Stinky Accra Sports Stadium, the Proverbial Gyan and the Ghanaian Flavor

WASS   ‘ayↄↄↄ’ was the usual refrain from colleagues when one questioned the absurdities of the conditions in West Africa Secondary School (WASS) in the mid-eighties. In pigeon English, the expression translates ‘WASS we dey’  to wit, this is the WASS way. Until 1988 when it was relocated to Adenta, the school was located in Accra New Town. When we enrolled in 1984, the place was good for anything but a school. The disjointed shacks that passed for classrooms had seen better days. The notorious Texaco boys who had in their fold some of the most dreaded armed robbers (some of whom were executed by firing squad ) of the time were not only our closest neighbors but also shared classrooms, dormitories and any of the scarce free space around the school with us.  Our classrooms were their sleeping place and the ware house for their staple- marijuana -which they stored in the broken ceilings. On many occasions, when nature called, they responded right there in the classroom. Because of the latter activity, students and teachers alike will abandon the classroom for days until some of us felt we’d missed our lessons long enough, so we will spread some ash on the excreta and sweep out the abomination in order to get a few teachers back. Thanks to those days at WASS, some of us witnessed ‘action’ beyond what was created in Hollywood.  On a couple of occasions soldiers  we believed were commandos, stormed the place during school hours and played ‘dzulo ke police’ with the Texaco boys. We ran and ducked at the sounds of the guns and enjoyed the cowboy stories when the raid was over.   I have come to realize that it was not just the WASS way, but to a large extent it is the Ghanaian way.  I still can’t explain why parents didn’t put any pressure on the politicians to get the school moved many years before a students’ agitation forced the issue, but if you need convincing, there it is, Ghana  ‘ayↄↄↄ’ – it is the Ghanaian flavor, the politician’s haven, where the applause for mediocrity is so loud nobody can hear the cries of neglect.

When Ghana hosted the African Nations Cup final in 2008, game tickets were sold in advance and tied to seats. Imperfect as the system was in those days, I was one of those who thought it was a great first step and that civilization had arrived. How wrong I was. On my way to watch Ghana vrs Malawi at the Accra sports stadium on the 8^th of September 2012, I heard some sport commentators lamenting the seeming lack of interest from Accra fans as seen from the empty seats in the stadium thirty minutes to kickoff. Ironically, when I got to the stadium less than fifteen minutes to kickoff, there were hundreds of fans outside the gate looking for tickets to go watch the match. Officially, tickets had run out. A friend of mine managed to get us VIP gate GH₵20 tickets. After paying for what is supposed to be a luxury seat, we watched the entire game standing with many others because there were no empty seats. We ran from the eastern to the western section with the same results-no seats. The VIP tickets sold outnumbered the seats available. Incidentally, the VIP section was the only section in the stadium that didn’t have empty seats. When we finally took our stand to watch the match, we had to endure a nauseating stench from the toilets that stayed with us for the duration of the match. No body warned us that the toilet cleaners had joined the popular single spine strikes, so it must be for shortage of Dettol and other cleaning materials on the market. A couple who were bold enough to bring their less than 6 months old baby to watch the game swapped seats to no avail.  I couldn’t help laughing at the sight of a couple of radio commentators running Twi commentary with mobile phones pressed to their heads as they struggled for space and view. They stretched their sentences to make up for un-sighted actions on the field. The next time you hear an incoherent commentary drowned in the stadium chants, just understand that it is part of the Ghanaian flavor. Perhaps the radio station was not accredited to use the commentary box leaving the commentators to jump over spectators to bring you what they can see. 

Fifty-five years after independence, we make ticketing for a football game look like rocket science. I recall a day in the eighties when a red-eyed rough looking guy walked up to a spectator at the chair-less popular stand of the Accra sports stadium, and insisted that he owned the spot where the latter stood to watch the game, because he always watched his game from that spot. When the spectator refused to give up the spot, he ended up with a cracked skull. It seems we haven’t moved far from such madness. There are those of us who wish that the stadium will be made family friendly so we can comfortably watch games with the whole family. We will love to buy tickets and be assured of our seats before we head to the stadium. We will love to walk through the gates without harassment, get into the seats that we have paid for without contending with matadors and enjoy the whole atmosphere at the stadium. It is not fair that we are estopped from enjoying a stick of kyikyinga (kebab) during recess by the lack of good cleaning program at the toilets. There is no value in messy queues at the gate that enrich pickpockets.  It seems there is greater demand for the sheltered   seats at the VIP stands; can someone stretch the shelter to cover more sections in the stadium? Wishful thinking, Ghana ayↄↄↄ, we’re doing just fine, who cares?

On the match itself, it was difficult to miss the fitness of Asamoah Gyan or the lack of it. The baby jet seems to have lost his speed and sharpness. He tried to conceal his lethargy with needless appeals to the referee for assistance. There were many, especially in England, who could not fathom why a 26 year old talented striker will abandon the highly competitive English premier league for the less glamorous league in the Emirates. But most of those guys do not know what it means to grow up in Africa.   They will never understand that for most Ghanaian talents, your short football career is also your one shot to rescue not just you, but your family from poverty. They know nothing about football age.  Over here, for lack of a meal, many former football greats perish, so when presented with the chance to play in an obscure league in the Middle East for three times  what he was making in the glamorous English premier league, Asa ,as the English love to call him, had a decision to make. He could choose to gamble on his talent to make him both famous and rich in good time, or he could choose to grab the riches immediately and risk getting lost on the radar of world football, and he chose the latter.  It is for good reason that many great players only choose to play at the emirates at the twilight of their careers, but for Gyan, he abandoned the challenge of the great leagues, the dream of conquest, and attempting to upstage the very best in the greatest theaters of the game. He may have made a great economic decision , but it seems the decision is already having a toll on his game. He must find ways of keeping his game at the top in the absence of true competition, or risks becoming a proverb. If he continues to flop like he has done of late playing for the national team, the Sheiks may soon change his status from a footballer to Liaison officer for Africa Affairs, and the next time the Sheiks approach a talented player in a high flying league,  his manager will call on the proverb- remember Asamoah Gyan.

Gyan has had a great career so far in the shirts of Ghana but there is still a lot for him to achieve. Almost a goal every two matches, two world cup appearances, BBC Africa player of the year and an African cup final are enviable achievements. But he is yet to win a cup or the CAF Africa footballer of the year prize. His penalty miss also denied Africa its first semi-final place in the world cup, a record he must be hungry to correct. Soon, an African country will make it to the semifinal and the final, and nobody will remember the nearly men of 2010. Realistically, Asamoah has only one chance to correct this in 2014. But the question is, is he hungry for these and more? Asa could just have told himself , "Onipa beyee bi, na w'ammeye ne nyinaa”  to wit  “Man came to accomplish a part, not the whole” when he embarked on project Middle East. He might have looked at his CV and assured himself, “kitiwa biara nsua”, no achievement is too small. Politicians get applauded for commissioning KVIP in the 21^st century, he has done better than that, “Ghana ayↄↄↄ”. No one can begrudge him for choosing the millions, but Ghana must look for our goals to take as to the next world cup, and it seems we must look beyond Gyan.

The Grave craves our Saints- Fare thee well, President Mills

I have seen a few funerals in my few decades in the land of our birth, but one thing stands out at these solemn occasions- Only good people die in Ghana. Tributes, Biographies, and other narrations eulogize the spirit that once occupied human jacket lying in the casket. But the praises and genuine grief expressed by Ghanaians after the death of the third President of the fourth republic, Professor John Evans Fiifi Atta Mills, I dare say, are unprecedented. This is the man whose performance as a president was hailed daily by his supporters as much as it was berated by his political opponents in his three and half years in office. But the voice of the critics has suddenly fallen with the demise of the man. After his death, even his fiercest critics have something good to say about the man Prof. Mills. The glorious tributes to the fallen President do not suggest that he was infallible, neither are they hints of hypocrisy.  Our tradition has rather bequeathed to us wisdom that has bubbled up to the fore with the departure of the King of Peace in Ghana politics. There is no perfection in man, but there is great goodness in all Men that we can celebrate daily and reap great benefits as a nation. It seems our ancestors didn’t want anything to do with Shakespeare’s line in Julius Caesar, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones”. No, in Ghana we don’t bury the good with the man, we sing it at his funeral, because that is the meaning of tribute.

For a man I only knew through the scenes and acts of public office, I think President Mills broke the myth that our political space is a preserve of tough-talking firebrands. He has proven that humble men can win the applause of the people without wearing a false cloak of machismo. Many have come to assume that because of our past, one can only win an election by throwing tantrums and making a nuisance of all that is decorous.  He kept the arsenals of vile tongue darts far from his public discourse. He proved that soft power can be used to devastating effect when he ignored all the public insults and disrespect shown him by his former mentor, President Rawlings, and his wife, but crashed the so called invincibility of President Rawlings’s support in an election by handing his wife what is perhaps the most humiliating defeat in Ghana’s political history at the Sunyani congress that elected him as the NDC flag bearer  for  2012  presidential  election.

You can throw anything at President Mills, but you can never describe him as corrupt. Long before Prof’s demise, Kwame Pianim, a member of the opposition NPP, declared that there is no corruption found in him. That is the greatest tribute that can be paid to a leader from this continent where it is common knowledge that most leaders fleece the States they head. He never came across as a property grabbing president; neither did we hear rumours that his wife was stashing away wealth on his behalf. When Nana Konadu’s campaign team accused him of spending ninety million cedis on his campaign to get re-elected in Sunayani, he found it so amusing he couldn’t stop the ‘un-presidential’ laughter which he interspersed with words of disbelief in his native Fanti language. That laughter is one of the media’s favorite sound bites of him.

Of course, Prof was not a man without blemish. For his reputation as Asomdwehene (King of Peace), President Mill’s demeanor didn’t seem to have rubbed-off many of spokes-people as they traded mud with the spokes-people of the opposition NPP. Because there were no open admonitions of his own men, it appeared the young men and women who run riot with verbal diarrhea had the Prof’s tacit support. A few weeks before the Prof’s death, there were false rumours of his demise. In reaction to the rumours he blamed on the opposition NPP, Mr. Okudzeto Ablakwa, a deputy minister of information, was reported to have said, “anytime they say Prof Mills is dead, one of them dies”, in reference to the demise of Mr Owusu Ansah a member of parliament from the NPP side. He denied the departed MP the very courtesies President Mills is being accorded now. When Rawlings boomed several times in the Kuffuor regime using unsavory language, there was little or no effort to distance then candidate Mills from such trash talk. The NDC and the ex-president only found them unpalatable when Rawlings turned his guns on them.  

Perhaps the biggest blot on the Prof’s reputation is the difficult to explain judgment debt payment to business man and NDC party financier, Alfred Agbesi Woyome. Mr. Woyome is currently defending himself in court against accusations of fraud preferred against him by the State after fervent defense of his conduct from people very close to Professor Mills.

But all said and done, Prof was a model politician whose career path many young Ghanaians will love to tread. There is no doubt that he was a good man.  A man you love to love and hate to hate. Prof is gone to live with the fathers in a world where the aftermath of life is no more a mystery. As he yielded to the stroke that conveyed his spirit into the afterlife, he freed himself from all pain and every cancerous cell in his mortal body. He has played his part in the drama of life perfectly acting out his role as the Man John Evans Fiifi Atta Mills.

The grave has consumed another saint. But the greatest tribute we can pay to him is to make our politics cleaner and the insults leaner.  His death has reminded us that we only contest ideas in the political space but not the Men who carry them.  Like us, the conveyers of the ideas we detest are saints the grave is waiting to swallow.

Fare thee Well Mr. President.

The horses and the chariots of Ghana- A Lamentation in memory of President Atta Mills

“Man who is born of woman
Is of few days and full of trouble.
² He comes forth like a flower and fades away;
He flees like a shadow and does not continue"

Job 14: 1-2

The tintinnabulation calls, the students sit for the lecture, but the lecturer’s seat is empty

The castle doors open, the Press is ready to cover the news, but the microphone is silent

The program goes on air, the pundits are ready to debate, but the agenda sheet is empty

Suddenly, the quite is broken by the ominous tune of the sacred  bamboo

The atenteben is giving a message  “….Se ye de brodie ma asasea, asase yi no kain kain kain; se ye de abro ma asasea, asase yi no kain kain kain; na se ye di onipa ma asasea, na asase afa no kora kora kora”

The commander runs to the castle, ‘Chief, Chief where are you ?’

‘My men are ready to defend Ghana.’ ‘ We await your orders’. ‘Where is the commander in chief?’

The only response is the dirge from the atenteben, ‘asase afa no kora, kora kora’

Oh no! The horses and the Chariots of Ghana!

It is the visit we dread yet we know he will come. When I heard the ululations, ‘mewue, mewue’ I knew that my worst fear had overtaken me. Man’s nemesis, death, stretched his icy hand towards our house and what a wreck. He pulled down a great tree and took the shine out of a star. Oh how are the mighty fallen! It cannot be true, President John Evans Atta Mills of Ghana is no more? But alas! It is so.

Our grief is deep, our hearts are broken. There is no pond big enough to contain our tears, nor leaf bitter enough to take away our pain. But  for Prof, there is no more pain, he feels no more hurt. He succumbed to his physical frailties so he takes away their sting.  It is dusk. The argument is finished.

Asomdwehene Professor Mills, who will teach us tax law? Who will the opposition blame for Ghana’s problems? Who will the government communicators hold up as a symbol of integrity? Your final move is unprecedented and no one can challenge this one. As you take the lead to the village, we have been sobered, and it just sunk in, our differences and disagreements aside, we share one attribute- we are all mortals after all.  Hopefully we will debate with respect for each other, speak with humility, and serve with forthrightness, knowing that no one will be spared this journey, it is only a matter of time. We will miss your quips, - the cat hunter, dzi wo fie asem, gargantuan heckling and more.

Suddenly, for you this scripture is real

I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith:  

 Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing. (II Tim 4:7- 8).

Damirifa due! Damirifa due! Damirifa due ne amanehunu!

Adieu good Professor. May your soul find rest with the Lord.

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.