from finding human ways to overcome difficult challenges.
Soo long
Ogyakromian
