A game of judgments, debts and a trophy

It feels like a nightmare, but the rooster's crow that will usually rescue me from the horror of a never ending bad dream remains deafening silent, a sign that this is for real. Any residual illusion that the sun would soon smile away the dark clouds and send me looking for my toothbrush was quickly dispelled when the words of a US Supreme Court Judge, Justice Louis Brandeis, were re-echoed – sunlight is the best disinfectant- to stress that that the sun will only bring more painful revelations of judgment debts. And after the learned attorney general of Ghana appeared before parliament's public accounts committee and told us to brace ourselves for more turbulence in judgment-debt-sphere, I have resigned myself to be drowned in screaming evidence that our elected officials, past and present, have failed to protect the public purse with our tacit support.

 
The nightmare began with accusations that business man and financier of the ruling NDC party, Alfred Woyome, was paid fifty-one million GHC he didn't deserve as judgment debt. Some government officials vehemently attempted to swear us to the belief that he had a valid contract with the republic which was broken by the past NPP administration, an argument that shamefully prostrates before the subsequent arrest and prosecution of Woyome for fraud by the NDC government and its efforts to retrieve payments already made to him. Since then, the judgment debt saga has taken enough twists and turns to take viewers away from the most enthralling soap opera.

 
As ordinary citizens struggle to come to terms with the fact that this and future generations have been mortgaged to the greed and misdeeds of the political class, NPP and NDC have shamelessly reduced our pain and anguish to a political game, so much so that the deputy minister of information, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa , has resorted to producing, hyping and staging serialized press dramas of judgment debts to gain political equalization of whatever advantage the NPP got from the Woyome saga. To our politicians, the judgment debt brouhaha presents a unique opportunity to grab the trophy-political power. Every ace they strike is crucial to the outcome of the game. To them, it has less to do with opportunity cost of development of a poor country masquerading as a middle-income state. They find little connection to the many women who in the twenty-first century, lose their lives just for attempting to have babies, or the many villages and towns that lack potable water. That is the reason we do not have a single apology from any politician or their parties for the mishaps of Woyomegate, Waterville, CP, AAL (I &II) and Isofoton. There is nobody responsible for any of these! Their well-oiled communication machinery are encamped at every print and electronic media outlet to shout themselves hoarse till the pendulum of blame is magnetically attracted to the other party. Yet we all know that somewhere in the mist of the accusations, the counter-accusations, the insinuations, the politic of equalization, the spins and the outright nonsense, lies the truth, who is usually the first to be sacrificed when accountability calls.

 
What our politicians have successfully done so far is to get into the laboratory, crush what is good, what is bad and what is ugly about contract terminations, in a single crucible, creating enough smoke to keep us blind to the truth and choke the speech out of our vocal chords. But we have heard enough to understand that this nation has lost and will lose more millions through the actions and inactions of our elected officials. Without a doubt, there are good grounds to terminate contracts, and if the other party feels aggrieved and heads to court, we meet him there fully armed. But when there seems to be too many contractual disputes leading to too many awards against the state, it raises very serious questions. What we can glean from the current season of the debt soap opera is a series of events that leaves the nation bleeding.

 
Firstly, contracts are awarded to political cronies in such a hurry that important documentation and processes are overlooked. Then the opposition party takes the reins of government and introduces a powerful man who attempts to cut to size some untouchable suppliers to the previous regime. With reckless enthusiasm, he abdicates contractual obligations as if there are no consequences in law, and the supplier heads to court. Unfortunately for the State, some of these contracts will be found binding and we had no business tossing them into the sea water behind the castle. Then the first government comes back to power and feels a sense of responsibility towards their cronies whose businesses were affected, so they refuse to defend the State even in situations where the State may have strong grounds for defense, the result is gargantuan judgment debt and spurious settlement debts. Seeing that the new government is in a benevolent mood to dole out Ghana money at settlements, an opportunistic business man, being a good entrepreneur smells an opportunity to manufacture and sell some settlement debt to equally eager State and government officials, and he grabs it with alacrity. When the s..t hits the fan, the party communicators take care of the rest.

 
It is difficult to understand how partisan politics has become an alibi for criminal behavior and ineptitude, but the only reason people get away with this nonsense is that there are too many of us who will find excuses for the misdeeds of our party men, even when we have no benefits from the outcomes of their adventures. There is enough blame in this judgment debt saga to go round all the governments of the fourth republic, yet the architects of these gargantuan debts receive massive endorsement from their parties, underscoring the view that our political parties are mere electoral machines rather than any organization built around values. 

Until the rank and file of the NPP and NDC indict their own leaders, for their part in this mess, there is no pressure on the political parties to take this nation seriously. It will take an extra ordinary circumstance for the government in power to put their own on trial, and when a member of the opposition is prosecuted, his party will scream, Political Persecution! With this dichotomy, the climate is perfect for politicians to play their game, and what a trophy to play for- the key to a nation's safe whose contents will not be accounted for. Maybe, as usual, we need a solution from our so called development partners. When they cease all donations and loans to this country, then we will understand the value of every cedi and we will fight to retrieve every pesewa wrongly applied.

The Cryptic Text

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

 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

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

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%.