tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31021933126031068092024-02-20T17:16:31.752+01:00Femi's ViewsFemi Akomolafe is a computer consultant, writer and a social commentator/critic. Femi and his crew currently produce videos, films and documentaries. Femi lives in Kasoa, Ghana.Femi Akomolafehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11181295541117761340noreply@blogger.comBlogger230125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3102193312603106809.post-56559174216105849802013-02-21T11:20:00.000+01:002013-02-21T11:20:30.881+01:00What is going on in Ghana Inc.?It was just two short months ago that Ghanaians danced on the streets to welcome the new government. <br />
<br />
Disobeying all the traffic rules and regulations, victorious partisans of the wining party took over our major roads to do what we know best: dance ourselves silly at the least opportunity.<br />
<br />
That the elections were marred by disturbing irregularities were not sufficient reasons for some not to enjoy themselves.<br />
<br />
Today, the land looks desolate.<br />
<br />
I cannot remember the last time I saw Ghana in this sorry state!<br />
<br />
Two of life’s basics – water and electricity are in short supply.<br />
<br />
The prices of foodstuffs are in the stratosphere.<br />
<br />
And, please let no one throw darts into my eyes with stupid figures of declining inflation – the prices of almost everything I buy has shot up drastically. <br />
<br />
The cost of living is, literally and figuratively, killing me.<br />
<br />
As though the burden is not heavy enough to carry, the government, in its infinite wisdom, increased the prices of fuel, once again very drastically. <br />
<br />
The prices of gas was increased by a whopping 50%.<br />
<br />
Please, please let no one tell me about world prices, blah, blah blah.<br />
<br />
I know that prices of goods fluctuates and can rise, what I do not understand is why a government will decide to increase the price of a commodity by 50% at one go!<br />
<br />
No, it is not done!<br />
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What is sensible is to make gradual increments so that citizens will hardly notice.<br />
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I have never use this column for personal complaint and I’m not about to start, but I will call on those in authority to gear up their acts. <br />
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Let no one deceive herself that things are well with us. Let no one engage in any stupid propaganda about the state of our national affairs: things are simply not well. <br />
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And I’m being very moderate in my choices of words.<br />
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It is sad to visit our national capital, Accra, and see human beings dodging traffic with heavy loads of jerry cans of water on their head. <br />
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Come on, guys, this is the year 2013! <br />
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Many societies left this type of primitive situations behind two centuries ago!<br />
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It is pathetic to, to say the least, that almost sixty after we started to self-govern ourselves, we still lack the ability to provide common, yes, common water for our people. <br />
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And we have normal, intelligent people going on the radio stations to try to justify this sad state of affairs.<br />
<br />
The least I say about those empty block-heads the better.<br />
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I feel totally scandalized when I listened to officials of the water company telling us that the filters used in treating the water have broken down, and that it’d take several months to replace them.<br />
<br />
Gosh!<br />
<br />
Am I being too intelligent or are some people just plain STUPID?<br />
<br />
It is a given that being mechanical gadgets, water filters are bound to break down. <br />
<br />
It is simply the immutable laws of physics that anything mechanical will, sooner or later, break down. <br />
<br />
This is where PLANNING comes into the equation.<br />
<br />
I abhor physical violence, but I’m glad that I was not close to the dunce-head of official who come on the airwaves to make the silly ratiocinations. <br />
<br />
What are our officials paid to do if not to stay in their opulent offices and draw up plans on how to get us basic services, and make sure that equipment are well-maintained and replaced as when due?<br />
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Why else do we remunerate them so handsomely? <br />
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Why else do we give them those big jeeps with which they drive us off the roads with their sirens?<br />
<br />
As though that were not enough, another official from the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) was on JoyFM (Monday, February 18, 2013) to give the nauseating news that his outfit has not started load-shedding!<br />
<br />
My part of Kasoa have been kept in darkness for two solid days and yet, an official of the company that collect my money every month, had the effrontery to come on air to tell us that we ain’t seen nothing yet. <br />
<br />
And he got away with it!<br />
<br />
What exactly is going on in the land?<br />
<br />
What is it that makes it impossible for us to do what other human beings are, as a matter of routine, doing almost effortlessly – generate and distribute enough electricity for domestic and industrial use?<br />
<br />
When I looked through my electricity bills, I discovered that the prices has been increased over 400% over the last few years.<br />
<br />
Almost yearly, the electricity asked for and get permission to increase their tariffs. We lodge our ineffectual complains but they get their way with promises that services will improve. <br />
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The authority charged with ensuring that the service providers keep their part of the bargain, the Public Utility Regulatory Commission (PURC) is effeminate to the point of uselessness.<br />
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I even listened to one PURC official on the radio the other day pathetically threatening hell and brimstone. The reporter failed to ask the moron why threaten when you have the power to act? <br />
<br />
Why didn’t the PURC simply sanction one of the utility providers to jolt them out of their somnambulism, rather than coming on the air with ubber stupid nonsensical effusions?<br />
<br />
I don’t know by what magic it is accomplished, but I also discover that I pay almost the same bill every month, irrespective of whether or not I was supplied with electricity!<br />
<br />
I honestly would not mind very much how much the ECG charge me, as long as they can provide me with the electricity to earn my living, pay my bill and cater for my family.<br />
<br />
Which brings us to the point I made recently about the pointlessness of the president traveling abroad to canvas for investors.<br />
I meant well, but it appears that many people did not take kindly to my telling the president to stop wasting his time by travelling abroad to woo investors.<br />
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Many did not understand the reason I adduced for advising the president to stop wasting his (our) money, time and energy on foreign forays that will not yield any positive results.<br />
<br />
Of course, the foreigners will welcome our president with wide smiles and high protocol, but that would be that. <br />
<br />
They will exchange the normal banter, make the necessary noises but will they ask themselves why we lack the intelligence to see the stupidity of our forays.<br />
<br />
The countries our leaders begged for direct investments all have embassies or high commissions in our country. <br />
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The officials at these foreign missions are paid to keep their eyes and ears firmly on the ground and appraise their governments on the state of affairs in our dear republic.<br />
<br />
We may have a penchant for celebrating, deluding and praising ourselves to high heavens, but these foreigners will tell their governments nothing but the unalloyed truth.<br />
<br />
They will tell about how our menfolk, womenfolk and children wake up at dawn with jerry cans and other containers to search for water.<br />
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They will tell about how we mindlessly broke our electricity company into three incoherent parts, with none of them able to tell us who is responsible for what.<br />
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They will tell about how the generation and distribution of electricity remains a major production in our dear land, despite all our boastful chest-beating and all that.<br />
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They will tell about the long queue for gas, even when we celebrate ourselves as the Gateway to Africa.<br />
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They will relate how we foolishly signed agreements that make foreign companies cart our oil away in crude form, only for us to import refined petroleum products, whilst our only refinery is deprived of crude oil.<br />
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They will tell about how we continue to destroy our environment by our using trees as fuel for cooking in the year 2013.<br />
They will tell about the innumerable big, big jeeps on our barely motorable roads.<br />
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They will tell about how our big men us off roads with their sirens.<br />
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The envoys will tell their government how profligate we are, and how we do not spare any efforts when it comes to making our officials comfortable.<br />
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They will tell about how we maintain the most expensive type of government money can buy.<br />
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They will recount how the executive branch of our government hiked their pay and back-dated it?<br />
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They will relate how we increased the number of our legislators (even though none of them have introduce a single private member bill since the dawn of history), give them US$50,000 for car loan (even though they all already own cars); and another 50,000 cedis as house allowance, even though they all own houses in Accra.<br />
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The legates will tell about the general indiscipline in our land.<br />
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They will tell about how, in the name of freedom, our people break any and all laws, and get away with it.<br />
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Honestly, I think we all should feel terribly scandalized by the current state of affairs in our beloved republic.<br />
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How on earth do we get to the point whereby two of life’s basic – water and light, come to be in short supply in this age and time in our country?<br />
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We ought to be outraged when people we pay handsomely to do a job come out to give us pathetically silly excuses on why the jobs are not being done.<br />
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We ought to feel ashamed to see our country reduced to this level by sheer incompetence of officials.<br />
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It is time we tell our elite that we are thoroughly fed us with their poor performance. <br />
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We should make them know that we feel terribly let down.<br />
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Femi Akomolafehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11181295541117761340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3102193312603106809.post-43387702005956877202013-02-18T11:58:00.000+01:002013-02-18T11:59:00.868+01:00American Dream (Satire)<br />
“<i>It is easy to become a satellite today without even being aware of it. This country can seduce God. Yes, it has that seductive power - the power of dollarism. You can cuss out colonialism, imperialism and other isms, but it is hard for you to cuss out dollarism. When they drop those dollars on you, your soul goes away.” </i>- Malcolm X<br />
<br />
“<i>And so you want to get an American visa<br />
To go where they say the living is easier<br />
Since you were young you’ve been told<br />
You can get anything there<br />
But, it’s not so.<br />
See, the matter is very steep for all<br />
Equal opportunity is the call<br />
But words without deeds is like garden<br />
Full of weeds<br />
So you better take heed<br />
So you better beware<br />
You better take care<br />
Cause you might be heading for a nightmare<br />
Why do you slumber from January to December?<br />
Dream only last while you sleep<br />
You better look before you leap</i>.” - Jimmy Cliff, ‘American Dream.’<br />
<br />
The gentleman looked thirty-something. He was dressed very conservatively - three-piece suit, jacket, a very colourful and very loud tie, plus all the works. <br />
<br />
I observed him from my vantage position. Now and then he studies a leaf of paper and smiles deliriously. I was intrigued. <br />
<br />
He doesn’t look crazed to me though; but you never know. And those irrational smiles!<br />
<br />
Holding my drink firmly, I zigzagged around the tables, curtsying to guests. I emerged in front of him and bare my ivories to him in a toothy smile. “How do you do?” I asked and settled down in an empty seat in front of him.<br />
<br />
With a wicked smile dancing on his handsome Ewe face, he scans my face. He seems to like what he saw and declared: “My broda, I go buy you drink.”<br />
<br />
“Rainy day on the Lotto?” I ask my greatly bemused companion.<br />
<br />
He looks at my face, glances at the paper, gives another of his mysterious smiles and shakes his head. “My broda, this one e pass Lotto, sef.” He tells me, waving the paper like a prized possession. “Who say God e no dey, ehn! Me, Godwin, son of Gadabo himself, I go go America, ah!”<br />
<br />
The guy was drinking Coca-Cola; I knew that it’d be difficult to get drunk on that. Perhaps he’d been imbibing somewhere else. He doesn’t look drunk to me, though. He holds the leaf of paper very close to his chest, so I couldn’t read what was on it.<br />
<br />
“You going to America?” I asked him, trying my best to pry the secrets from him.<br />
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“By HIS grace, I go go. My ancestors are not asleep. Even if na only one man they call for the whole of Ghana, dat go be me.” He vows, beating his chest vigorously. <br />
<br />
I still didn’t understand his riddles so I formally asked him to explain. He takes some time deciding whether or not to impart the secrets. He cast a long look around the tables, the way they do in spy-movies. Satisfied that there were no enemies lurking in dark corners, he tells me his story.<br />
<br />
The paper he’s cradling was the receipt for his application for the American Green Card Lottery. The whole of Africa had been granted fifty or so thousand places and, according to him, millions are fighting to get aboard. The paper was evidence that his application had been accepted - like thousands others. The raffle would soon be drawn. <br />
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That, however, was enough reason for Godwin, the son of Gadabo, to celebrate.<br />
<br />
“So you want to go to America?” I asked<br />
<br />
He gave me a scornful look. “Why did you ask me if I want to go to America? Who no wan go America, you no wan go? You see man wey no wan go America before?”<br />
<br />
“I know of many people who are not dying to go to the U.S.A. Why is it so important for you to go to America? Why all the crazy smiles?”<br />
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“You lie me, bad!” Godwin Gadabo cries like an outraged housewife. “No man who has the chance will not choose to go to America. Whether you jealous sef, or you be craze.”<br />
<br />
“I am not jealous and kindly let my doctor decide the state of my sanity. Tell me, why you want to go to America.”<br />
<br />
He smiles a very wide smile. “God in heaven, this man ask me why I want to go to America! Plenty reasons. Do you think that I do not like better things? If I can get to Yankee, all my problems are solved, period. Don’t you see all our burgers? Don’t you see the big cars they bring home; the big mansions they put up? I know people who go Yankee for one year, and they build fine storey building for their village. They bring two or three cars and they have more dollars in their pockets than many of our local banks. Do you think that Godwin, the son of Gadabo himself, wants to die in poverty? You think sey I no like better things?”<br />
<br />
I gave him a wry smile, “Your optimism is commendable, but it’s not everyone in America that has a car and a big mansion. There are also poor people in America.”<br />
<br />
“Blasphemy!” Godwin, the son of Gadabo ejaculates. “Poor people for America, you lie me. Have you ever been there? I think that you are just jealous. Don’t you watch the movies, where do you see poor people in America, tell me? I came here to celebrate my good luck, and here you’re trying to pour sand on my gari.”<br />
<br />
It was my turn to laugh at the simple-mindedness of my companion. Men like these, just a shade from idiocy, get their opinion from make-believe movies. Could they really believe that all movies are real? <br />
<br />
“Do you believe everything you watch in movies?” I asked Godwin, the son of Gadabo.<br />
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He looked genuinely shocked by my question. “Do you think that white people are lying when they make their movies? If there are poor people in America we should see them in the American movies, don’t you think so? Unlike in our Ghana, everything in America is neat, tidy and big. Everybody has his own car plus his own palace. You don’t have to work hard. Don’t you see that they don’t work as hard as we do in Ghana? You see them, when they need money, they take out their wallets and put a plastic into a wall and money comes out. White men are magicians! And you are asking why I want to go to America. Do you think that I’d like to die in poverty?”<br />
<br />
“But there are also poor people in America. There are people in America trying hard to make ends meet.” I insisted<br />
<br />
“Maybe you lie. Or, maybe they don’t want to work. In Yankee, there is big opportunity for everyone. Poor people for America, tcheew. You lie bad.”<br />
<br />
This fellow is beyond redemption. “Look, young man,” I cried, raising my voice. “Either you’re inebriated or you are the biggest moron this side of the ape divide. Movies are simply optical illusions concocted to entertain. They do not represent objective realities, except, perhaps, to muttonheads like you. Take it from me, behind the Hollywood-inspired facade of general prosperity and contentment for all are serious, even grave, economic and social problems. You don’t see them in your movies because that is not the image America wants to portray to the world. Those who want to portray their land as the Paradise on earth know what they are doing. The simple fact is that there is no society created by man that hasn’t got its share of worldly problems. America propagandists create the illusions that their land is an Oasis of opulence, an Island of contentment, and a land flowing with milk and honey. They don’t tell you about the streets and neighborhoods that are virtual war-zones. They don’t tell you about the gigantic ghettoes. They tell you not about the Indian plantations. They don’t inform you about the drug-problems, the street violence, the social, economic and financial pressures, the stressful lives people live, the deep sense of alienation. No, they show you only America-The-Beautiful where young men, with no apparent means of income, are driving around, wining and dining the whole day. They make you believe that everyone lives in palace with swimming pools. They want your head to dance with the vision of men driving one kilometer-long limousines, with beautiful damsels hanging on their shoulders. Of course, they make you believe that it is yours just for the asking. They show you how to get money from walls without telling you that you must have put the money there beforehand. They paraded glitters before your eyes, forgetting to tell you the rat race you must run before attaining them. The master-illusionists are busy concocting magic to wow you to hate your own country and dream of nothing but emigrating to America. Here you are gleefully celebrating your own enslavement.”<br />
<br />
“Me,” Godwin, the son of Gadabo, wails, “who enslaved me?”<br />
<br />
“No one is enslaving you but yourself. A great pity many Africans do not take their history seriously and they do not allow that history to be their guide. We always believe in the altruism of the Europeans. Our minds are so totally polluted that HE only has to whistle and we are jumping up and down like mindless dogs. You think that America is doing you a big favor by throwing a lottery at you. ‘Come to our land of opportunity for all,’ they tell you and you’re vibrating with gratitude. Why don’t you ask yourself when America developed such large humanitarian heart? If America is dying to give equal opportunity to all, it should start by giving it to the Indians in the plantations or the Black Americans they have quarantined in their numerous ghettoes and prisons. The white man is again doing what he has been doing since the beginning of time: Emptying our lands of all resources - both human and material. In years gone by, they came with guns and slave-ships and enslaved millions of our people. Now they only have to throw a Lottery and our best and brightest are falling over themselves to answer the master’s call. If America has such a charitable heart and is dying to help, why doesn’t it ask us to send them our illiterate folks so that they can help train them? No, all they asked are Africans with some education and some skills. Our professional class has emptied itself into Euro-America. Most of them are cleaning toilets and flipping hamburgers. Those are the crops with which modern societies are built. This is our greatest tragedy in Africa! We trained our youths at great cost, and when the time comes for them to help in developing our society, Euro-American bribe-masters come calling. After enticing away those of our people who could help us, they then send us their very expensive ‘development specialists.’ Development experts who are incapable of developing anything except their bank accounts. They keep us, with our connivance I should add, in perpetual tutelage and laugh at our historic stupidity<br />
<br />
“Don’t you think that they are helping by taking those who cannot find jobs? Look at how much our ‘burgers’ are sending home. Don’t you see the amount they are bringing on holidays? Don’t you see how many cars they are sending home?” Godwin argues.<br />
<br />
I countered him with great emotions, “Our burgers are among our greatest tragedies! If they tell you the true story of Euro-America, I’m sure you’ll not be caught celebrating for going there. I see how brainwashed our burgers have become in perpetuating the myth of a paradisaical Euro-America. I see them come on holiday and spend money as though it was going out of fashion. I see them spend a few years in Euro-America and become totally useless to the societies that raised them. I see the cars and the money they are sending. All they are doing is jolly and well, but we need their brains more than their dollars. We NEED THEM MORE THAN EURO-AMERICA NEEDS THEM. There is limit to what money alone can do in developing a nation. Knowledge, human knowledge, is the key. That is what is in short supply in Africa and, tragically, that is what we are exporting! Our human capital is what America set out to get and they throw a Lottery at us and, instead of our bemoaning our tragic fate, we are rolling out the drums in great celebration!”<br />
<br />
“I think you hate America? If everything be so bad, why they go ask people to come to their country?”<br />
<br />
“I don’t hate America, I hate hypocrisy. I hate American hypocrisy. I hate American thievery. Have you asked yourself why Americans are escaping the paradise they have created on earth?”<br />
<br />
He found some humour in my assertion and laughs broadly, his strong and sparkling Ewe teeth dazzle brightly, “Now, you lie. Americans escaping. Escaping to where?”<br />
<br />
“I don’t mean your everyday political or economic asylum-seeking. Which country has the world’s worst drug-problem? If American is such a wonderful place why are Americans abusing every concoction known to chemistry? You have no need for drug if your life is fulfilling. Americans are the world champions when in come to drug abuse. They have succeeded in creating an Elysium on earth where human beings need pharmaceutical assistance to survive. <br />
<br />
Wagging a thick fingered in my face, Godwin shouted, “You are a master propagandist. I think that you are trying to discourage me; in which case you are wasting your breath. You want to dim my star wey wan shine, God no go gree.”<br />
<br />
“God knows that it is impossible to tell lie against America, if only because the country is such a monstrosity. I only regret the waste - I mean our waste. Young man like yourself who should be aiming higher spend the best part of their lives dreaming of escaping to Euro-America, believing that their problems are solved if they can leave Africa. <br />
<br />
“I know that you don’t like the country but why are you trying to pollute my mind? I know that all you are saying are lies. If America no give we money, how come they say it?”<br />
<br />
“You mentioned propaganda a while ago. With enough propaganda machinery you can say anything and make it stick.”<br />
<br />
The youth could take it no more. Giving me a disdainful glance, he stands up, inserts his ticket into a folder, wraps it in a cellophane holder for added security and readjusts his tie, “I am leaving before you contaminate me. Wish me well. I go go America whether or not you like it. I hope that you’ll be around in few years when I come back. My people back home will compose songs in my name. I go famous. Kai! Godwin, the son of Gadabo, you go make am. Amen!”<br />
<br />
Femi Akomolafehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11181295541117761340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3102193312603106809.post-27193060948836834152013-02-08T19:04:00.000+01:002013-02-18T11:59:15.900+01:00Stop teaching the Christian Bible to school children"<i>A fact never went into partnership with a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of wonders. A fact will fit every other fact in the universe, and that is how you can tell whether it is or is not a fact. A lie will not fit anything except another lie." - </i>Robert Green Ingersoll<br />
<br />
"<i>If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane.</i>" - Robert Green Ingersoll<br />
<br />
"<i>The inspiration of the Bible depends upon the ignorance of the gentleman who reads it.</i>" - Robert Green Ingersoll<br />
<br />
“I charge and purpose to prove, from unimpeachable texts and historical records, and by authoritative clerical confessions, beyond the possibility of denial, evasion, or refutation:<br />
<br />
1. That the Bible, in its every Book and in the strictest legal and moral sense, is a huge forgery.”<br />
<br />
2. That every Book of the New Testament is a forgery of the Christian Church; and every significant passage in those Books, on which the fabric of the Church and principal dogmas are founded, is a further and conscious later forgery, wrought with definite fraudulent intent.”<br />
<br />
3. Especially, and specifically, that the famous “Petrine text” – “Upon this Rock I will build my church” – the cornerstone of the gigantic fabric of imposture, - and the other, “Go, teach all nations,” – were never uttered by the Jew Jesus, but are palpable and easily-proven late Church forgeries.<br />
<br />
4. That the Christian Church, from its inception in the first little Jewish-Christian religious societies until it reached the apex of its temporal glory and moral degradation, was a vast and tireless forgery mill.” – Joseph Wheless,<b>‘Forgery in Christianit</b>y,’ pp. xviii-xix.<br />
<br />
Last week, I had an experience that both shocked and shook me profoundly. A video documentary expedition took me to Amanfro, a suburb of Accra, the Ghanaian capital.<br />
<br />
Part of the activities took us to a school where a Bible-reciting contest took place.<br />
<br />
I watched in horror as school children were turned into mindless Zombies and awarded marks and gifts for abilities to recite, machine-like, quotations from the Christian Bible.<br />
<br />
I was totally flabbergasted that these types of stupid brain-washing go on in our schools. <br />
<br />
I was shocked to see that these types of utterly senseless exercises are what go for education in our dear country.<br />
<br />
I was both sad and angry to see that Christians have been allowed to extend their cravenly-mindless propaganda to our schools, and are allowed to pollute the minds of our children with their special brand of lies.<br />
<br />
I have no problem whatever with any grown up person who believes in whatever he fancies for religion. <br />
<br />
I have problem however when the Christians are allowed to force-feed little children (our future leaders) with their jejune <br />
nonsense. <br />
<br />
And I find it most abhorrent to see little innocent children being exposed to the Christian lies, absurdities, indecencies, violence and atrocities at such impressionable ages.<br />
<br />
What exactly is the point of teaching the Christian Bible in our schools? <br />
<br />
How do we tell our children to abhor lies and then turn around to feed them on the consciously-forged lies of the bible? <br />
<br />
How do we expect our children to be moral, ethical and righteous when we forced them to read all the lies, forgeries, absurdities, atrocities, larcenies, pornography and wholesome violence of the Christian Bible?<br />
<br />
Why do we entrust the moral education of our children to parasitical priests, who make their good living on telling bare-faced lies about a desert god named Jehovah, his invented son named Jesus and a book packed full of lies they called a Bible?<br />
<br />
I have said it several times that I do not know why the Christians fail to realize the enormous damage they do to their god by their claim that he commanded to be written, the pack of lies, atrocities and absurdities we see in the Christian Bible.<br />
<br />
The simple truth is that from beginning to the end, the Christian bible is a pack of lies and forgeries. <br />
<br />
Aside from Ecclesiastes, absolutely none of the forged books in the Bible make any sense whatever.<br />
<br />
In the age when few people can read and write, dishonest and lying priests can claim that their book was inspired by a god and that it was free of errors. <br />
<br />
The pious Christians priests knew then that they were lying; that was the only reason why they discouraged people from learning to read and write. <br />
<br />
The desire to maximize their power and wealth was the only reason the priests burned people who learned to read until Martin Luther and other brave souls gallantly put a stop to it. <br />
<br />
The desire to live on alms and plunder was the only reason the priests made their god frowned upon eating from the fruit of knowledge at the pain of death!<br />
<br />
Today, only the most dishonest, lying and ignorant priest can make the claim that the Bible was inspired or that it was free of stupid errors. <br />
<br />
The history of the how the Bible was compiled is too well documented for anyone to claim that it was inspired by a god, even a dreadful one like Jehovah.<br />
<br />
There are enough historical documents available (for free) to debunk the Christians’ claim about the accuracy and the inspiration of their Bible. <br />
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In philosophy, when the premise of a proposition is false, it is a given that the proposition cannot be correct.<br />
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If the Christian Bible opens with a lie (as it demonstrably does), we can safely assume that the whole pack was false, since the whole edifice was constructed on the original lie.<br />
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Let us examine some of the lies on which the Christian religion is foundated.<br />
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<b>THE GOD FORGERY</b><br />
“<i>The first sentence of the translated Bible is a falsification and forgery of the highest importance. We read with awed solemnity of faith: ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth’ (Gen. 1.1). The Hebrew word for God is el; the plural is elohim, gods. The Hebrew text of Genesis 1.1 reads: “Bereshith bara elohim,” etc., - “in-beginning created gods the heavens and the-earth.” And in the same chapter we read in Hebrew honestly translated, thirty times the word “elohim,” gods, to whom are attributed all the works of creation in six peculiar “days” of Genesis. This is plainly evident from the Hebrew texts of Genesis I, which even false intention could not hide in translation, “And-said elohim (gods), Let-US-make man (adam) in-image-OUR, after-likeness-OURS” (1,26). And when “adam” had eaten of the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge, “the Lord God” said, “Behold, the-man has become like one of US, to know good and evil” (III, 27). And when the Tower of Babel was abuilding, “The Lord (Hebrew Yahveh) said… Come, let US go down,” etc. And thus, some 2,570 times the plural, elohim, gods, is used in the Hebrew text, but is always falsely translated “God” in the false singular, when speaking of the Hebrew deity, Yahveh.</i><br />
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<b>THE ADAM FORGERY</b><br />
“There was no first “Adam,” according to the Hebrew texts of the story. The word adam in Hebrew is a common noun, mean man in a generic sense; in Genesis 1,26, we have read: “And elohim (gods) said, Let us make adam (man)”; and so “elohim created ha-adam (the-man); … male and female created he them” (1,27). And in the second story, where man is first made alone: “Yahveh formed ha-adam (the-adam) out of the dust of ha-hadam – the ground” (11,7). Man is called in Hebrew adam because formed out of adamah, the ground; just as in Latin man is called homo because formed from humus, the ground, - homo ex humo, in the epigram of Father Lactantius… The forging of the common noun adam into a mythical proper name Adam, was a post-exilic fraud in the forging of the fictitious genealogies from “in the beginning” to Father Abraham.” - (Joseph Wheless, “<b>Forgery in Christianity</b>,” pp. 75-77.)<br />
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It might interest the Christians to know that:<br />
<br />
i. A Persian story also had a god created the world in six days. The story also had a man called Adama and a woman called Evah. And we know that the Persian story is far older than the plagiarized Hebrew version. <br />
ii. The very word “Eden” is derived from <b></b>the Persian word heden, meaning "garden." <br />
iii. The Akkadian also have their own “Adamu” story.<br />
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<b>THE ABRAHAM FORGERY</b><br />
“In popular belief the story of Abraham is very simple. His original name was Abram, and he lived in “Ur of the Chaldees”; but God called him and change his name to Ab-ra-ham, which is the Hebrew for “the father of many peoples.”<br />
“Blessed are the ignorant, for they have no difficulties. The word Abraham does not mean “the father of many peoples.” No Hebrew scholar can make it mean anything. It has no meaning in Hebrew. Abram may have come from Ur; but it was not a “city of the Chaldees” until ages afterwards.” (Joseph McCabe, “<b>The Story of Religious Controversy,</b>” pp. 126-133).<br />
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<b>NEW TESTAMENT FORGERIES</b><br />
“The simple fact is that the New Testament, as we know it, is a helter-skelter accumulation of more or less discordant documents, some of them probably of respectable origin but others palpably apocryphal, and that most of them, the good along with the bad, show unmistakable signs of having been tampered with. ‘No Biblical scholar of any standing today,” says Weigall, “whether he be a clergyman or a layman, accepts the entire New Testament as authentic; all admits that many errors, misunderstandings and absurdities have crept into the story of Christ’s life and other matters.” (H.L. Mencken, “<b>Treatise On The Gods,</b>” pp. 209-220).<br />
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<b>THE VIRGIN BIRTH FORGERY</b><br />
“<i>The most colossal of the blunders of the Septuagint translators, supplemented by the most insidious, persistent and purposeful falsification of text, is instanced in the false translation of the notoriously false pretended “prophecy” of Isaiah vII, 14 – frauds which have the most disastrous and fatal consequences for Christianity, and to humanity under its blight; the present exposure of which would instanter destroy the false faith built on these frauds.<br />
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“The Greek priest who forged the “Gospel according to St. Matthew,” having before him the false Septuagint translation of Isaiah, fables the Jewish Mary yielding to the embraces of the Angel Gabriel to engender Jesus, and backs it up by an appeal to the Septuagint translation of Isaiah VII, 14: “Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel.</i>” (Matt. V, 23.)<br />
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Isaiah’s original Hebrew, with the mistranslated words underscored, reads: “Henneh ha-almah harah ve-yeldeth ben ve-karath she-o Immanuel”; - which, falsely translated by the false pen of the pious translators, runs thus in the English: “behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” (Isa. vII,14.)<br />
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The Hebrew words ha-almah mean simply the young woman; and harah is the Hebrew past or perfect tense, “conceived,” which in Hebew, as in English, represents past and completed action. Honestly translated, the verse read: “Behold, the young woman has conceived – (is with child) – and beareth a son and calleth his name Immanuel.”<br />
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Almah means simply a young woman, of marriageable age, whether married or not, or virgin or not; in a broad sense exactly like girl or maid in English, when we say shop-girl, parlor-girl, bar-maid, without reference to or vouching for her technical virginity, which, in Hebrew, is always expressed by the word bethulah. But in the Septuagint translation into Greek, the Hebrew almah was erroneously rendered into the Greek pathenos, virgin, with the definite article ha in Hebrew, and e in Greek, (the), rendered into the indefinite “a” by latter falsifying translators… And Jerome falsely used the Latin word Virgo.<br />
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As early as the Second Century B.C., “ says the distinguished Hebrew scholar and critic, Solomon Reinach, “the Jews perceived the error and pointed it out to the Greeks; but the Church knowingly persisted in the false reading, and for over fifteen centuries she has clung to her error.” - Joseph Wheless, “<b>Forgery in Christianity,</b>” pp. 62-65<br />
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We have thus established the fact that the book Christians peddle as the word of their God is nothing but pack of consciously forged lies. <br />
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Those that are interested to read about the true origin of the New Testament can begin their search here: http://www.fargonasphere.com/piso/<br />
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The stories that the Christian solemnly preach to their gullible congregation are mere collections and re-hashed stories, myths and legends from Babylon, Chaldean, Mesopotamian, Egyptian and other places the Hebrews collected from their wanderings around the ancient world.<br />
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It was a Roman emperor that called a conference in Nice in present day Turkey, which ratified the books collected into the Bible. The Priests were inspired only by greed and desire to maximize their power and profit. <br />
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You can read more about the conference here: http://www.jesustheheresy.com/ncreed.html<br />
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The Christian Bible is not only a collection of dangerously forged lies; it contains enough indecencies and atrocities that it should be kept away from decent people, especially our children. <br />
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How do we expect our children to be upright when we allow them to read such atrocities like the story of Achan and Elisha?<br />
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How do we preach morality, love, honesty and ethics when we have ignoble, dishonest and lying priests as instructors of morality and ethics in our schools?<br />
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My humble plea is that the Christian Bible should cease to be used as a moral guide for our children in our schools. <br />
Pray, what morals are children supposed to learn from Biblical stories and quotes like:<br />
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1. Abraham marrying his father’s daughter – “And yet indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife.” - Gen 20:12.<br />
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2. Lot’s offers his two daughters to a mob – “Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them good as is good in your eyes.” – Gen 19:8.<br />
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3. Two daughters of Lot seduced their father – Gen 19:30-38.<br />
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4. Zipporah has to circumcise her son in order to restrain the Lord from killing Moses – “And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the Lord met him, and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, surely a bloody husband art thou to me.” ”-Exodus 4:24-26.<br />
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5. Ammon ravishes his sister Tamar – 2 Sam. 13:1-14.<br />
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6. Women conceive after interviews with prophets – Manoah’s wife (Judges xiii, 3, 6, 9, 24). Elkanah’s wife (Sam I, 1, 2, 17,20) the Shunnamite and Elisha (Kings II, iv, ii, 16, 17).<br />
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7. Kind David is revived by a virgin – Kings I, I, 1-4).<br />
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8. "I will send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children," and "ye shall eat the flesh of your sons and daughters." But if you humble your uncircumcised heart, God won't do all these nasty things to you. It's your choice. Leviticus 26: 16-41. <br />
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9. "The spirit of the Lord came mightily upon Samson and he found a new jawbone of an ass ... and took it, and slew 1000 men therewith." Judges 15:14-15.<br />
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10. God offers David a choice of punishments for having conducted the census: 1) seven years of famine (1 Chr.21:12 says three years), 2) three months fleeing from enemies, or 3) three days of pestilence. David can't decide, so God chooses for him and sends a pestilence, killing 70,000 men (and probably around 200,000 women and children). 2 Samuel 24: 13.<br />
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11. Anyone who adds to the words in Revelation (or to the rest of the Bible?) will be struck with plagues, and anyone that tries to remove anything from it will have his name removed from the book of life. Rev. 22:18-19.<br />
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“<i>The doctrine of eternal punishment is in perfect harmony with the savagery of the men who made the orthodox creeds. It is in harmony with torture, with flaying alive, and with burnings. The men who burned their fellow-men for a moment, believed that God would burn his enemies forever.”</i> - Robert Green Ingersoll.<br />
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Femi Akomolafehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11181295541117761340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3102193312603106809.post-88028613721943364862013-01-31T12:55:00.003+01:002013-01-31T12:55:49.962+01:00The logic of Hooliganism“You Africans are hopeless, and so stupid.” The man accused, wagging a thick finger in my face. He’s of the European Stock, with the ragged appearance of some of those dirty tourists one encounter on the streets of Accra. His mouth was contorted into an angry snarl. The corners of his mouth foam with spittle. Bad breath emanate from his partially-opened; the odor was that of cheap alcohol. Most of his front teeth are missing. The lower lip showed some signs of laceration, perhaps from ulcer.<br />
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Unaccustomed to his type of brutal, unprovoked and direct aggression. I elected to ignore him. I continued to nurse my drink. He won’t, however, let go.<br />
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“Stupid, stupid.” He brayed, taking a mouthful swing from his large jug of beer. He shook his head as though he felt sorry for the world. He smells very badly and looks as though he hasn’t shaved in two weeks.<br />
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Since I believe that it is useless to argue with a man who, obviously, was under the direct influence of Lord Bacchus’ agent, I continue to ignore him.<br />
<br />
The man rose unsteadily to his feet, raised the jug to his mouth and drained the content. He wiped the corners of his mouth with the back of his hand. Throwing a ferocious glare in my direction, he tottered to the bar and had a refill. He wobbled back to his seat and resumed his accusations.<br />
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“What do you find so stupid about the Africans. What are the reasons for your exasperation?” I finally managed to ask him.<br />
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He regarded me with hateful frown and declared, “I watch your African Football Championship matches,” he shouted, “It is so terrible, so stupid!”<br />
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“What do you find so terrible, so stupid about the African Championship matches. I thought it was a great tournament. It was so lively.”<br />
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“That, exactly, is the problem,” the man proclaimed, dispatching spittle in every direction. “You Africans are the same, stupid. You call that a great tournament?”<br />
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“What exactly are you objecting to? Why do you find everything so stupid, so terrible? What is bugging you?” I was getting a bit irritated by the incessant accusations. I came here to have a drink, not to defend the Black race.<br />
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“Who but a bunch of idiots go to stadium with drums?” He asked, throwing me a withering stare. I watched the whole tournament; it is incredible, unbelievable how stupid you people could be. In some of the matches, people actually dance the whole time, beating drums, horns and what do you call that long thing that make so much noise, ehm, Voodoozela or whatever! Imagine that! And your women, mama mia! God have mercy; they are beautiful. Some of those beautiful girls shake their well-endowed buttocks and breasts all the time and make man go crazy with desires. Fancy that! Imagine all those muscle-men beating drums the whole afternoon!” He bellowed contemptuously. He has managed to work himself into a sort of frenzy, the spittle flows freely.<br />
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I was taken aback by the silliness of his accusations. I find nothing objectionable in people going to stadium with drums. “What is wrong with having merriment in a stadium during a National or Continental Football fiesta? What is the whole purpose of sport if people cannot have fun?”<br />
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“That is the whole problem. When are you people going to learn, if ever?” He cried, “When are you people going to start to learn simple economics? When are you people going to start to understand the connection between violence and prosperity? When are you people ever going to learn that not everything in life can be reduced to dancing and the beatings of TOM-TOM drums? Take the case of our European Championship,” he paused to take a draft of his drink and then continue, “how many times have you seen drums in a European stadium? Now, be honest, how many times? None, if you’re honest with yourself. Why? Because Europeans are not as stupid as you people. We do not believe that drums belong in stadium.”<br />
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I had the feeling that I was talking to a raving loony. The accusations are becoming increasingly incoherent. I stirred the ice-cubes in my soda and lifted the glass to my mouth, but his next words stopped my action from been completed.<br />
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“Don’t you see the connection between violence and prosperity?” He asked, winking at me. His eyes were blood-shot.<br />
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“No, I don’t.”<br />
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“In Europe people go to stadium with knives, gudgels, bricks, baseball bats, tarers and lasers guns, pistols, grenades, rifles and occasionally some enterprising youth come with artillery pieces. Can’t you see how greatly that’s contributing to the economy of Europe?”<br />
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This, indeed, must be a certified lunatic. I checked the door to ensure that my path remain unobstructed, just in case he decided to become violent.”What is there to be celebrated about that?”<br />
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“Are you still blind, still stupid?” He cried, banging his fists on the table, rattling the glasses and ash-trays. He was like a child, whose cries are being mis-interpreted by its parents.<br />
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“I am neither blind nor stupid. I just cannot follow your lunatic train-of-thought. I don’t see what point you’re making. If you’re making any, that is.”<br />
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“Because we Europeans are such a clever people, see,” he cried, eye-balling me with his blood- shot eyes. “We clearly see the connection between violence and prosperity, and we took advantage of it. That is why people in Europe go to stadium with instruments of violence, unlike your wimpish people. The logic is clear and unmistakable, except to stupids like you guys: Whatever is destroyed must be rebuilt, simple, see. Is that not so? When we have our sport fiesta, especially football, everybody is happy. The whole thing is tied up to simple economics, a subject too complex for you Africans to master, ah! ah! ah! I shall explain it to you, since, it appears such simple logic is beyond your comprehension: See, before any major sport fiesta, the breweries and the distilleries worked overtime to produce enough drinks to lubricate the occasion. The suppliers are happy, so are the workers, who are paid decent overtime. The money trickle down to their bakers, grocers and rum-shop managers, see. On D-Day minus one, the fans start putting some money into the local economy by consuming inordinate amount of booze, drugs and things, you see. They are so inebriated that they could only stagger to the stadium, armed with every description of weapons. The authorities responded by deploying their own instruments of violence – police, armored cars, horses, dogs, helicopters and things, see. The dogs are well-fed so the dog- food factories’ owners and workers get their own share. Even the fuel suppliers are very happy, they get paid handsomely. Talk to any policeman, he’ll tell you that the police are also very happy since they get paid handsome overtime and hazard wages, follow me? So are the bus, trams and train drivers and conductors who also receive hazard pay, see, nobody is missing out. I tell you, the football match is just a side show to improve the economy. You can see that the real game is just a sideshow – it doesn’t matter who wins or loses, the reaction is predictably the same. At the end of the game the fans, further lubricated by drug and booze, are so plastered that when they troop out of the stadium, they could not help but started wrecking anything and everything in their path. They will overturn some cars, set alight some trams and trains. The police will respond by lobbing some canisters of tear-gas and charge at them with horses and dogs and truncheons. At the end, some few fans are hospitalized for fractured bones. The hospital staff are also happy. They are also well taken care of, with extra pays and things, see. Journalists, who also receive their own hazard pay, gleefully report the events. Don’t forget that the carnage also has to be cleaned-up. So the cleaning companies are also very happy. You should remember that they [cleaning companies] employ many Africans – think of what we happen if we dance in our stadia like you guys. We’ll have to deport all the African economic-refugees seeking political asylum in our countries in Europe. We manage our sports so well that everything trickles down – nobody misses out. Everyone is happy. When are you Africans ever going to learn, if ever? To think of all the charity appeals that have been launched in your behalf over the years, when you guys can do a lot to help yourself by becoming a little more violent in the proper ways. We keep sending you our expensive experts and our NGOs when you can do a lot of things for yourself. Check it out for yourself, which country in the world has developed economically without being sufficient violent? No, you tell me. The U.S. economy was built by unbridled violence. Europe’s economic prosperity was built on the violence Europe launched against the rest of the world. You only have to check your history books. Do you guys read anything aside from your lotto papers around here? Look at your own continent, South Africa is the most economically developed – it is also the most violent on your continent, see. Its economy was built on the state violence. Africa’s problem, I declare, could be solved overnight if you Africans will start to adopt the proper attitude to things, and stop treating everything as a cause for celebration. Do you know who my favorite people are?” He finally asked me.<br />
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“The Bolsheviks.”<br />
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“Wrong again” he cried, “it is the British.” He replied beaming with satisfaction.<br />
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“I am surprised. Why?”<br />
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“Because British fans are the only people left on earth who still knows how to vibrate with positive anger. No matter what you think of the British, you’ve got to admire the pugnacity of their football fans. It is sheer joy to watch British fans have a go at a city center. Destructions wrought by hurricanes pale in comparison to the havoc generated by those vibrant youth. Do you know why the British economy is going down?”<br />
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“I am sure that you’re going to tell me.”<br />
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“It is going down, precisely because of those so-called, stupid anti-hooliganism laws passed in the 80′s. Since the British government became stupid enough to restrain the ire of those dynamic youth with those stupid, liberal laws, things have fallen apart for the empire.”Femi Akomolafehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11181295541117761340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3102193312603106809.post-3545355675380853512013-01-23T09:33:00.000+01:002013-01-23T09:35:50.348+01:00Accra Mayor playing Jesus of Jerusalem“<i>So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! How dare you turn my father’s house into a market</i>!” John 2;15-16<br />
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Politically adroit, superlatively ingenious, environmentally sagacious, economically dexterous, a socially-inspired masterpiece, divinely-motivated stroke of genius, attractively-packaged tour de force, an unalloyed work of pure genius…<br />
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Simmer down, my brother, what are all the big grammar for? You will break my head, o!<br />
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You! Where have you been? Why do you always vamoose when the big things are happening?<br />
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Big things, what big things, what exactly are you blowing all those grammar for?<br />
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My brother, I believe in giving praises where and when it is due; unlike some people that I know.<br />
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Your pull-down will get you everywhere. But what exactly are you waxing lyrical about?<br />
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Ah, you. Where on earth have you been? Didn’t you see the whole Mayor of Accra on the street personally driving hawkers of the streets? The man deserve a national award. Ah! The president should make him a minister; even a vice-president. I didn’t know that we have such patriotic, energetic and intelligent leaders in our dear land.<br />
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You! Is that what excited you so much that you have to expend all those big grammar?<br />
For your information, Mr. President has announced his cabinet, and when did you hear that there was vacancy at the vice-presidency? So, a Mayor drives hawkers off the street, and that is enough to make you giddy with so much excitement that you have to expend all those big grammar?<br />
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Can you ever be satisfied? When will you learn to give kudos when and where it is due? You have written so many articles to castigate our officials for not doing their jobs. You have written uncountable pieces to wail against street-trading. And now, the whole Mayor went out to do precisely what you advocated and you still will not give him some praises. You are simply impossible!<br />
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I am very sorry that you felt that way. The action of the Mayor you so described is exactly what I railed against. We need solid institutions and policies to tackle problem, not some Mayoral fire-brigade approach.<br />
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You are simply impossible. So you don’t find it praiseworthy that the Mayor left the comfort of his office to go and bring sanity to our streets? Have you not been to Accra recently or are you too blind to see the transformations wrought on the capital. <br />
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Transformation, what transformation are you talking about? Which Accra are you referring to?<br />
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Please, please let us learn to give honours where they are due. You have always written to castigate officials for not doing their jobs. Today, we have an ultra-energetic, superbly-motivated Mayor who pulls all stops to bring sanity to the hawking problems of the capital, and you cannot even be charitable enough to heap some praises. The man left the comfort of his office to personally supervise the driving away of hawkers from the streets, and you don’t think that is praise worthy! Whilst you were resting comfortably in your house, the whole mayor of Accra was sweating on the streets, chasing the hawkers and the other ragamuffins defacing our national capital. And you cannot praise him!<br />
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You are not been fair to me at all. I have had occasions to salute our officials where I thought they merited it. But a mayor chasing hawkers on the streets to me is simply wasting his time. Those types of showy showmanship belongs in the movies.<br />
But you have written loads of articles to complain about the problem of hawking in Accra. <br />
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So I have.<br />
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And you don’t believe the mayor is doing it right?<br />
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No, I don’t.<br />
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What on earth would it take to please you? You are really a hard-hat, do you know that?<br />
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I am so sorry you felt that way. If you have really read what I’ve written I’m sure that you won’t feel that way. I have also railed against our fire-men approach to serious issues…<br />
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Fire-men approach, what is that?<br />
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Fire-men are called out in emergency to put out fire. That is reactive. What we need and what I have consistently advocated is that our officials should be more proactive. They should sit down, make good policies and ensure that they are implemented. That’s all. A Mayor that chases hawkers on the streets is wasting his time and, to tell you the truth, is a complete disgrace to his Mayoral office. A Mayor’s time should be more valuable than to be wasted chasing miscreants on the streets. Gosh, what are the City Guards supposed to do when the whole mayor is chasing hawkers?<br />
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What do you mean?<br />
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Have you not been following what I was saying?<br />
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But I thought the Mayor was setting good example by leading from the front, as the military people will put it.<br />
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I think you get your military analogy all wrong. Except in few armies, Generals are hardly found at the front line. Generals are mostly esconded in command and control bunkers, where they busy themselves to set up strategies and adjust tactics to suit situational imperatives. Generals are very expensive pieces and are deployed with the utmost care. Have you sat down to consider what calamity would have befell the city had one crazed miscreant decided to visit violence on the Mayor? I wonder why our officials are always so security unconscious.<br />
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Ah!<br />
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Yes, ah! A Mayor leading charges against hawkers imperils his life. We live in a dangerous world, and many citizens are too stressed out by the economic hardship that they might decide to become violent. But that’s not my main gripe about the whole thing.<br />
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And what would that be?<br />
My main gripe is that our officials tend to mistake gyrations for motions; confuse momentums for solid movements and think that smokes are solid substance. They believe that as long as people can see that they are doing something, however silly, then they must be doing something right. That is our main problem in this country. We have ministers who are paid to manage ministries and assist Mr. President jumping from radio station to radio station running their mouth. They believe that they are doing great job by the amount of high decibel noise they can make on the airwaves. Nowadays, we have so-called Political Scientists at our universities, who are paid to teach students, but has now turned themselves into reviewers of the junksheets we call newspapers in this part of the world. The job of a Mayor is an onerous one, and it is one that calls for very strong administrative skills. It is his job to run the complex machineries of the city. This involves setting up the structures, institutions and the policies to make all the intricate parts run smoothly. It is more of a brain job than a brawn one. His job includes employing the people to man the various institutions to run the city. A mayor should have better employment for his time than to go on the streets to chase hawkers. He will only get lost without seeing the whole picture. Let’s not even talk of the financial loss. The Mayoral paycheck is far too fat for him to turn himself into a City Guard.<br />
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All you said could be true, but the Mayor also has to let the people see that he is performing…<br />
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No, he doesn’t. His performance should be so self-evident that people will know that he’s performing. His achievements should speak for him. His records of achievements should be his best trumpet.<br />
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But unlike you, some would like to see the Mayor performing.<br />
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You keep mentioning performing without actually saying what exactly you meant. If you meant that by chasing hawkers the Mayor is performing, I say that is utterly a wrong way to appraise a mayor. Apart from looking good on television, what exactly has the Mayor’s ill-advised and utterly stupid pyrotechnics achieved? Nothing, if you ask me. Were the hawkers driven off the streets of Accra? Yes, they were for a day or two. Today, they are back, with a vengeance. The menace of street-hawking is back like the mayor never did a darn thing.<br />
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But at least he did his best.<br />
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I certainly hope that was not the best he’s capable of doing. I think among our biggest problems in this country is that we are, like children, easily pleased. We are menaced by people who break laws to take over our streets, including pavements meant for you and I. But rather than demand that they be moved, we are dazzled and appeased by the Mayor of Accra, sweating profusely as he chased hawkers. He will go back to office where fawning officials will pat him on the back for a job well done. People like you will sing his praises to high heavens. Has the problem been solved? Of course, not. This, precisely, is our tragedy in this country.<br />
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What then do you suggest we do to get rid of the hawkers?<br />
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It looks quite simple to me. It is simply a question of enforcements of the laws. Part of our problems is that we enact laws but we fail to adequately enforce them. It is like our officials are afraid of enforcing our laws. In some societies that I know, officials enforce laws without fair or favour. It is time that we realize that it is the penalties that they will suffer that dissuade people from wilfully breaking the law. It is the fear of paying heavy fines that made people comport themselves when they decide to live in a civilized environment. But in our case, we spend time and money enacting laws which we left to gather dust without enforcing them. It is the knowledge that our officials lack the will to enforce existing laws that make people break them at will. We enact the laws without setting up adequate structures to ensure their enforcement, which goes to defeat the whole purpose. And we then left it to the Mayor to go around with his populous beard to try and enforce them. This is crappy.<br />
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You still didn’t say what exactly you will do in his position.<br />
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Ah! What I will do in his position is to sit with my colleagues and plan on how to implement our laws on environment and sanitation. We will strengthen the laws where they needed to be strengthened. We will enact new ones where necessary. But then we will put emphasis on enforcing all our laws to the letter without fair and without favour. In the case of street-hawking, it is quite simple. The penalties should be so heavy that few would like to pay it. If they do not exist, I will set up special courts to tackle the problem. The courts will be presided over by Special Magistrates, with powers to sit at all hours of the day, and on weekends and holidays. What I will do then is to divide the city into special zones and appoint Special Commissioner for street-hawking for each zones. Their remit would be to clear the city of hawkers within three months. They will have the power to appoint and train Guards to manage their zones. A coordinator will oversee their activities and update me accordingly. Do you know what is so regrettable about the whole thing?<br />
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You tell me.<br />
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All I said are actually not new ideas at all. Those of us old enough will remember the Health Inspector we had in the olden days. They had the powers to enter any premises and conduct inspections, and they also had the power to impose sanctions and fines. I remember how we use to be so afraid of them that we kept our houses spanking clean all year round. For reasons best known to us, we jettisoned the system, today most of our houses are pure hovels, and our streets are so dirty they will not meet the standards for pig pens in some countries. Nostalgia is not what it used to be.<br />
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Femi Akomolafehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11181295541117761340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3102193312603106809.post-55470068700178874892013-01-16T15:42:00.000+01:002013-01-16T15:42:17.255+01:00A Leter to President John Dramani MahamaYour Excellency,<br />
<br />
Accept my hearty congratulations on your investiture as the president of our great nation.<br />
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Your responsibilities are great, your tasks onerous, so I can only hope that you find the time to read my little pieces of advices to you, with the hope that they shall find favour in your esteem.<br />
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Your rise to the presidency amply demonstrated your knowledge, wisdom and intellectual capabilities.<br />
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The only thing I will wish the gods to grant you now is COURAGE. Your Excellency, I did not mean this to say that you are a coward.<br />
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It is just that, your ascendancy to the presidency clearly demonstrated your possession of the other attributes; courage remain the single attribute you will require to make yours an outstanding presidency, and write your name solidly in the sand of times.<br />
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We, your compatriots, today remember our founding President Kwame Nkrumah with great fondness.<br />
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The reason that made us loved the Osagyefo was that he dazzled us with the brilliance of the architecture of his visions.<br />
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Despite his shortcomings as a human being, Kwame Nkrumah left legacies that made him the most outstanding African of last Millennium.<br />
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It was not for nothing that Africans voted him the greatest African of the modern times.<br />
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We remain eternally grateful for the immense contribution he made to our nation's development.<br />
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Ghana, indeed the whole of Africa, yearns for a new leader in the mold of Nkrumah.<br />
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Our people cry out for purposeful, selfless, courageous and patriotic leaders to demonstrate to the world that we Africans, indeed, are capable of managing our own affairs.<br />
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Your Excellency, it is only courage that would enable you to rise above partisan politics, transcend religious, ethnic or tribal divisions, and become a truly great leader which generations will remember with deep admiration.<br />
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Your Excellency, I repeat here what I have written many times that the gods cannot be blamed for our woes in Ghana, indeed in Africa.<br />
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Having enriched us with immense natural wealth; the gods have done their best parts for us.<br />
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It is how we manage these resources that will determine how far we go as a people.<br />
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It is our ability to use these resources most effectively that will determine the future of our nation.<br />
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Sir, the times call for very bold and radical steps to transform this country.<br />
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What we sorely need at this juncture of our history is a very bold and courageous leader to lead the radical transformation our country badly need.<br />
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All your predecessors that came after Nkrumah can be said to have done their best, but they all were handicapped by their lack of vision.<br />
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Yes, sir, it is the VISION thing!<br />
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What type of Ghana do you intend to leave behind?<br />
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Would you leave us with a vibrant and confident Ghana that is on an unstoppable industrialization trajectory, or would you leave us with a diffident, confused and neo-colonial Ghana that still import tooth-pick and mosquito coils and begs for 'donor' support every time?<br />
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Time is not on our side, Your Excellency: We no longer can afford to conduct our national affairs with the same lackadaisical attitudes of the post-Nkrumah years.<br />
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A year or so ago, I wrote an article to castigate your immediate predecessor when he gave a speech at the UN and touted the elimination of schools under trees and the provision of school uniforms as great national achievements.<br />
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Sir, we live in the 21st century and we no longer ought to be thrilled by such pedestrian 'achievements' in our national life. Our ambitions should be made of sterner stuffs.<br />
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We should not in this age be gratified by pictures of our president commissioning bore-holes and KVIP toilets; Sir, you should be seen commissioning dams and industrial plants.<br />
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Korea started life about the same time as our nation, but today Korean firms like Samsung, Hyundai and LG dazzle us with the brilliance of their electronics, scientific and engineering feats.<br />
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Modern China started life in 1949, just about eight years before we regain our own independence.<br />
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Today, China leads the world in many areas of science and engineering. So phenomenal is the Chinese Miracle that today the Chinese are readying a man to send to the moon in a few years.<br />
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You have travelled extensively in China, so I need not tell you how far the Chinese have progressed in terms of development.<br />
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History recorded that the Chinese made the transformation within a single generation.<br />
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The Chinese miracle did not happen per chance; it was a deliberate, courageous move made by the Chinese leaders to break with the past and transform their nation through their own efforts.<br />
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The Chinese were probably guided by the simple historical fact that foreigners, however benevolent, have never developed any country.<br />
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It is the citizens of any given nation that develop their countries. This is precisely where boldness and courage come in.<br />
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At this juncture in our national life, we no longer can afford to be counted among the under-achievers.<br />
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History beckons us to make the 21st Century the African Century.<br />
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But this will not happen by mere wishful thinking; it will come into being by conscious efforts by African leaders to lead their people into the Promised Land.<br />
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It gladdens my heart enormously to see how comfortable you look using your iPad. It shows clearly that you are abreast of scientific innovations.<br />
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Sir, I do not intend to be impetuous by offering you advices, but I will suggest that you, as a matter of utmost urgency, do everything within your power to reconcile the country.<br />
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Let no hawk within your party tells you that the opposition can go to hell; the margin of your victory suggests that a sizable numbers of Ghanaians did not share in either your political philosophy or your ideology.<br />
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Our disgruntled compatriots needed to be appeased and brought aboard.<br />
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Magnanimity is one of the hallmarks of great leaders.<br />
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Of course the main opposition party has behaved rather badly since the election results were announced, but that is where you should allow your wisdom and courage to shine through.<br />
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Our elders say that if children behave like children, the adult should behave like adult.<br />
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The nature of our politics makes the opposition stance predictable and understandable. Allow them time to lick their wounds, and then find the means to bring them aboard in the supreme interest of mother Ghana.<br />
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A house divided cannot achieve much; national development is impossible sans national peace, stability and cohesion.<br />
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As you focus on your Better Ghana Agenda, you simply do not need the distraction of an embittered opposition.<br />
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I suggest that you make national reconciliation your first priority and pursue it with vigour.<br />
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Another area you should address as a matter of urgency is the issue of the Ghanaian Diaspora.<br />
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For years, successive governments have paid lip services to how to tap into this huge pool of talents.<br />
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Your Excellency, in the course of my television interview programme, I have interacted with quite a number of highly qualified and hugely talented Ghanaian professionals, who perform at the highest levels of finance, governments and industry across Europe. I am told that a bigger pool exist in North America.<br />
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Almost to a man and a woman, they all burn with great desires to come and contribute their quota to nation-building. They all burn with the ambitions to see Ghana transformed into a modern, self-sufficient, industrialized nation as fast as possible.<br />
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These are not dreaming utopians, but men and women with the requisite qualifications to realize their dreams and ambitions if given the opportunity.<br />
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These our compatriots do their best wherever they find themselves, but they feel alienated and unwanted by alien societies, blinded by too much crass racism, to recognize their contributions.<br />
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I hope that you will make it top priority to find a way to bring Diasporan Ghanaians home and make them part of your agenda to transform the country.<br />
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Courage implies self-confidence; no nation has developed where the people doubt their own abilities.<br />
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Sir, you must be bold and courageous to lead a crusade to make us jettison our age-old colonial-mentality and neo-colonial mindsets.<br />
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Your best efforts will be retarded unless you can carry our people along. And it'd be difficult to carry them along if many of us continue with the mindsets that things cannot be done unless we take dictation from foreigners, especially white ones.<br />
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After over half a century of self-government, there is no reason why we cannot begin to do most things for ourselves.<br />
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Your Excellency, I wrote somewhere that the only difference between us and the countries we called developed is the quality of education they give their citizens.<br />
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My reading of history tells me that every single nation that became developed first made conscious efforts to develop its education sector.<br />
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That was the reason I asked before the elections that whoever wins must give top billing to the provision of quality education.<br />
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Sir, what is called for is a total transformation of our education from the current chew-and-pour system.<br />
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We need an educational system that allows and encourages pupils and students to think, to experiment and to innovate.<br />
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I see our current system as one colossal waste, because we continue to pour great resources into graduating people who are not sufficiently trained to think and solve problem.<br />
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Your Excellency, your main remit to your new education minister should be to revamp our education curricular within six months to a year, and come up with a system whereby children go through a thoroughly holistic education that includes civic responsibilities, culture, basic technical abilities and entrepreneurship.<br />
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Our education system should shift emphasis from the arts to the teaching of mathematics and the science.<br />
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History also teaches us that countries become developed only when governments repose enough confidence in the citizens to challenge them to solve problems and produce things for themselves.<br />
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Let me give a concrete example: we spend a good chunk of our budget on defence, as we rightly should.<br />
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The problem I see here is that we continue to think of defence only in terms of the acquisition of foreign armaments that other people have discarded.<br />
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Common sense alone ought to tell us that no one will sell us armaments for which they have not developed adequate counter-measures, just in case we get into a fight with them.<br />
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Our defence policy should be anchored solidly on home grown defence industries that could provide us with our own indigenously-designed and built weapon systems.<br />
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Sir, I do not know whether to laugh or cry whenever I see our bemedalled officials making speeches at the launch of acquired armaments.<br />
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If we begin with light arms, there is no reason why Ghana Armed Forces cannot be equipped with Made-in-Ghana arms within a year or two.<br />
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Experienced gunsmiths abound aplenty in the Volta Region, and all that they need is official sponsorship.<br />
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Sadly, our colonial mindsets made us criminalized artisans we should have called upon to aid our industrialization.<br />
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The Russians didn't jail Mr. Kalashnikov when he designed and built the AK-47; rather they encouraged him and gave him official recognition and helped him with government's contracts.<br />
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The US Army helped Mr. Smith when he designed the gun that bears his name.<br />
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Your Excellency, there are very important lessons we could learn here; one is that we need to shed our neo-colonial mentality and start to believe in ourselves.<br />
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Sir, countries are developed by leaders throwing a challenge to the people.<br />
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A prime example is President John Kennedy asking American scientists to send a man to the moon and bring him back within a decade.<br />
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Americans scientists took up the challenge and achieved the feat with ample time to spare.<br />
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We need not go to the moon but you, as a leader, can challenge our leading universities to come up with solutions to some of the challenges that we face.<br />
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Here are some examples I have in mind:<br />
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1. You can ask the University of Ghana at Legon to come up with ideas on how to clean up the Odaw River in Accra, and create a masterpiece that could be used for transportation, pleasure, tourist attraction, fishing etc, etc.<br />
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2. Challenge the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology to come up with affordable Solar-powered lamp that could be used to lighten up our homes, streets and roads.<br />
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3. Challenge the University at Winneba to come up with Civic and Cultural papers that would enable us take back some of the cultural traits we have lost.<br />
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We can begin with these three ideas.<br />
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And while we are at it, you can also challenge us to dream about how to link our two major cities, Accra and Kumasi, with a Canal?<br />
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You may consider this a legacy worth bestowing to us. Future generations will regard it with awe?<br />
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If our ancestors in Nubia and Egypt could build the Great Pyramids thousands of years ago without mechanic machines, there is no reason why the building of a canal should be deemed impossible.<br />
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We are handicapped only by the limits we place on our visions.<br />
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Sir, it is time we in Ghana also join the rest of humanity in dreaming big ideas.<br />
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The future, they say, belongs to those that believe in the beauty of their dreams.<br />
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Rather than keep waiting for help and assistance from foreigners, we can begin to generate ideas and look for indigenous solutions to our problems.<br />
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The experiences we will build up will help as we begin to tackle the myriad of challenges that we face. Successful implementation of our own ideas will also bolster our self-confidence.<br />
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Sir, I also think that you should be bold and courageous enough to tell us some bitter truths. Principal among this is that we are not a very productive people. Many of us are lax and lazy.<br />
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Many of our compatriots still go through life expecting manna to fall from heaven. They still expect to sleep for twenty hours a day, pray for the rest four hours and expect everything to be provided for them on a platter.<br />
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You must have the courage to tell us the simple truth that no nation of indolent gadabouts has ever prospered.<br />
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We cannot go about boozing up, refuse to read and expect our nation to prosper.<br />
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We cannot spend our days and night praying and sleeping and expect miracles to transform us and our land.<br />
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Your Excellency, as the first president of our blessed republic who appears to be hip and technologically-savvy, I sincerely hope that you will spend more time with our Engineers and our Scientists rather than parlaying with Priests.<br />
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I wish also that Your Excellency will be bold enough to tell our people that religion is strictly a personal matter between a person and his god, and should not be part of national affairs.<br />
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Your Excellency, the choice before us is stark and it is, put simply, this: do we want to continue with our hit-and-miss approach to development or do we make a clean, decisive break, jettison old prejudices, become bold and make bold, if painful, decisions about our future?<br />
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Sir, I wish you great successes.<br />
<br />
Femi Akomolafe<br />
Femi Akomolafehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11181295541117761340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3102193312603106809.post-62358839569183489272013-01-11T11:58:00.000+01:002013-01-16T15:52:25.770+01:00IMF-SAPEN“<i>Do not be ashamed of your poverty unless you got it dishonestly.</i>” – Anon.<br />
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According to those who should know, humanity began in Africa about five point five million years ago when varieties of Australopithecus separated from their monkey cousins.<br />
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Through gradual gradation, we moved from that lowly beginning to what we call ourselves today – Homo sapiens, (supposedly thinking beings).<br />
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A new species of the human genus has evolved. Future researchers will again place its birthplace in Africa and time at circa the late 20th and early 21st century.<br />
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Morphologically, physically, genetically, mentally and intellectually the IMF-SAPIEN is the equal of the HOMO-SAPIEN.<br />
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In fact, future anthropologists will have big-time difficulties distinguishing the two species.<br />
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What, then, are the characteristics of the IMF-SAPIEN that made it a distinct specie?<br />
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To recognize an IMF-SAPIEN, we have to go beyond the physical sciences.<br />
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Neither biology, nor geology, nor anthropology, nor archaeology, nor chemistry will help us.<br />
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Only in its behavior does an IMF-SAPIEN differ from a HOMO-SAPIEN.<br />
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Only by studying their behaviors can we make a distinction between the two species.<br />
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We thus move away from the domain of physiology and enter the province of psychology.<br />
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How, then, do we properly recognize an IMF-SAPIEN?<br />
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Many features distinguish the IMF-SAPIENS from other species of the human genus.<br />
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Below we list some of the easily recognizable traits of IMF-SAPIENism, though not necessarily in any specific order:<br />
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The most significant trait is that the IMF-SAPIEN is a colonial being.<br />
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A colonial would be an adequate description of one under colonial domination, but an IMF-SAPIEN goes way-way beyond that.<br />
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For starters, a colonial subject always harbors the HOPE of gaining his (we are not being sexist here) freedom. He considers is position unnatural, and he is full of hope of freedom.<br />
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IMF-SAPIENS on the other hand has abandoned all hope of salvation.<br />
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Our unfortunate cousin does not believe himself capable of self-redemption; he considers his position the natural order sanctioned by the gods.<br />
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In fact, an IMF-SAPIEN appears satisfied with his lowly, colonial, lot.<br />
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Having abandoned any hope for self-redemption, the IMF-SAPIEN waits, with child-like helplessness, for others to come and rescue him.<br />
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Your average Homo Sapien knows that it’s stupid to be nice to those who do not know how to appreciate the gesture, never mind to reciprocate it, not so with an IMF-SAPIEN.<br />
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He keeps giving even when his generosity is used to lampoon him. He would rather starve than allow a stranger to go hungry. Centuries of ingratitude has not dulled his sense of mis-guided altruism<br />
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An IMF-SAPIEN sits on vast wealth whilst living in wretched poverty.<br />
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Few will contest the fact that Africa is the world’s most resources-rich continent.<br />
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How then do we explain the strange phenomena of our continent being the worlds’ beggar and the world’s basket case?<br />
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How do we explain why Africans are the world’s most malnourished, the worst clothed and the most poorly housed people on earth?<br />
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We need not mention the simple truth that we are the worst educated and the most ignorant.<br />
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How do we explain the strange phenomenon that makes Africans the lowliest of the world’s lowly wherever we live?<br />
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Why are UN pamphlets on hunger and starvation always adorn with pictures of Africans?<br />
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The IMF-SAPIEN has long stopped thinking. He has long abandoned efforts to solve his own problem. He has left his salvation and redemption to others. He has folded up his arms in abandonment and has left it for others to analyze and proffer solutions to his problems.<br />
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This can be the only explanation we have for the uncountable NGOs, institutions and Think Tanks Westerners have set up to maintain their stranglehold on our lives in Africa.<br />
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Or where is it possible to breath nowadays in Africa without a Western NGO telling us how to do it?<br />
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The IMF-SAPIEN is ravaged by poverty to the point of intellectual inertia.<br />
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He accepts without protest when others insulted him with their mis-analyses of his problems.<br />
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He believes when told that his problems are lack of democracy (he should have questioned why his situation hasn’t improved after over two decades of democratic experimentation). Let someone tell me what dividend Nigerians have gained from their democracy.<br />
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He accepts without murmur that his problem stemmed from the corruption of his government (he should have asked how the Americans’, Italians’, Chinese, and Japanese’ economies boomed in spite of their frequent corruption scandals).<br />
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He receives it solemnly when told that ‘bad governance’ is his major palaver; it never occurred to our unlucky cousin to ask what the nebulous term is supposed to infer?<br />
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Our IMF-SAPIEN cousin believes that over-population is at the root cause of his destitution (he should have questioned why that is not a problem in say, Holland, where about nineteen million human beings crammed themselves into a real-estate of forty-thousand square kilometers versus Sudan where a land-mass of two point five million square kilometers is populated by only about twenty-two million people. And that Angolans eleven million people have over one million square kilometers in contrast to the almost eighty million Germans who share about three-hundred and fifty-six thousand square kilometers.)<br />
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Oh yes, an IMF-SAPIEN loves titles and nothing pleases him more than to hold political office.<br />
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Whether or not it is a political office totally bereft of any real power or authority, the IMF-SAPIEN is contented to hold his sham office.<br />
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He loves aplomb and pageantry to no end. To make his day, give him a small piece of real estate, throw in a flag, an anthem, and equip some rag-tag band of delinquent ruffians with museum pieces and call it a national army, our strange cousin will find nothing ironic in celebrating his sham independence.<br />
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Adorning himself with all the brass and epaulets money can buy, he will be seen vibrating with joy on ‘Liberation day!’<br />
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Everyone the IMF-SAPIEN invites to his house is having the best time of their lives, whilst he continues to exist in grinding poverty and mendicancy: This is among the most obvious signs of IMF-SAPIENism.<br />
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Any society largely populated by IMF-SAPIEN is immediately recognizable by the fact that the aboriginals are always at the bottom rung of the economic ladder.<br />
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As pointed to, supra, the IMF-SAPIEN sits on vast natural wealth but does not benefit from them in any tangible way.<br />
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It is thus left for foreigners to exploit these resources for their own benefits. The IMF-SAPIEN lives in rat-infested, mosquito overwhelmed and vermin-plagued hovels in slum and ghost towns (a ghost town is a ghetto inside a ghetto); the foreigners live in walled mansions in ‘exclusive’ suburbs.<br />
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The IMF-SAPIEN crammed himself (<b>44 sitting, 99 standing</b> – apologies to Fela Anikulapo-Kuti), into ancient jalopies (trotro in Ghana, molue in Nigeria and matatu in Kenya) whilst the foreigner tool around his towns in the latest designer high-tech 4*4 jeeps.<br />
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What is also easily apparent to visitors is the fact that almost all the foreigners in his land are having the best times of their lives, whilst the IMF-SAPIENS wallow in abject poverty.<br />
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Or has anyone ever seen a European, Arab or Asian living in any of our numerous shantytowns, ghettoes and ghost towns in Africa?<br />
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An IMF-SAPIEN does not grow what he eats: Present-day keen observers and future archeologists will notice this unique feature of the IMF-SAPIENS immediately.<br />
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This being is easily recognizable by his eating habits. His foods consist of imported items: British mad cow beef, expired Australian poultry products, European foot and mouth diseased pig feet (yuk!), expired Dutch and Swiss milk products have become staple food of our unfortunate cousin.<br />
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Our strange cousin believes himself civilized by the numbers of ‘Fast (junk) Food’ outlets in his land! That these foods give him debilitating (diabetics, stroke, heart) diseases has not dissuaded our unfortunate cousin from consuming them with gusto.<br />
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Strangely our cousin, who has absolutely no conception of time, likes to eat at Fast Food joints!<br />
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IMF-SAPIEN does not eat what he grows: Like almost all other colonial-subjects, the labor of the IMF-SAPIEN is not employed in producing food for himself and his family.<br />
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No. His heavy muscles are engaged in producing what they tell him is cash crop. (If IMF-SAPIEN is capable of asking questions, he should have asked where the cash is, that he had employed his labor in producing over the years).<br />
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He should also have asked why it is possible for people who only push pen around in Paris and London to make more money that he, who slave upward of twelve hours a day in tropical sun to farm and produce cocoa.<br />
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Our weird cousin hates his culture. As Apostle Paul said in his <b>Epistle to the Ghanaians 20:05:</b> ‘<i>By their taste for foreign culture, ye shall know them</i>.’<br />
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A society populated by IMF-SAPIENS must be a miniature (actually a caricature) of the metropolitan (dominating) power.<br />
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The IMF-SAPIEN has lost touch with his roots and most of his energies are employed in running away as fast as possible from his cultural roots.<br />
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Not only would an IMF-SAPIEN not speak his language but also, in speaking a foreign language, he must use foreign tones, mannerisms, inflections etc, etc.<br />
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A properly evolved IMF-SAPIEN would rather die than bear his traditional name.<br />
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Traditional African names have meanings and sometimes long history behind them; today many African felt no shame to bear totally ridiculous and meaningless foreign names.<br />
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The IMF-Sapiens’s mannerism consists entirely of mimicking other cultures.<br />
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Anything foreign is OK for the IMF-SAPIEN as long as it does not remind him of his own culture or traditions.<br />
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You can easily know when you get to a society of properly-evolved IMF-SAPIENS – Just listen to the leader talking to his people.<br />
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A well evolved IMF-SAPIEN society is the only place on earth where the rulers are addressing the ruled in a foreign language!<br />
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In these societies, no one sees anything wrong or ironic in societies where leaders address their own people in a foreign language!<br />
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Let us now consider the structures of the society inhabited by IMF-SAPIENS, albeit briefly.<br />
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The most notable feature of this society is structures (political, economic, social, sociological and psychological) erected that have no traditional or cultural base.<br />
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The political and economic institutions of IMF-Sapien’s society are based on alien, imported structures.<br />
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IMF-SAPIENS has long abandoned their traditional systems of governance and economic activities.<br />
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Their system of social organization is imported in its entirety.<br />
<br />
What’s baffling is that the IMF-SAPIEN failed to grasp why these structures, which he badly-misunderstood, are failing him.<br />
<br />
As mentioned supra, the IMF-SAPIEN is running away from his roots as fast as possible, we find him junketing from one foreign country to the other seeking solutions to his local problem.<br />
<br />
Those who pretend to be helping him are swarming his land with their unemployed and unemployable youth, thereby solving their own unemployment problems at the expense of our unfortunate cousin.<br />
<br />
We thus find the peculiar situation whereby those who created the problems are proffering the solutions.<br />
<br />
This happens only in a thoroughly evolved IMF-SOCIETY.<br />
<br />
In the sphere of spirituality, the IMF-SAPIEN is a lost soul.<br />
<br />
Religion has been properly defined as the deification of the ancestors.<br />
<br />
Every society creates its own religion and creates its own gods in its own image.<br />
<br />
Not so for our peculiar and wonderful cousin.<br />
<br />
As Apostle Paul warned in his <b>Epistle to the Nigerians 20:05</b>, “<i>By their worship of foreign gods, ye shall know them.</i>”<br />
<br />
With alacrity, our strange cousin made a bonfire of the images of his gods. With stunning speed, he adorned his temples with the images of other people’s gods.<br />
<br />
How else to explain the burning by Africans of the wooden images of their own gods, only to replace them with the plastic images of a blond, blue-eyed European nailed to a cross in obvious agony?<br />
<br />
No properly-evolved IMF-SAPIEN finds anything ironic in adorning his walls with the picture of a Caucasian Jesus the Christ – even one painted by the Italian artist Michelangelo!<br />
<br />
Nothing makes our cousin giddier than imitating the religious rituals of other people.<br />
<br />
Our cousin is at his best elements when he can recite off his head the ‘holy books’ of other people religions.<br />
<br />
Our unfortunate cousin sees nothing wrong in adopting badly-copied religions of his ancestors in Egypt – both Islam and Christianity evolved from Judaism,which is nothing but ideological variant of Ancient Egyptian Religion.<br />
<br />
The leaders of IMF-SAPIEN societies love titles, ceremonies and speech making, though not necessarily in that order.<br />
<br />
The sight of the maximum leader spewing rhetorical verbiage on the television and the radios and the newspapers daily confronts a visitor to any IMF-SAPIEN’s society.<br />
<br />
In these societies, the leader is the state and the state is the leader.<br />
<br />
The only other personage competing with the maximum leader for coverage is invariably the numero uno’s wife.<br />
<br />
Go and ask Mevrouw Kibaki in Kenya or Madam Goodluck in Nigeria.<br />
<br />
Leaders of IMF-SAPIEN societies are simply beyond irony. The opulent live-styles enjoyed by these leaders bear no relationship whatsoever to the poverty suffer by the masses of the people they are leading. This is the only explanation we can adduce for the nauseating sight of well-fed African leaders, resplendent in the best attires money can buy, meeting annually and pontificating about their people’s suffering.Femi Akomolafehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11181295541117761340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3102193312603106809.post-79647143638210173402013-01-07T12:52:00.000+01:002013-01-16T15:52:44.909+01:00Music Review<i>A satire </i><br />
<br />
Who asked Rita Tweneboah to sing? <br />
<br />
To describe her first (and hopefully last) CD cum cassette as a musical disaster is to be guilty of inadequate vocabulary. <br />
<br />
Nothing exists in the English language, or in any language that I know, to describe this incoherent, clangorous nonsensical piece Ms Rita foisted on us as a high musical achievement. <br />
<br />
Any primary school singing group could have easily produced something better than the shit (pardon the scatological term) that made Ms Rita genuflected with enthusiasm. <br />
<br />
Listen to her: “<i>I thank the Almighty God for allowing me to complete successfully this taxing musical project</i>,” she gushed to me breathlessly at the low-key, two-room affairs she shares with her manager cum producer at Alajo, a suburb of Accra. <br />
<br />
The manager, a lanky lad wore dark glasses in the poorly lit room. A Che Guevera's beret lay on his head like a bird of paradise. The last part of a joint dangled from his enormous lip. <br />
<br />
He accented her every word with a nod of the head. <br />
<br />
He looked like one high on some performance-enhancement drug. <br />
<br />
Why do we have to drag the gods into this bizarre musical affair? <br />
<br />
Mere mortals, relying on their native abilities, have produced much better musical works. Ms Rita must be thinking that celestial intervention is a substitute for ABILITY. <br />
<br />
If there is an award for the WORST CD EVER, Ms Rita will win it with ease. <br />
<br />
The CD, the one I listened to, started as though a drunkard got hold of a guitar and started strumming un-rythmically. Then a fellow bibber apparently rescued a piano and punched the keys erratically. On top of this clangorous mishmash, Ms Rita attempted to sing - at least that is what she appeared to be doing. <br />
<br />
A good musical voice might have save the day, but [alas] Ms Rita's voice will make you puke, yes vomit. <br />
<br />
Track two follows the same mushy pattern. Let us not waste time on the next three tracks. In track six, Ms Rita decided to go for what must have appeared to her to be gospel. In a confusing pantomime of drums, noises, guitar, piano, horns, drums and keyboard, she wailed some imitation of spiritual songs. <br />
<br />
Again, her voice spoiled the fun. <br />
<br />
It is difficult to imagine what Ms Rita was trying to do in track seven. <br />
<br />
As though telling herself: "I am tired. I am fed up with this whole nonsense. Let's get done with all these shit and be done with it." <br />
<br />
The track opened with the guitars dominating and pushing Ms Rita's grating voice out of the way. The guitarists then went on an insane display of guitar pyrotechnics.<br />
<br />
These fellows, apparently high on some chemical-enhancements, must have just left their fingers waddled on the wires without caring what keys are hit. <br />
<br />
In track eight (blessedly, the last), Ms Rita performed a mournful rendition of another spiritual generously sprinkled with 'Gye Nyame,' 'Jehowah,' 'Awurade,' and 'Yesu.' <br />
<br />
Again, her voice did the whole thing a great injustice. <br />
<br />
Granted that Ms Rita shares her manager cum producer's bed, how did any self-respecting studio managed to get such a shoddy job out of its doors and stamped it with its label? <br />
<br />
The managers of CD-X Studio, who recently were in the news boasting about their latest hi-tech equipments, should tell us what they were thinking before releasing this monstrosity to the Ghanaian public. <br />
<br />
The listening public certainly deserves something better. <br />
<br />
Are we to believe that good face (Ms Rita, with a full, dreamy African face, inviting sensuous thick lips and winning smiles is very beautiful), and gorgeous body (her succulent body, the stuffs dreams are made of, giggles to her every movement), is enough to get an album out? <br />
<br />
So, OK, Ms Rita cannot sing, her guitarists do no not know one key from another, her keyboard player is both inept and insane and her horn-man is a crazy-banana, didn't her lyrics rise up to the occasion? <br />
<br />
Not on your life. <br />
<br />
It is not only that the woman cannot sing, she also cannot write music. <br />
<br />
Although, in bold Garamond type on the CD jacket, she boasted that: "<i>All lairics (sic) ritten (sic) by Rita Tweneboah,</i>" the fact of the matter is that Ms Rita simply cannot write - prose, verse, music or anything else for that matter. <br />
<br />
How could she when she has problems with elementary grammar? Sample this: <br />
<br />
“Along the cost we moves (sic) (she meant 'coast') <br />
Move, move, move [2*].<br />
Sea water in the Area Move, move, move [2*].<br />
Plenty of sand and people we sees (sic) .<br />
Move, move, move [2*].<br />
We eats (sic) fish and shito .<br />
Move, move, move [2*]”.<br />
<br />
Alternatively, try to make sense of this - from track four: <br />
“A child is an angel in the face of the mother (sic). <br />
A mother is an angel in the face of the child (sic). <br />
God is an angel of heaven .<br />
Angels are messengers of our Father in heaven. <br />
Who send us messages from our home, Jerusalem Oh, Jerusalem, Salem, Salem.” <br />
<br />
What are we to think of the mind capable of producing such 'songs'? <br />
<br />
Ms Rita's inability (perhaps, absolute incapability is a better word) to sing well is matched only by her sheer lack of dancing abilities. <br />
<br />
Nothing evidences this more than her pathetic attempt to dance in the accompanying video which she showed to me with glee. <br />
<br />
If her singing can be dismissed as a disaster, Ms Rita's dancing is pure shame. <br />
<br />
Many a fine African lady can do justice to dancing by simply moving her body, not so Ms Rita. <br />
<br />
In her gallant efforts to impress and overcome an obvious natural handicap, she turned herself into something like a robot programmed to pantomime a dance. <br />
<br />
No matter the type of music being played, it was always the same steps for Ms Rita as though she is following a rigid dancing script. <br />
<br />
Her style of dancing is like this: Plant your legs widely apart with your buttocks (yards and yards of it) sticking out; throw your left hand this way, your right the other, then shake your head like you've got an epileptic seizure, and you get a pretty good picture of what Ms Rita did in the video. <br />
<br />
"<i>We made the video in Belgium.</i>" She enthused to me as though a Belgium stamp of approval can mask a shoddy job and bestow legitimacy on a very poor performance. <br />
<br />
In a bow to the trash that goes for modernity, Ms Rita's fashion designers managed to reveal more than they hide. <br />
<br />
In some scenes, she wore ultra-miniskirts that are no larger than a Nigerian postage stamp. <br />
<br />
Although naturally endowed with great natural beauty, Ms Rita's heavy make-up made her look like a cheap whore. The wigs are definitely Brazilian and the mighty boobs are suspiciously\conspicuously Silicone jobs). <br />
<br />
In some scenes of the videos, we saw only heavy boobs and in some scenes, Ms Rita showed us that she’s hip as reveals some panty-less hairy-box.<br />
<br />
Ms Rita has no business singing and less dancing. With her great looks, there must be something she could, conceivably, be good at - although, it is hard to imagine what that could be judging from her performance on the CD and the video. <br />
<br />
This is a music sang by the untalented; produced by the inept and marketed by the amoral. <br />
<br />
Don't buy this CD and don't accept the video even if it becomes a freebie - unless you need a paperweight or you want to aggravate your enemy. <br />
<br />
If this CD ever sold a single copy, it would represent the triumph of marketing over good taste. <br />
<br />
<b>The Moral:</b> in years gone by, musical giants like ET Mensah, ET Crentsil, Koo Nimo and others firmly planted Ghana’s music on the world’s cultural\musical map. <br />
<br />
They played authentic highlife music that couldn’t be mistaken for anything else.<br />
<br />
These hugely-talented musical giants were passionate about their role as their country’s cultural ambassadors.<br />
<br />
Lamentably, like almost everything else in our dear land, our music scene is now populated by hustlers masquerading as musical artistes. <br />
<br />
Disappointingly, we are today saddled by wannabee artistes who appeared not have heard the phrase that no one treat his imitator like an equal.<br />
<br />
I wish that Ghanaian musicians will sit up and try and emulate their Jamaican and Senegalese counterparts by maintaining their cultural integrity. <br />
<br />
Whichever part of our globe one goes, Jamaica is synonymous with reggae. And musicians like Baaba Maal, Orchestra Baobab, Youssou N’dour, Thione Seck et al have ensured that Senegal has become a force to be reckoned with in what European commentators like to call World Music.<br />
Femi Akomolafehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11181295541117761340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3102193312603106809.post-70590761295258795162012-12-29T10:31:00.000+01:002013-01-16T15:52:59.166+01:00Ghana Elections: Good news is no news “I am disappointed.”<br />
<br />
“Why is that, my dear friend?”<br />
<br />
“Don’t you dare call me your friend, my friend!”<br />
<br />
“Ah, what’s bugging you?”<br />
<br />
“I am sorely disappointed!”<br />
<br />
“In me, what have I done to wrong you, my friend?”<br />
<br />
“You and your bunch of friends from the Western Press.”<br />
<br />
“Eh, what the heck are you talking about?”<br />
<br />
“And you call yourself a friend!”<br />
<br />
“What are you talking about? Why are you in such a nasty funk?”<br />
<br />
“I am talking about you western media people!”<br />
<br />
“And what on earth is wrong with us?”<br />
<br />
“That exactly is the problem, ah! You still do not know why I am so angry with you lot?”<br />
<br />
“No, I don’t know.”<br />
<br />
“For crying out loud, we had one of the best elections ever conducted anywhere in the whole wide world and none of you guys deemed it newsy enough to write on it. I search in vain for anything positive about the fairness, the freeness, the drums, the dances, the electric atmosphere generated, nothing. Zilch. That’s what I got, Niets! Nothing from the BBC right up to the Constant Negative News channel you call CNN. None of you have anything to say.”<br />
<br />
“Oh, that! Is that what’s bugging you.”<br />
<br />
“Yes, yes, yes! And don’t tell me that it is not enough to bug anyone! I knew how you guys went to town to pillory Africa after the debacle in Nigeria, Kenya and Zimbabwe about flawed elections. Why don’t you give credit where it is deserved?”<br />
<br />
“I am afraid, my friend, you really do not understand the way of the world.”<br />
<br />
“What way of the world are you talking about here? We just had a world-class elections conducted with all the international busy-bodies that call themselves ‘Election Observers’ claiming that it was the best ever in the world, and not a single paper or media in the West deemed it newsworthy. You deluded us with tons and tons of info on the mayhem that happened in Kenya, yet not a whimper about the fair, free and violence-free elections in Ghana. I am so disappointed.”<br />
<br />
“I feel both sad and sorry that you feel that way, my friend. But your anger is misdirected. If only you understand the way of the world, you won’t feel that way.”<br />
<br />
“What way of the world are you talking about, eh?”<br />
<br />
“I am truly sorry that you feel that way. But your anger is grossly misplaced. You truly lack the capacity to see the whole picture. You cannot grasp the entire perspective.”<br />
<br />
“What are you talking about? I asked you why you Western Press people failed, miserably I should add, to mention a well conducted elections in Ghana, whereas you are prepared to devote reels and reels of newsprint to any conflict in the most obscure part of Africa!”<br />
<br />
“Exactly, my point. I don’t think that I can start by introducing you to simple Economics as the subject appears beyond the comprehension of you Africans.”<br />
<br />
“Now, now, what are you talking about? What has Economics got to do with your biased reporting about the continent of Africa?”<br />
<br />
“Semantics, semantics, my friend. You called it biased-reporting but I called it obeying the immutable laws of economics. You do not believe that I sent myself here, do you?”<br />
<br />
“What exactly are you talking about, my friend?”<br />
<br />
“I represent a newspaper which, you may believe it or not, need hard cash in order to survive. And since we do not believe that money grows on trees like people in Africa do, it follows that we have to generate our cash somehow. Our income comes mainly from advertisers. Our advertisers make their monies selling products that hard-working people in the West are prepared to shell out their hard-earned income to buy. The people buy the newspapers hoping to get their money-worth in news and stuffs.”<br />
<br />
“I still do not get the point!”<br />
<br />
“Patience, my friend, is a great virtue. I am coming to the point in my own round-about way. You do not expect Joe the Plumber to come home, after a hard day’s job, and be confused by improbable headlines like free and fair elections in Ghana. The man is tired. He has worked hard and he has downed his fair share of liquor, and only need to read about some chaos and mayhem and things in his newspaper before he goes to bed. You do not expect us, in good conscience, to disallow him his daily dose of gory news, do you? You don’t believe people in the west are going to be happy if they sit at their breakfast tables, perusing their newspapers and be side-blinded by headlines like, “Ghana Conducted Successful Elections,” or “Ghana Election shines,” or such monstrosities like that.”<br />
<br />
“What exactly is wrong with that? You will only be reporting the truth? Wasn’t it written that you will know the truth and the truth shall make you free?”<br />
<br />
“Don’t be daft, my friend. What’s the truth? Do you think that my editor is going to hang a medal on my neck if I should send him a report about how successfully Ghanaians conducted their elections?”<br />
<br />
“I thought journalists are supposed to report objectively!”<br />
<br />
“You thought wrong, my friend. I am not your crusading, revolutionary reporter bent on shaping the world in my own image. I’ve got a family to support, a mortgage, children’s school bills, etc, etc, to consider. You don’t expect me to throw all that away in some messianic pursuit of what you called objective journalism.”<br />
<br />
“I didn’t call it that! That’s what you Western Press people claim to be!”<br />
<br />
“Don’t be naïve, my friend! You don’t expect me to come here and tell you that I am ‘Mr. Biased Personified,’ do you?”<br />
<br />
“So there is nothing about objective about you Western Press?”<br />
<br />
“Don’t put words in my mouth, but don’t blame us if you guys decided to go off the rail.”<br />
<br />
“What do you mean, going off the rail?”<br />
<br />
“Why did you decide to do the un-African thing? Who has ever heard of an election in Africa devoid of violence, rigging, mayhem and stuffs? Can you imagine that I searched the whole day in vain for close shots of mayhem, arson, police brutality, violent-protest and things? I even tried to bribe some youth at Alajo in Accra to stage a protest for my sake, but the patriotic idiots refused my generous offer. My cameraman was so bored that he fell asleep. Happily, I should add, in the arms of one of those well-endowed, succulent ladies with good rear engines parading the streets of your capital. What exactly is wrong with you Ghanaians?”<br />
<br />
“What do you mean?”<br />
<br />
“All that you are doing is destabilizing a perfect equilibrium. Who but a Bolshevik revolutionary is interested in free and fair elections in Africa? Everyone knows that good elections in Africa are occasions for fossilized, sit-tight father-of-the-nation to dispatch his uniformed goons, armed with our discarded museum pieces, to beat up citizens, award fantastic electoral votes to himself and his cronies, with everyone going home happy and dandy. But you Ghanaians decided to upset the smooth apple-cart.”<br />
<br />
“But there have been free and fair elections in Botswana, Sierra Leone, Liberia and…”<br />
<br />
“You are wasting your breath, my friend. Those are mere exceptions that do nothing to challenge the rule. We all know what to expect from African elections and is it not among your sayings that a Tiger does not change its spot?”<br />
<br />
“It is Leopard; there are no Tigers in Africa.”<br />
<br />
“Leopard, Tiger, Elephant or whatever, no one is going to believe the tale of a violence-free election in Africa. All they want are reports of Do-or-Die elections.”<br />
<br />
“You are not telling me that your readers are interested only in mayhem, violence and arson?”<br />
<br />
“I am saying no such thing. Just that some things are so predictable: The sun will shine in Africa tomorrow; an African dictator will steal an election. People are used to that. But when you start on the path of successful elections and things, those are uncharted, potentially-dangerous revolutionary trends and it might upset our folks.”<br />
<br />
“You mean white folks?”<br />
<br />
“Who else? You didn’t reckon that we generate our income from your voodoo economies, do you?”<br />
<br />
“Are you telling me that your decent white folks are only interested in your reporting violence and mayhem?”<br />
<br />
“Once again, you are putting things out of context. We are in business to inform our readers, pander to their tastes and their delicate sensibilities; we are not in the business of evangelizing or crusading. We are not on a mission to change the world or how the world’s people think.”<br />
<br />
“Now I am getting the picture.”<br />
Femi Akomolafehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11181295541117761340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3102193312603106809.post-89410595105002582152012-12-21T09:36:00.000+01:002012-12-21T09:36:36.505+01:00Every Child is Beautiful, Mr. President“<i>When beggars die there are no comet seen… the heavens themselves blaze forth for the death of Prince</i>.” – Shakespeare in Julius Caesar.<br />
<br />
“<i>The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less</i>.” – Eldridge Cleaver in Soul on Ice<br />
<br />
“<i>I can think of no other way to say this, so here goes: An awful lot of white folks need to pull our heads out of our collective ass. Two more children are dead and thirteen are injured, and another community is scratching its blonde scalp, utterly perplexed as to how a school shooting the likes of the one in Santee, California could happen. After all, as the Mayor of the town said on CNN: “We’re a solid town, a good town, with good kids; a good church-going town; an All-American town.” Well, maybe that’s the problem.<br />
<br />
I said this after Columbine and no one listened, so I’ll say it again: Most whites live in a state of self-delusion. We think danger is black or brown, not to mention poor, and if we can just move far enough away from “those people,” we’ll be safe. If we can just find an “all-American” town, life will be better, because “things like this just don’t happen here.”<br />
<br />
Well excuse me for pointing this out, but in case you hadn’t noticed, “here” is about the only place these kinds of things do happen. Oh sure, there’s plenty of violence in urban communities too. But mass murder, wholesale slaughter, kill-’em-all-let-God-sort-’em-out kinda’ craziness seems made for those “safe” white suburbs or rural communities. Yet the FBI insists there is no “profile” of a school shooter</i>.” – www.alternet.org<br />
<br />
“<i>Given the utter lack of human empathy exhibited by the US in its dealings with the world, it should perhaps come as no surprise when the lack of empathy is replicated on a smaller scale at home by school assassins and the like. It goes without saying, however, that the president’s tears are reserved for the non-military slaughter of domestic civilians.<br />
<br />
As for Obama’s pledge to do whatever he can to “prevent… more tragedies like this”, it would seem that true prevention efforts would require the comprehensive rewiring of American society.<br />
<br />
I don’t believe my son belongs in jail… But it seems like the United States is using prison as the solution of choice for mentally ill people. According to Human Rights Watch, the number of mentally ill inmates in US prisons quadrupled from 2000 to 2006.<br />
<br />
In the end, however, gun control is merely one of many issues requiring attention in a country that should itself be diagnosed as mentally ill.</i>” – Belen Fernandez<br />
<br />
“<i>According to Mother Jones, since 1982, 61 mass murders involving firearms have occurred throughout the country. Of these, 43 of the killers were white males, and only one was a woman. Mother Jones focused on whether the killers obtained their guns legally (most did). But this highly visible sign of mental illness should lead us to consider how many people in the U.S. live in fear, like I do.<br />
<br />
When I asked my son’s social worker about my options, he said that the only thing I could do was to get Michael charged with a crime. “If he’s back in the system, they’ll create a paper trail,” he said. “That’s the only way you’re ever going to get anything done. No one will pay attention to you unless you’ve got charges.”<br />
<br />
I agree that something must be done. It’s time for a meaningful, nation-wide conversation about mental health. That’s the only way our nation can ever truly heal.<br />
<br />
God help me. God help Michael. God help us all</i>.” Liza long, ‘I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother.’<br />
<br />
It has become a familiar spectacle: for whatever reason, another American has grabbed an assault rifle, that big gun designed for combat troops to achieve maximum kill-rate, and sprayed innocent people with hot lead and left scores dead.<br />
<br />
The media rush to express shock like it has never happen before. Analysts brought out their crystal balls and talk themselves silly on the Constant Negative News (CNN). Politicians dodged and fudged and the Commander-in-Chief donned the garb of Mourner-in-Chief, made impassioned speech, not forgetting to wipe off a tear or two and vow to do something ‘meaningful.’<br />
<br />
Candles are lit and a solemn funeral held where the names of the victims are called and remembered with fondness by loved ones.<br />
<br />
There is a vow to do something to stop the senseless massacres. Everybody goes home. Few days later, things are back to normal. Massacre is forgotten. It is time to eat hamburger, drink soda and watch football unmolested by the dins of wars and of drones and their missiles.<br />
<br />
After all this is America, land of the free and the brave which has a genius of insulating itself from the mayhem and the violence its unrestrained military unleashes on the world every minute of every hour of every day of every year since 1945.<br />
<br />
So, a young man of 20 years somehow got hold of an assault rifle. There are reports that the weapon belongs to his mother.<br />
<br />
There are several questions provoked here: At the risk of sounding sexist, what on earth is a woman doing with an assault rifle in her home?<br />
<br />
Many societies consider a 20-year a teenager that still needs parental\societal guidance to navigate the maze that is life.<br />
<br />
But of course in God’s own country, even babies have constitutional rights that are inviolable. And men (and women, too) consider the amassing of insane amount of armaments God’s given rights.<br />
<br />
One of the most baffling things I noticed during my sojourn in Europe was the ability of the people to totally divorce themselves from all the reality around them.<br />
<br />
Europeans claim to be educated but they know so little about the world they so thoroughly dominated (through their military and their media) and they care even less.<br />
<br />
The genius of the European Power Elite was to successfully create societies where people are totally isolated from any and all atrocities committed in their names by their armed forces.<br />
<br />
For example, the Netherlands was actively engaged in two wars – in Iraq and Afghanistan (let’s forget the Dutch participation in the NATO piracy off the Somali coast, for a while), with the citizens delightfully unaware.<br />
<br />
Not once did I see a picture of the war on Dutch television. The people are simply not allowed to see the blood and the gores of wars.<br />
<br />
The wars got mentioned in the press all right but sans its nastiness and its messiness.<br />
<br />
The Dutch media has so totally dehumanized the enemy that even the most progressive of citizens have trouble thinking of him (it?) as a human being worthy of empathy.<br />
<br />
The other, the enemy, is reduced to a Nonentity; a mere abstract statistical figure in a remote place with unpronounceable name.<br />
<br />
After all, democratically-elected government has determined that it (the enemy) is a blasted, freedom-hating, horned ogre with no purpose in life than to threaten the lives of the civilized, Christian, democratic, freedom-loving, altruistic Westerners.<br />
<br />
The westerner has had this falsehood fed and brow-beaten into his head he knows nothing better.<br />
<br />
Lest the Westerner veer and start a dangerous self-doubt, the Western free press constantly do their best to re-inforce the imagery with relentless bombardment of untruths and outright lies.<br />
<br />
Dutch businesses get a good cut of the pie that is war booty (an oil contract here, a pipeline deal there eventually adds up to serious money so beloved by the Dutch).<br />
<br />
War booties keep the economy on good stead and living standard high and they guarantee good life for Dutch citizens.<br />
<br />
So what if some, ungodly Afghan, Somali, Iraqi or Pakistani child, or children got killed?<br />
<br />
Collateral damages happen in wars, don’t they?<br />
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So, the Dutch blissfully go about their businesses unconcerned, unmoved, untroubled and without the least worry in their lives, except for worries about inflation and the state of the Euro.<br />
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That is until the enemy kills a Dutch soldier.<br />
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And suddenly, the whole country wake up to the realization that there is war going on after, all.<br />
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Flags are lowered; Generals and Politicians put pancakes on their faces to look good on television where they blabber until kingdom come.<br />
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The Dutch Monarch, the Queen, is drag into the affairs. As head of state, she has to lead and be seen to do so.<br />
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There is great fanfare in the land with all the attendant pomp and pageantry.<br />
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The fawning media is there is to capture and propagate the disaster (the killing of a Dutch, nay, Westerner, anywhere is always a disaster) until tomorrow.<br />
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I often wonder why the Westerners always think that their lives are worthier than those of the rest of us.<br />
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Dutch troops kill Iraqis, Libyans, Iraqis routinely with no mention made in the Dutch media. But there is over-saturation of news coverage if a single Dutch soldier is killed.<br />
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It is the same way I wonder why the Dutch celebrate the four years Nazi occupation of their country, but develop collective amnesia when it comes to the question of their country’s bestial colonization of Indonesia and Suriname or the dastardly apartheid they imposed to blight the beautiful country of South Africa.<br />
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Another trait of the West that constantly baffles me was the way people think that they somehow will not reap what they sow.<br />
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I see Westerners expecting to reap love when they (or should I say their governments?) go around to litter the world with hatred.<br />
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The people of the European Stock (apologies to my editor at the New African magazine, Baffour Ankomah), tout their rationality, but few of their actions suggest rationality.<br />
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They also appear incapable of telling themselves the truth.<br />
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However much we grief for the hapless victims, especially the children of Connecticut, we should be honest enough to tell ourselves some home truths.<br />
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Any society that promotes and glorifies violence should expect tragedies to happen.<br />
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Any nation that thinks only of violence to resolve disputes should not express surprise when some citizens do the same.<br />
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A nation that built multi-billion dollars blood-drenched video games industry should not tell us that it does not expect its citizens to become violent.<br />
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A nation that allows citizens, for whatever reasons, to have more guns than some nation’s army is only courting serious trouble.<br />
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A nation where bullets are dirt cheap should also expect massacres to occur now and then.<br />
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A nation where film industries make billions in make-believe violent wars should realise that some citizens will sooner or later act upon the fantasies.<br />
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So, our Nobel Laureate Emperor Obama is capable of shedding tears on the death of little children?<br />
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Tchaah!<br />
<br />
This is the same man that day after day orders the killing of little children from Yemen, through Somali through Afghanistan through Pakistan.<br />
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According to reports, Mr. Obama has taken personal charge of the CIA-engineered drone wars and has ordered more drone attacks that all his predecessors put together. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?_r=0<br />
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Of course, like its Dutch counterpart, the American media shield the American from seeing the unpleasant sides of wars.<br />
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A drone assault on a wedding party in Pakistan is mentioned alright, but the reportage is so bland, so devoid of all humanity that it is impossible for the American to feel a darn thing for the victims.<br />
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A missile assault on a hut in remote Afghanistan might wipe out entire family including little children, but to the American, it is just another dry statistics.<br />
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The media could have been talking about goats or sheep.<br />
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Which American journalist has the time to ferret out the names, the ages, the hobbies and the ambitions of little Afghan children?<br />
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Which true-born American wants to read about those inanities anyway?<br />
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When Obama was making his speech, many called for the N—– to get off their television so that they can watch their football? See here: http://deadspin.com/5968935/take-that-nigger-off-the-tv-we-wanna-watch-football-idiots-respond-to-nbc-pre+empting-sunday-night-football<br />
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“<i>You don’t have to teach people how to be human. You have to teach them how to stop being inhuman.</i>” – Eldridge Cleaver<br />
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Readers, kindly read this:<br />
<br />
“<i>With seven seconds left to go, there was no one to be seen on the ground. Bryant could still have diverted the missile at that point. Then it was down to three seconds. Bryant felt as if he had to count each individual pixel on the monitor. Suddenly a child walked around the corner, he says.<br />
<br />
Second zero was the moment in which Bryant’s digital world collided with the real one in a village between Baghlan and Mazar-e-Sharif.<br />
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Bryant saw a flash on the screen: the explosion. Parts of the building collapsed. The child had disappeared. Bryant had a sick feeling in his stomach.<br />
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“Did we just kill a kid?” he asked the man sitting next to him.<br />
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“Yeah, I guess that was a kid,” the pilot replied.<br />
<br />
“Was that a kid?” they wrote into a chat window on the monitor.<br />
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Then, someone they didn’t know answered, someone sitting in a military command center somewhere in the world who had observed their attack. “No. That was a dog,” the person wrote.<br />
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They reviewed the scene on video. A dog on two legs</i>?”<br />
<br />
– ‘The Woes of an American Drone Operator,’ By Nicola Abé, published by Der Spiegel.<br />
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It was Mr. Obama who ordered the drone attack that killed the innocent children in a village between Baghlan and Mazar-e-Sharif(they even lack the decency to get the name of the village).<br />
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An innocent human child heartlessly and unfeelingly reduced to a mere dog.<br />
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It was the same Mr. Obama that tearfully tells us how beautiful the children that died in Newtown, Connecticut were.<br />
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Was the child in a village between Baghlan and Mazar-e-Sharif ugly?<br />
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We would never know as he went quietly to his grave, anonymous, unnamed, unloved, unsung, un-praised and with no dirge and no high-falutin rhetoric from Emperor Obama.<br />
<br />
May his innocent soul rest in peace.Femi Akomolafehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11181295541117761340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3102193312603106809.post-89370643631251854682012-12-18T09:08:00.000+01:002012-12-18T09:08:22.600+01:00Presidential Inaugural addressFellow compatriots, brothers and sister, our tradition and simple courtesy demands that I use this occasion to thank you for the confidence that you have reposed in me, by electing me to serve as your Executive President for the next four years.<br />
<br />
It is a great honour and privilege to be elected to occupy the seat once occupied by the illustrious founding father of our nation, the great Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. <br />
I feel very humbled.<br />
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It is with great humility that I accept your vote of confidence and I promise to do my best not to disappoint you, the good people of Ghana.<br />
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I am very grateful for the chance you have given me and my party to be the custodian of our nation’s affairs in the next four years.<br />
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Fellow compatriots, I thank you greatly.<br />
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The tasks ahead of us are great and they call for the utmost dedication from each and every one of us. <br />
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It is, of course, the duty of governments to provide leadership and direction, but citizens also have their own roles to play.<br />
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Our dear country faces great challenges in all the spheres that we care to look. <br />
Our economy is confronted with very deep problems. <br />
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We suffer greatly from the adverse effects of global warming due to no cause on our part. <br />
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Our electricity and water supplies remain inadequate for our citizens.<br />
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We face great challenges in the large number of our people that are out of work. <br />
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Many of them have received little or no education at all, so that they cannot even participate in the building the great nation we so cherished. <br />
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Tribalism, that terrible ogre that has consumed so many lives on our dear continent from Cape to Cairo, is rearing its ugly heads in our dear country. <br />
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But, fellow compatriots, I urge that we maintain a positive outlook of life. <br />
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Life is nothing but a struggle. <br />
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Many people have faced greater peril than what today confronts us, and they triumphed. <br />
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They succeeded simply because they did not allow themselves to be unnecessarily daunted by the challenges that life poses.<br />
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They took their challenges in stride and they conquered them. <br />
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It is this positive way of looking at challenges that I dearly recommend to each and every one of us.<br />
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We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be defeated by a pessimistic philosophy that is alien to our culture. <br />
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Our African cosmogony thrives on unbridled optimism. <br />
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Our forebears bequeathed to us rich legacies we can build upon. <br />
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Our African Personality has stood us in good stead over the years, and it is not something that we should jettison in a hurry.<br />
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The challenges that confront us today might look immense, but they pale in comparison to what our forebears have to bear. <br />
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Today we bemoan lack of adequate food, water, shelter, clinics, good roads and the rest of the things that have become part of modern, civilized life. <br />
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I do not mean to belittle these challenges that confront us, but I hasten to add that compared with what our fore-parents had to face, our challenges pale into insignificance. <br />
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We are indeed very lucky. <br />
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Today, we do not have to cope with slave raiding parties that denuded our lands of its most productive best and brightest. <br />
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We do not have to battle today with the indignities of been colonized by foreigners that do not wish us well.<br />
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Compared with what our fore-parents had to bear, I say that we are lucky, very lucky indeed. <br />
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Our fore-parents had to live in constant fear of been captured, beaten, branded, shackled and sold like common cattle, never to see their land and their people again. <br />
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In slavery, they became common chattel. That means that they were someone’s property. <br />
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Spell that with a capital letter. <br />
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From slavery our forebears had to endure about a hundred years of bestial colonialism. <br />
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A group of European powers decided to share our continent among themselves and they sent their officials to take possession of our land and of our lives. <br />
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Our parents were browbeaten into submission, had their lands forcibly taken away from them and forced to become indentured workers for white colonisers.<br />
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Under colonialism our parents were made to endure every form of humiliation and indignity.<br />
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Luckily for us, their children, today no colonial official is bossing us around. <br />
We have total control of our land and all its rich resources. <br />
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We are today the masters of our own destiny.<br />
<br />
Allow me to depart from the traditional form of address common to inaugural ceremonies, so that I can engage in a personal and candid conversation with you, fellow compatriots. <br />
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During my campaign I eschewed the traditional form of promising you the moon. <br />
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The only that I promised was that I am going to be a president the like of which you never had before. <br />
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I also promised not to be your typical politician who promised to do things for you that are simply not possible. <br />
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I promised you that I will be truthful, honest and be very candid with you in all my undertakings. <br />
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That was my solemn pledge and one that I will carry out faithfully.<br />
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I believed that it was on the basis of my promise to tell you nothing but the honest truth that you elected me to run the affairs of our dear nation for the next four years.<br />
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By virtue of your votes, I stand there today before you as the president our beloved republic.<br />
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Fellow compatriots, God in his infinite wisdom gave every human being the faculties to cater for himself. <br />
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He gave us the brain to think. He also gave us two hands and two legs to accomplish whatever our brain cells are able to craft for us. <br />
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If you care to look closely at me you will notice that I have only one head just like the rest of you. <br />
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God also did not equip me with extra legs, eyes, ears or arms. <br />
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It simply means that I’m no super-human; I am an ordinary mortal like the average man or woman.<br />
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During my campaign, I tried to be as honest with you as humanly possible. <br />
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In all my campaign speeches I told you that by giving us immeasurable resources, the gods have done the best they could do for us. <br />
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How we use (or abuse) these vast natural resources is left for us.<br />
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Fellow compatriots, the time for hypocritical, flattering talk is over; we have to be very frank with ourselves. <br />
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Looking back at all the close to sixty years that we have been managing our affairs, we have no cause to beat our chests triumphantly. <br />
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The truth is that we have not fared well at all. <br />
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Given the resources at our disposal, we have fared very badly, if the honest be told.<br />
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I am not going to bore you with statistics but since we all live in this our dear country, we can all see the abysmal poverty that remains the lot of many of our fellow citizens. <br />
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Depending on whom you believe, fifty to eighty per cent of our people are living below the poverty level.<br />
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That means that they make do with about one point five cedis a day. <br />
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That’s the abysmal existence many of our compatriots still eke out daily!<br />
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We can blame foreigners, we can blame governments all we like, but we have to come back to what we, ourselves, are doing to improve our material existence here on earth? <br />
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There are a lot of things that we can do as individuals to ameliorate the poor states of our station, and as your president, I shall be remiss if I do not share some ideas with you. <br />
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The job of building Ghana is not for the president or the government alone. <br />
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We are all citizens of this great country and we together must build our homeland. <br />
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Our only ambition in life should be to build a nation that our children and their children, children will be very proud of. <br />
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So that when we join the ancestors, we can do so with a smile on our faces, knowing full well that we left our footprints in the sand of history. <br />
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We can then carry the message to our forebears that our children are enjoying the sweat of our hard labour. <br />
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No honour can be greater than the knowledge that our children and their children will be proud, very proud of what we accomplish in our sojourn in this spinning ball that we all call home.<br />
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Fellow compatriots, my brothers and sisters, I will not promise you the moon. <br />
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I will never, I repeat never make a promise to you that I cannot and will not keep. <br />
If I make a promise, I’ll keep it. <br />
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I can understand cynics who may scoff at this very idea. <br />
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For very long time, many leaders have made many promises that they did not keep. <br />
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You can write this down that I stand before you today and solemnly promise never to tell the good people of our great nation anything but the truth.<br />
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My promise to you shall be sacrosanct and shall be kept. <br />
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Let my friends and foes write this down. <br />
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Every week I shall be sharing with you ideas about the nature of our nation. I shall be sharing with you my own ideas about what I think we can individually and collectively do to move the wheel of our nation’s progress forward.<br />
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Until next week when I shall come to address you again, and share with you the first of the ideas I have, I say God bless you and may the good Lord continue to bless our beloved homeland.<br />
<br />
Femi Akomolafehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11181295541117761340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3102193312603106809.post-73867045354827503902012-11-29T17:41:00.000+01:002012-12-21T09:36:53.840+01:00Ghana Elections 2012: may the best candidates winIn exactly a week, Ghanaians will troop to the polling stations to cast their votes for the governors that will rule the country for the next three years.<br />
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The presidency is up for grabs as are the two hundred and seventy-five parliamentary seats.<br />
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With five relatively free and fair elections under her belt, Ghana proudly brandishes an enviable record of organizing elections that are widely hailed across the world. <br />
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It is an achievement that countries like the USA cannot even boast of, as elections in god’s own country continue to be besetted by every manner of shenanigan like gerrymandering, and the intimidation of illiterate minorities.<br />
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With our enviable record, it is sad that elections continue to polarize our nation. It is equally sad that the act of choosing our governors continues to be so fraught with insults, mudslinging, and character assassinations!<br />
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If we begin from the premise that we are all patriotic citizens of the land, why has it become impossible for us to agree to disagree without being uncivil to each other?<br />
Why do we think of ourselves as the super-patriots and our political opponents as evil, treasonous felons? <br />
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Why do we think that we love our country more than those on the opposing political side?<br />
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We ought not to think that we love our country more than those on the other side of the political divide, and we should not think less of them to the extent that we disparage and assassinate their characters.<br />
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It is sad that many fine and quite capable citizens shy away from joining politics simply, because the professional politicians have so muddled the water, that many think of politics as a dirty profession.<br />
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The numerous entreaties and exhortations from religious and opinion leaders appear only to have lessened but not totally eliminated the ugly incidences of political violence in the country.<br />
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It is to be hoped that Ghanaians will remember that the eyes of the world is upon us and that we are seen as the cynosure of Africa – a continent that continues to receive unfair negative media attention. <br />
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Let us continue to exhibit the maturity that has earned the country global kudos. <br />
Our people should realize that elections are nothing more than occasions for us to exercise our franchise as citizens of a free and sovereign nation. <br />
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Elections should not be occasions to think of how best we could display our primitive masochism or visit mayhem at the behest of the elite.<br />
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It is time we all realize how much it cost us whenever things go awry in any part of the country. <br />
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Maintaining law and order does not come cheap, and bringing back peace after mayhem is very expensive.<br />
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The common people of Ghana should start to use their common sense. <br />
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Our elders say that those that allow their heads to be used to break the coconut will not partake in eating it. <br />
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People should ask themselves how many children of the elite they see rioting, snatching ballot boxes or bashing the heads of their parents’ political opponents?<br />
None, I daresay, since the children of the elite are esconded safely in elite schools abroad. Their fees are paid in hard currency, thank you very much. They live in comfortable environment totally devoid of the deprivations we suffer daily in Ghana. <br />
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The children of our elite parley and enjoy lives with children of other elite from other parts of the world. <br />
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There, they make the connections and the networks to ensure that they are made for life.<br />
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It is the nadir of stupidity for an ignorant, illiterate and unemployed youth to accept pittance from politicians and rent himself out as political machoman.<br />
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We should employ our brain and brawn to demand that our politicians use our resources for the common good. <br />
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Few people will enjoy the benefits of a university education without thinking twice about becoming party thugs.<br />
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There should be vigorous campaign to make our youth realize the folly of allowing themselves to be used as cannon-fodder by politicians.<br />
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It behooves all of us to campaign against all and every form of political hooliganism.<br />
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Simple logic suggests that if our politicians are not selfish, greedy and self-seeking they could have created the environment whereby no Ghanaian will be deprived of the basic education with which to fend for himself. <br />
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If we had been blessed with leaders with visions, Ghana should by now be up there as an industrialised nation, where citizens use their time and their brains to create the things that will make lives more comfortable. <br />
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If our leaders had been serious, we should by now be creating and manufacturing all the fanciful things our leaders borrow money to purchase.<br />
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All these make this year elections all the more interesting. For several reasons this year election is going to be a watershed.<br />
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For one, the ruling party is prosecuting it without its enigmatic and charismatic founder, Jerry Rawlings. <br />
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A man of deep conviction and one who is totally unafraid of voicing out his thoughts on the thorniest of issues, President Rawlings has so far refused to join the campaign train and his party has, wisely it seems, decided to ignore him. <br />
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This year will make or mar the President Rawlings political legacy as Ghanaians will, once and for all, demonstrate whether or not he still count for something in Ghanaian political calculus.<br />
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It has being nice to see the dignified figure of ex-president John Kufuor campaigning rigorously for his party. Kufuor committed several faux pas during his tenure, but when the occasion called for true statesmanship during the tensed 2008 elections, he rose gallantly and deserved praises for that singular act.<br />
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Without a doubt, this year elections have also seen more robust and better packaged political messages than the previous ones. <br />
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The TV and radio adverts have been very creative. It is good to see all the political parties embracing new technologies in their campaign. <br />
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Gone are the days of dull TV adverts. <br />
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This is good news especially for those in the advertising business. <br />
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According to the Finder newspaper, this year will go down as the most expensive: “<i>An estimated amount of GH¢549 million has been spent by the country’s political parties on all forms of advertisements and inducements aimed at wooing the electorate to vote for them in the forthcoming presidential and parliamentary elections.<br />
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The money is being spent on advertisements, promotions, billboards, vehicles, motorbikes and bicycles, and as direct monetary gifts to voters.<br />
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According to investigations conducted by The Finder newspaper, about GH¢350 million has been spent so far on advertisement on television, radio and newspapers while billboards have consumed some GH¢21 million mainly in the Greater Accra Region.</i>” <br />
<br />
<a href="http://elections.peacefmonline.com/politics/201211/147870.php">http://elections.peacefmonline.com/politics/201211/147870.php </a><br />
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So, if the Finder’s findings were to be true, we will end up having the most expensive president money can buy!<br />
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This year elections have also seen the introduction of more focused political messages. Instead of the drab, canned messages lifted from cut-and-paste manifestoes, the parties are beaming to us easy-to-digest ideas we can sink our teeth into.<br />
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The ruling NDC is all over the place with its Better Ghana Agenda with adverts chronicling for us its achievements in power. <br />
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In John Mahama, the NDC has an extremely confident, affable man who appears to be at peace with himself. Behind the affability, however, we perceive a man that brooks no nonsense. <br />
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The president has also managed, within a few months, to rein in the babies with sharp teeth in his party and government, who managed to ostracized many people who might have taken a liking to the NDC. <br />
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Gladly, the nation has been spared the venomous vituperations of uncouth presidential spokesmen like Anyidoho and Presidential Staffers like Vanderpuye.<br />
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As we said many times in this column, the presidency is too important to be served by those unable to control either their temper or their mouth. <br />
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We cannot afford to have ill-mannered, ill-bred masochists speaking for our nation’s Chief Executive.<br />
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Ironically, the main opposition party, New Patriotic Party (NPP), have become associated with free education policy. This is great for a party that is supposed to be for the seriously rich men in society. <br />
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With social policies targeted at the under-privileged, the NPP have stolen the thunder of the NDC, a self-avowed social-democratic party. <br />
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The well-crafted adverts from the NPP show serious professionalism that showily demonstrated the fact that the party’s chairman was an advertising guru before he branched into politics.<br />
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Everyone can relate to the NPP’s main manta: “Free SHS Now.”<br />
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By telling us that the president was a beneficiary of a free education policy, the NPP makes it extremely difficult for the NDC to continue to lampoon the free education policy. <br />
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This is simply brilliant.<br />
<br />
Wow, funny that the Danquahists borrowed Nkrumah’s battle cry of “Independence, now!”<br />
The NPP’s candidate, Nana Akuffo-Addo, have also transformed himself into a more human, humane, accessible person who is even capable of social banter.<br />
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The picture of his eating Kenkey at a side chopbar was also an endearing one.<br />
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Kudos must go to Paa Kwesi Nduom, the Progressive People’s Party candidate. With its bold ideas and policy thrusts, the PPP has live up to its billing as a truly progressive party. <br />
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There is no deny the fact that for sheer organizational skills and personal dynamism, none of the presidential candidates comes close to Paa Kwesi Nduom.<br />
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It must take lots of ability and skills to single-handedly formed and launched a party and gave it national prominence within a very short time. <br />
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Those types of prodigious abilities ought to be saluted and celebrated irrespective of what we think of the man’s personal politics. <br />
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Not only that, the PPP’s programme remain the most visionary and the best articulated among the parties.<br />
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Were people to vote on pure merit alone, the PPP will win handsomely.<br />
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CPP’s Abu Sakara’s proved his mettle during the presidential Debates as he projected the image of a confident leader on top of issues. <br />
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His performance was simply sterling.<br />
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Alas, Nkrumah’s party continues to operate at the periphery of Ghanaian politics! <br />
Top officials of the CPP told this writer that they know what they are doing at the grassroots; I can only hope that the party of Africa’s favourite son is able to spring a surprise in this year’s election.<br />
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On the other hand, my younger brother, Deji, always tell me that hope and prayer are not strategies!<br />
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And we cannot forget the comic relief provided us by the PNC leader, Hassan Ayariga – thank ye, gods, for small blessings. <br />
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The man gave us occasions to laugh and relieve our tensions. <br />
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He even managed to drag his mother to come out with an appeal in his behalf! But as we said before, Hassan Ayariga is no presidential material and he, undoubtedly, knows it. Even members of his own party appeared scandalized by his antics.<br />
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Let it never be said that our politics lack a dull moment or that it is devoid of joksters. Our political lexicon have been greatly enriched by words like ‘Ayarigate,’ and we all know what Ayaricough now mean.<br />
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Whatever happens, Ghana appears to have crossed a political Rubicon: Free Education has become the standard by which every political party will be judged.<br />
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In this column we have consistently advocated for the implementation of a free and compulsory education for every Ghanaian. <br />
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A free education for youth should go in tandem with a comprehensive adult literacy education programme to ensure that illiteracy is totally wiped out from our society. <br />
No nation that haboured illiterate citizens has ever been able to break out of the under-development logjam. <br />
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We are either serious or we are not. We cannot eat our cake and expect to keep having it. Let no one tell us any lie; without full complement of educated people, we shall never break out of our Third-World status.<br />
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As we wrote in, “It is education, stupid”: In a globalized world, we need to produce global citizens who can successfully compete with their peers from anywhere in the world.<br />
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We need to seriously reconsider our education system under which we continue to graduate people who cannot think critically. <br />
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We cannot continue to operate a system whereby our graduates are good at only quotology – swallowing and regurgitating facts like parrots mimicking human voices.<br />
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Our next leader should be someone prepared to break away from the crowd and lead. He should be a confident person and one that is bold enough to tell us basic home truths. Principal among this that there is no way we can continue the way we are going and expect to get anywhere.<br />
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Our next leader should be one emboldened to change the whole paradigm of our education system.<br />
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Our next leader should be an education President. If he only could successfully prosecute an education agenda that give our children quality education, linked intrinsically with our core traditional values, he would succeed beyond measures.<br />
Femi Akomolafehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11181295541117761340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3102193312603106809.post-26974379568122415712012-11-22T12:45:00.000+01:002012-12-21T09:37:20.902+01:00Of Criticism and Higher Criticism<br />
“<i>You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help</i>?” - Mark Twain<br />
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“<i>(Mankind) is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell</i>” – George Orwell<br />
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My article, <a href="http://nigeriaworld.com/articles/2012/nov/091.html"> What if I don’t want to be saved?</a>, excited many people. <br />
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For a writer that is good news as it shows that people do read – contrary to widespread perception. It is also nice to know that what one writes made some people to start to think. <br />
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Thinking can only be good for the human brain. <br />
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I did not ask for anything more than that human beings (especially Africans) should use their brains to THINK instead of holding tenaciously to dogmas. <br />
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The mind, they say, is a terrible thing to waste, human beings should refuse to turn themselves into mindless zombies in the name of a religion.<br />
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In writing the article, little did I know that many Africans feel as strongly as I do by the activities of the so-called Christians, with their ignoble lies and the teaching of a fabricated religion constructed entirely on falsehoods.<br />
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Many Africans told me that they also feel affronted by the havoc the Christian and other imported religions have wreaked on our continent - the wholesale massacres; the wanton destruction of African cultural patrimony; the forceful imposition of European norms on us; the capture of the African mind and the turning of Africans into unthinking mass of automatons.<br />
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Many wrote to give me new information; to them I remain grateful and indebted.<br />
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Whereas many Africans wrote to give me kudos for the article, many Christians decided it was time for them to vent their anger and frustrations. <br />
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Even though I committed no crime in writing out what I believe to be true, but many of those that go around preaching love, tolerance and forgiveness decided that I have committed capital crime and must be condemned!<br />
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A lady from Kenya who called herself Catherine Otieno decided to vigorously masturbate in my inbox with some mind-boggling mindless drivels. <br />
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I answered her that I do not possess the mind or the time to waste of her jejune bunkums.<br />
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I never would understand these Christians! <br />
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Why would an Almighty, Omnipotent and Omniscient god requires ordinary mortals to come to its defence?<br />
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Many Christians said that they pray for me so that god will forgive me my sins so that I can be allowed to enter paradise!<br />
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Tchaah!<br />
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I wrote in my article that I was not interested in any paradise, and that one life is simply enough for; but it looks like our Christians, in their hastes to condemn, refused to digest the gist of my article. <br />
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This is sad!<br />
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If human beings can evolve a system of justice that refuses to condemn a man for crimes committed by another person, why should the Christian believe the malarkey that their god would roast me because of a sin committee by some Adam and Eve?<br />
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Honestly, the Christians are the worst recommendations for their faith. If they live exemplary lives, we can try to emulate them. But few honest people can relate to the mindlessness we see in Christiandom.<br />
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I do not care for the company of the Christians that I know to want to be with them in any paradise.<br />
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Some of them even asked that I repent, accept Jesus and believe that the Bible is the word of god so that I can be forgiven my sins and be allowed to enter paradise.<br />
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What type of bribery is this, and why do people in this age and time believe in this utterly stupid proposition?<br />
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So, according to these Christians, Jehovah, in his infinite wisdom will not judge me on the strength of my character; he will not be interested in whether or not I was a good husband, a loving father who never steal and always kept his word. Jehovah will not be interested that I never visited violence on anyone and that I am all for justice.<br />
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He will determine my fate solely on my believing that a fiction, some pious priests invented and called his son, and that he wrote a collection of forged, utterly absurd books they called a Bible! <br />
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Jehovah will be so angry with me for not believing the stupid tales of the Christian Bible, so much so that he will sentence me to eternal hell-fire, where he will spend eternity roasting me in fire!<br />
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Could anything be more preposterous to thinking than this stupid idea?<br />
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I know enough chemistry and have been to many cremations to know that it takes all but few minutes of intense fire to reduce a cadaver to ashes; so why would Jehovah be spending eternity roasting poor me? <br />
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Why would any god derive any joy in turning itself into a pyromaniac that enjoys the stench of roasting human flesh?<br />
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Do the Christians really expect me to cringe in fear?<br />
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None of the avowed Christian that wrote questioned the integrity of my article; none queried its accuracy and no one challenged me for peddling falsehood. <br />
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Why then are people not interested in the truth? <br />
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Why are the Christians afraid to use their brains, do some thinking and arrive at conclusions that accord well with reasoning? <br />
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Are they afraid of what they will discover? <br />
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Didn’t their Bible plagiarize an Ancient Egyptian injunction: “You will know the truth and the truth will make you free?”<br />
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Some of the Christians said that I should accept Jesus and keep referring to him as Jesus Christ as though it were his surname.<br />
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The simple fact that two of the gospels, Matthew and Luke, gave two completely different and contradictory accounts of the central figure of their faith, appear not to bother the Christians at all. <br />
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That the inspired words of their god should contain so much violence, so much absurdities do not trouble these Christians at all. <br />
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According to the Biblical account, Jeshua (Jesus) purportedly lived up to thirty three years of age before he was crucified. <br />
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There was no account of him going to any school or learning a trade. He was not reported to have held any job or earn an honest living. Most Christians denied his ever loving his gossiped lover, Mary Magdalene. The Biblical Jesus was painted as a one-dimensional man with no depth. He was as ignorant as the worst of his age. He uttered neither a single intelligent nor an inspiring word. He cursed like a sailor and appeared to be totally ignorant of simple laws of economics as attested to by his reportedly telling his disciples to give unto Caesar what his Caesar - he ignorantly believed that money belongs to those whose portraiture they bear and not to the man that toiled to earn it.<br />
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They brought the coin, and he asked them, "<i>Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?" "Caesar's," they replied. Then he said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's.</i>" Matthew 22:21.<br />
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Jesus reportedly magically fed people with fish, cast out demons and walked on water.<br />
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Jesus believed that diseases were caused by demons; Science proved long time ago that diseases are caused by germs and not by demons.<br />
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That is the sum total of the life of the person the Christians called a Saviour!<br />
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The story of how the Bible was collected is well document; readers only have to read the accounts of the Nicaean Conferences to know the true origins of the so-called Holy Bible, and discover that the books were chosen by dubious priests inspired only by a desire to make money and grab power. <br />
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As to the authenticity of the books of the Bible, if the efforts will not kill the Christians, they should try and compare the Epic of Gilgamesh (available online) with the Biblical fable of Noah.<br />
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But seriously, why is using one’s brain to learn new things of less importance than holding tenaciously to a blind dogma?<br />
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The mind, they say, is a terrible thing to waste!<br />
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Finally, I commend the Christians to Buddha: “<i>Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”</i><br />
Femi Akomolafehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11181295541117761340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3102193312603106809.post-86966454355922259272012-11-19T16:05:00.000+01:002012-12-21T09:37:07.823+01:00Not you too, Tony AidooIt is a great pity that our elected officials in Africa appear to have abandoned all sense of ethics and morality. <br />
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To them all that matters is legality. <br />
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So long as something does not appear to breach the laws (which they drew up, lest we forget), it is considered OK.<br />
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As things stand now, people see politics as nothing but an avenue to loot state properties. We have the sad situation today where we go to great length to borrow money for development. <br />
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Our officials expend big chunks of these loans into building mansions for state’s officials. They also use part of it to buy the best 4*4 jeeps money can buy. Parts of the loans also go into paying the astronomical salaries and emoluments they crafted for themselves. <br />
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Little thought is given to providing basic services for the hoi polio. Our taps are still dry and electricity generation and distribution is still a big challenge, so much so that where I live we sometimes get four hours of electricity a day.<br />
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At the end of their four years, our officials will get juicy ex-gratia pay-checks. As though that were not scandalous enough, they will also get to buy the state properties allocated for their use at thieving.<br />
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The new boys on the block will blame the old guards as corrupt infidels and make loads of noises and threaten fire and brimstone. <br />
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All is shakara, as they say in Nigeria. <br />
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Before long they also will think that it is their turn to eat.<br />
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That in a nutshell is the story of governance in our Africa.<br />
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In the article I wrote to condemn the Chief Justice of Ghana for her unethical behavior in acquiring state’s land, <a href="http://www.swans.com/library/art16/femia48.html"> Can the CJ spell ETHICAL? </a><br />
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I wrote, inter alia: “I don’t know who her advisers are, but those who advised (mis-advised in my opinion) the Chief Justice to release that capricious statement did her a terrible dis-service. <br />
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It is best to shut your mouth and let people wonder whether or not you’re a thief than to open it and remove all doubt.<br />
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Madam CJ’s statement revealed a pathetically amoral soul with absolutely no capacity for ethical or moral consideration whatever. <br />
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To her, it is all about legality, legality and legality!<br />
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Sadly, for our CJ, as long as something is legal, then it must be right. <br />
But this should not be so. In our actions or inactions, thoughts should also be spared for the ethical dimension.<br />
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Sorry, Madam CJ, do you mean that your serving “this nation conscientiously for the past thirty-eight years as a public servant,” entitles you to engage in free-booting on government’s property? <br />
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I simply hate it when I hear people like the CJ telling us how conscientiously they have serve Mother Ghana. We are all in our own little ways serving our country. And heaven knows that we have well-remunerated high officials like the CJ without their dipping their hands to loot from the government property.<br />
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HIPCed (Highly Indebted and poor Country) as we are, we still manage to pay our officials well – at least by our modest standards. <br />
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What exactly is Madam CJ talking about? Is she telling us she is a more deserving public servant than the poor farmer or the poor teacher both of whom are toiling under great deprivations to contribute to our nation’s development? Did Madam ask herself since when the Government of Ghana become a land seller? Were the lands sold to the CJ and her fellow travellers advertised and disposed off according to laid down regulations? Was our CJ unaware that she was paying an unusually low price for her land in that part of our blessed republic? When lands acquired for government services were under-handedly sold off at thieving prices, where did our CJ expect the government to get the land when the needs arise, or is our CJ suggesting that the government will not undergo natural growth? <br />
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And she had the temerity to tell us about ‘serving conscientiously!” <br />
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Kindly sing us another song, Madam.<br />
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She further said: “I did not acquire the subject matter illegally or through some other unorthodox means.” <br />
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I pray that Madam CJ is not suffering from inadequate grasp of Basic English as my dictionary defines unorthodox as “unconventional: failing to follow conventional or traditional beliefs or practices.”<br />
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There are well-laid-down rules governing the disposal of government assets, part of which I understand is that such sales must be publicly advertised. <br />
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What type of banana republic are we running when people can meet in secret and sell state properties to themselves and their cronies! <br />
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And Madam CJ is mouthing some effluvial about following orthodox path in acquiring her land. Madam should kindly tell us when and where the land she purchased was advertised. If it was not advertised, how did she hear about it?<br />
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It is sad when people like Madam CJ simply cannot get it into their heads that public service is a calling. It is sad indeed that those privileged to be called to serve their nation did not consider it great honor indeed. Sadder still when they consider it a way and means to loot their proverbial share of the national cake.<br />
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It was recently revealed that seventy-five (yes, 75%) of our national income is devoted to servicing the machinery of government – that is to pay concurrent expenditure like salaries and emoluments.<br />
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So, our blessed republic is left with ONLY 25% for its capital expenditure – roads, schools, hospitals and other infrastructural projects. <br />
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Do you now begin to understand why we are mired in seemingly intractable poverty quagmire? Do you now know why our leaders need to go around the world with begging and supplicating like common beggars? Do you now know why any announcement by the Japanese and the Chinese about grant always send our rulers dizzy with excitement? <br />
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Do you now begin to realize why we are perpetual recipient of ‘aid?’ Do you now begin to know why we command no respect in any part of the world and why the other races keep looking down on us?<br />
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That is not all about the sad state of our affairs. Our elite (remember greedy bastards?) are not satisfied with collaring 75% of our budget for their comfortable upkeep, they still want a share of the paltry 25% left for our development. <br />
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How?<br />
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Remember that it is from the 25% that government must pay compensation for lands acquired for state’s use. <br />
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So, when our greedy bastards (sorry elite) started parceling out these lands to themselves at simply ridiculous prices, they are literally stealing what belongs to the commonwealth.<br />
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Methinks that it is this culture of entitlement by our public officials that must be disabused. Why do our public ‘servants’ think that because; ‘I have served my country, so I am perfectly entitled to loot her meager resources.’<br />
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We had a departing speaker of parliament, not satisfied with his whopping ex-gratia award, literally and figuratively stripping his bungalow of every item his thieving hands could grab. No sanction was imposed on him. A departing minister also bought his official residence for a song; today he chairs one of our major parties!<br />
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Our MPs ‘serve’ for four years and believe that they deserve ex-gratia to the tune of 800million cedis.<br />
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According to Madam CJ: “In order to protect the high office of the Chief Justice of the Republic of Ghana, I would like to relinquish my interest in the plot of land under reference.” <br />
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Methinks that this is simply not enough. By purchasing government land under very questionable circumstances, the CJ has severely compromised her ethical authority.<br />
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The government of Ghana is not a land-seller, period. Madam CJ, like any other Ghanaian, should know better whom to approach when in search of land to buy.<br />
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How, on earth, does Madam CJ expected to be taken seriously whenever she pontificate about the virtues of honest living. Does she still expect to be taken seriously when she admonishes people about crime not paying? How would she adjudicate in a land dispute when she herself is a beneficiary of a dubious land deal?<br />
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While it might be true that she breaches no law in acquiring the land, she patently breached the ethical standards her high office demands. Her behaviour might not be strictly illegal, it is certainly not ethical.<br />
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And this is precisely where the CJ’s problem lies: Her lack of capacity to either comprehend or appreciate the ethical dimensions of her judgments reveals a person whose moral standards are questionable, to say the least.<br />
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<i>“<b>Ethics (Greek ethika, from ethos, “character,” “custom”), principles or standards of human conduct, sometimes called morals (Latin mores, “customs”), and, by extension, the study of such principles, sometimes called moral philosophy.</b>”</i><br />
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And what was Madam CJ trying to tell us when she wrote: “this is the only piece of land that I have acquired from the Lands Commission, for which reason I have supplied my full maiden name to enable the facts stated to be verified.”<br />
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I guessed she expected Ghanaians to dance with joy because she had acquired only one piece of government land. <br />
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Sorry, Madam CJ, I refused to see the logic of your argument. I wonder how you’d treat a criminal who plead in your court that he had stolen only once. And pray, what was Madam CJ trying to do by employing her maiden when she was a married woman!<br />
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Land is a highly prized finite commodity and a visit to our court houses will reveal heart-breaking stories of land cases stretching back to time immemorial. <br />
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There are serious allegations that many judges had received parcels of land over which they sit in judgment. How do we expect to get impartial judgment from such judges? And our judges expect to continue to receive our adulation!<br />
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The big question Madam CJ fail to address is: Was it right for you to surreptitiously buy government property?<br />
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Sorry Madam CJ, but it is not the frequency of your UNETHICALLY acquiring government property that is worrisome: it is your failure, as the Chief Justice of Ghana, to adhere STRICTLY to the rules and procedures of how government’s properties should be disposed off. <br />
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It is your lack of moral etiquette that is most baffling. Your action might not be illegal but it is grossly unethical. And it is your inability to distinguish between illegality and unethicality that is making your holding the position of the Chief Justice of our blessed republic quite untenable.<br />
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I will, once again, advice that you advice yourself about the ethicality of your continuing to hold your current exalted position. <br />
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You may quote all the law books to support your position, but on the ethical or moral scale, you simply have failed, miserably.”<br />
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Sadly, the CJ did not heed my advice to resign her position; she is still there. And if anything the primitive acquisition of state properties have increased. The latest is the saga of Dr. Tony Aidoo.<br />
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According to those that knew him very well, Dr. Tony Aidoo was a Marxist-spewing left-leaning, no-nonsense university don who’s very fond of his cigarettes. <br />
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He reportedly tooled around Kwame Nkrumah University campus in an ancient jalopy and appeared not to have other ambitions than to trudge it out as a lecturer until retirement.<br />
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Apparently his Marxists rhetoric caught the fancy of then President Rawlings who plugged him from obscurity to fill the position of a deputy Minister at the Ministry of Defence. <br />
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He was not distinguished in that capacity and left office when the term of his boss ended in 2001.<br />
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Little was heard of Dr. Aidoo again until the late Beloved President Mills dragged him to the Castle and seconded him as the Head of the nebulously-tiled Policy Monitoring and Evaluation Unit at the Presidency.<br />
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It was a position that appeared to fit our erstwhile Marxist perfectly. <br />
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Like every petty bureaucrat, he quickly cut a niche for himself, made himself relevant, pushed papers around and at the end of the month collects his juicy pay that benefits a presidential staffer.<br />
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Occasionally, Dr. Aidoo emerged from his obscure office to vent his anger at the opposition. At times he roared like an Old Testament Patriarch whose children have disobeyed Jehovah. He spared neither the low nor the mighty in his vile invectives against corruption and other vices. He bellowed angrily whenever any opposition dare criticize the government. <br />
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Generally, Dr. Aidoo cut the picture of a pious, self-righteous and upright man totally against all and every evil and vices. <br />
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He was said to have personally led agents to retrieved state properties from former officials of the NPP.<br />
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Dr. Aidoo was recently in the news demanding that President Mahama named those he considered ‘babies with sharp tooth and evil dwarfs,’ whom President Rawlings reportedly said were the Greedy bastards that cause confusion in the ruling party and are busy looting state’s resources.<br />
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There were no reports that the president ever answered him.<br />
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Then, the communication team of the NPP did the nation proud by releasing documents that showed that the self-righteous Dr. Aidoo was not so incorruptible, after all.<br />
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Addressing a news conference in Accra, a Deputy Communications Director of the NPP, Mr Sammy Awuku, accused Dr. Aidoo of buying a Ford Expedition for 6,200. Mr. Awuku said the car, which was part of former President Kufuor’s fleet of official vehicles, was bought on auction by Dr Aidoo and the money paid to Shargaw Ventures, a licensed auctioneer. <br />
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According to him, the deal smacks of corruption as the vehicle was released to Dr Aidoo at a “ridiculously low price".<br />
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Six thousand, two hundred cedis is, of course, a steal for that type of vehicle, auction or no auction. I recently sold my 2001 Opel Astra Estate wagon for 6,500!<br />
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In his defence, Dr. Aidoo lame excuse was that the said vehicle was in “a very bad condition," and that: “I am not the one who took the decision to scrap the car...and ordered its public auction. I am not the one who valued the car and set the price on it.... So where arises the conflict of interest?” he asked.<br />
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Tchaah!<br />
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I did some Googling and discover that the average selling price Ford Expedition 2005 in the USA is US$13,294: <a href="http://www.motortrend.com/cars/2005/ford/expedition/pricing/"> 2005 Ford Expedition Price</a><br />
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We then have to add the shipment/freight and the duty price to get the actual price it could have been sold in Ghana. <br />
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The paltry 6,200 Dr. Aidoo paid will hardly cover the Duty alone. <br />
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His claim that the vehicle was in bad shape could be true but could not have depreciated to the level where it could be sold for that ridiculous amount. <br />
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And maybe Dr. Aidoo needs to talk to his auto-mechanic as automatic vehicles do not have gear boxes as he claimed.<br />
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But the real problem here is that Dr. Aidoo like those who have partake in looting state properties can simply not grasp the unethicality of their actions. They cannot see the conflict of interests in buying properties of the government in which they serve. <br />
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This is the real tragedy for the country.<br />
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It is sad for the country when we have people like Dr. Tony Aidoo being caught in the web of corruption against which they have vociferated so loudly not too long ago.<br />
It is equally sad that the President did not deem it fit and proper to fire his errant aide as soon as the story of the scandal hit town. That action alone would have put the president in the best of light and would have send the strongest message that this indeed is the president that meant what he said about fighting corruption. <br />
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By firing Dr. Aidoo, President Mahama would have deftly stolen the thunder from the opposition.<br />
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Dr. Tony Aidoo was reported to have once said "<i>hena na edaho na honey so go na noa wantafere</i>" to wit: "who will not lick it if honey falls on his/her tongue?” <br />
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And this was the same man who said he felt scandalized when President Rawlings accused some in in his party of being sharp-toothed greedy bastards and evil dwarfs!<br />
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Femi Akomolafehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11181295541117761340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3102193312603106809.post-83281514538599472042012-11-10T11:40:00.000+01:002012-11-10T11:40:33.574+01:00What if I don’t want to be saved?The shrieking sound of the gate-bell savagely cut shorty my deep slumber. <br />
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I rubbed my eyes to get them sufficiently awake to focus on the clock: the digital panel said it was 05:12. <br />
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Impatiently the bell shrieked again. <br />
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Who could be disturbing me this early morning? <br />
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Since I mind my business and do not owe anybody, I expect to sleep soundly in my bed without any disturbance at ungodly hours.<br />
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Cursing silently, I hustled into a short and T-shirt. <br />
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I was almost at the gate when the bell shrieked impatiently. My body was shaking with rage as I opened the gate. An emaciated, elderly man in a faded shirt tucked into an ill-fitting trouser and a dog tie stood at a side of the gate. Beside him was a younger lady in an out-of-fashion blouse that looked like a demented tailor designed it. An old-English lady hat was perched rakishly on her head.<br />
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They both cradled dated bags. <br />
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My eyes roamed over them with undisguised anger. <br />
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“Yes. What is it?” I demanded in an angry tone. <br />
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The old-man find something amusing, He smiled crookedly, revealing dental works that were badly in need of dental care. <br />
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Opening his bag, he ruffled a while and brought some pamphlets out, thrust them to me and said: “Young man, we have come to discuss the good-tidings with you. We want to share with you the good-news about the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus.” <br />
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Gosh!<br />
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I was, by this time, literally, vibrating with ire. <br />
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Cutting him short, I demanded, “You don’t mean to tell me that you’re Jehovah Witnesses!” I exclaimed. <br />
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“No, we are not Jehovah Witnesses,” the man protested. “We are...” <br />
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I was not interested in whatever sect they belong to. “But for your age, I would have told you what you can go and do with your good-tidings. Good-day, even if you both don’t deserve it.” <br />
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I shut the gate in their faces. <br />
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The anger had drained the sleep from me. <br />
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I collapsed on the bed with angry thoughts parading my consciousness. <br />
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“<i>Religions are the cradles of despotism</i>.” - Marquis de Sade. <br />
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What manner of arrogance made the Christians believe that they have the right to disturb my sleep? <br />
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Is it not presumptuous for them to arrogate to themselves the right to intercede between MY CREATOR and I? <br />
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There are hundreds, even thousands, if not millions, of religions in the world. Have the Christians pause to think of what bedlam it would be, if the other religionists are as arrogant and as aggressive as they are - waking people up to listen to ‘good-tidings?’<br />
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What would our towns and cities look like if the Moslems, The Hindus, The Buddhist, the Traditionalists and the rest of the religionists wake us up every Sunday and start to peddle their versions of piety? <br />
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Our cities will look like nothing but hospitals for the insane. <br />
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After much reflection, Karl Marx said: “<i>Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.</i>” <br />
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If opium is a sedative, then Karl Marx was only half-right. <br />
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Religion has become, at least in Africa, the amphetamine of the people.<br />
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And it has also become big, very big business. <br />
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How else do we explain the hypocritical priests who tell their malnourished and ignorant congregation that ‘everything on earth is vanity,’ and yet tool around town in the latest hi-tech cars, planes and live in posh houses? <br />
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These sanctimonious hypocrites very conveniently forgot what their saviour was supposed to have told them: "<i>No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon</i>." (Luke 16:12-14)<br />
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It seems as though Africans now need a dose of spiritual injection in order to draw breath. Our land is dotted with every manner of churches. Ill-fed ignoramuses, who believe that their god in heaven has answer to earthly problems, accost us on the roads. They waylay us in the streets and in the trotros (molues in Nigeria; matatus in Kenya). <br />
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The Christians are everywhere, falling over themselves in their bid to take us to ‘alujanah.’ <br />
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The hypocritical, sham charismatic charlatans leading them are crowding our airwaves with their fake American accents, pretending, in the words of Robert Ingersoll, to stand between our helplessness and the wrath of the gods. <br />
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The shameless priests continue to do today what the priesthood has done since the begininning of time: make their good living by selling patent and absurd falsehood.<br />
The ignorant congregations are shouting hallelujahs to the priest’s false claims of ‘miracles.’ <br />
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Why does any normal human being needs a miracle, which are nothing but mendacities? <br />
If these pious tricksters can heal the sick, cure blindness and barrenness etc, etc, why don’t they simply build hospitals?<br />
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We shall be grateful to them for it. <br />
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Any intelligent person should know that miracles, like magics are, essentially, fakeries. <br />
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“<i>It is not God that is worshipped but the group or authority that claims to speak in His name. Sin becomes disobedience to authority not violation of integrity.</i>” - Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan <br />
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We have to be thankful that most modern states are now secular. I shudder to ponder what it would be like to live under a theocratic rule. I dread to think of living in a society where priests hold all the power – not only licensed to tell lies, but had powers to kill whoever expose their lies. <br />
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From selling fake indulgences to burning heretics, the history of the Christian priesthood is one that will shame a nation of savages. <br />
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What baffles today is that any decent person can, in all honesty, read those calamitous, dreadful and utterly shameful histories and still dare to belong to the priesthood.<br />
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There will little trouble if these Christian men and women who go about preaching love and tolerance practice what they preach? <br />
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The truth is that we see very little love even among the Christians themselves. The Catholic have no lost love for the Anglicans, and the latter have nothing but deep hatred for Christians of other sects than theirs. <br />
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Couples have had their marriages destroyed because they choose to belong to different churches. <br />
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Parents have disowned children who choose to go to different churches.<br />
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What is more intolerant than shoving your religion down someone else’s throat? <br />
There are, at least, six churches near where I live. If I need to, I can easily find my way to any of them. <br />
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No, it is not enough for the Christians to disturb our sleeps with their constant drumming and singing, they have to come right into our houses and wake us up from our sleeps. <br />
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I believe religion to be a private thing. Every human being should be able to find his or her way to the creator. <br />
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If my father is in heaven, does it make any sense for him to talk to me through another person? <br />
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If I need to talk to my son, I talk to him directly and not through another person, not even his mother. <br />
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I believe in live and let’s live, and I wish the Christians would learn this elementary courtesy. <br />
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I believe that I’ll be ‘saved’ through my own efforts and conducts, and not through some ‘holy’ book of dubious origins filled infantile tales of pornography (two daughters getting their father drunk and seducing him), absurdities (uncountable), massacres (too many to recount here), mayhem (just too numerous) and false astronomy (a general stopping the sun so that he could complete a massacre). <br />
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I am fully prepared to face my creator and account for anything I did wrong. <br />
I don’t need Christians to teach me anything about morality – the ones I know are the most amoral around. <br />
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I don’t need anyone to tell me to love my fellow-being; because common-sense tells me that I cannot expect love from those I hate. <br />
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I don’t need a religion to tell me not to steal; I am contented with what I have, and I’ve trained myself not to want anything I cannot afford. <br />
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I don’t need eternal life; one life is simply enough for me. <br />
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I don’t want any paradise in the sky; I want to build mine right here on earth. <br />
I am not in the least impressed by infantile tales of someone walking on water (I can easily take a boat); turning water into wine (I don’t touch alcohol); waking Lazarus from the dead (what is the point? I won’t like to be disturbed after I join my ancestors).<br />
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The nature of my work (computer consultancy and video production) calls for no prayer: I cannot find lost hard disk clusters by reading the bible; neither could I fix a damaged video tape by supplicating to my almighty father.<br />
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Organised Religion has nothing to offer me, so the Christians can take their pie-in-the-sky lies and sell it to whoever will appreciate it. <br />
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They should very kindly leave me alone. <br />
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“<i>All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.</i>” - Thomas Paine <br />
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A great mind has opined that we Africans are in the fine mess we are because we spend more time preparing to go to heaven than on improving our material lives here on earth. <br />
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While other people are slicing genes, interacting with one another thousands of miles apart through electrons, and doing their utmost best to improve their physical and material environment, we are busy wallowing in our ignorance-engendered poverty.<br />
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And why do our people forget that religions are essentially ancestor-veneration. If the Christians worship their own ancestors, perhaps I can relate to that. <br />
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But why on earth should I, a True-Born African, be paying homage to the god of Abraham or Moses or to the god of any Semitic people? <br />
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I am a Yoruba with a history that goes back into time. My ancestors were here long before there was any Habiru, or Hebrew. <br />
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If only Africans will learn their history!<br />
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Sadly, we continue to occupy our days and nights with useless religious rituals, chanting futile hymns to desert gods, and we pretend not to know why we are as poor as we are. <br />
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Instead of parading our streets with ramshackled followers purporting to teach a religion they barely understood, I will be glad if our religious leaders can mobilize their followers to plant and harvest. <br />
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What a beautiful sight it would be to see a Methodist’s Corn Farm or a Presbyterian Yam Farm or a Catholic Ranch or an Anglican Cocoa Plantation! <br />
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Are there biblical injunctions against the establishment of Electronics and Computers Academies, instead of the plentiful Bible and Theological Studies Schools we have? <br />
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Is there any reason why our numerous churches cannot build factories and help alleviate our chronic unemployment, instead of buying posh cars and planes for the priests? <br />
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Many churches are built right inside dirty swamps, violating the injunction that cleanliness is holiness, why are our preachers not interested in improving their own earthly environment instead of sermonizing about a glorious, beautiful heavens? <br />
The Christians should not become too emboldened: If some of us are not challenging them, it is only because we have better employment for our time. <br />
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They should be contented to peddle whatever lies they tell themselves in the confines of their churches. <br />
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If they find it difficult to restrain themselves, they should not complain when occasional salvos are hurl in their faces. <br />
Femi Akomolafehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11181295541117761340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3102193312603106809.post-45389535378670345322012-10-31T20:59:00.001+01:002012-10-31T21:01:12.174+01:00Random MusingsAfrica remains a writer’s delight; our beautiful continent continues to be a writer’s paradise. <br />
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So completely does art imitates life in Africa that a writer would be considered very imaginative if she only chronicles daily happenings in our beautiful continent.<br />
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Standing aside and watch the goings-on in Africa, I often wonder if some of us are for real. And our leaders never fail to produce the comic reliefs to lessen the tensions and the stresses and the grinds in our daily lives. <br />
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Mayhap this is deliberate ploy on their parts, as they do not provide any service for the <b>hoi polio</b>.<br />
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I watched and listened to some African leaders making speeches at the recent concave of the 67th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations.<br />
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I really have to shake my head and pinch myself several times to make sure that I was not in some dreamland. <br />
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Are these leaders from Africa for real? Are there some special diets prepared at our Presidential palaces that make our leaders look and sound like complete schizophrenics – totally divorced from reality? <br />
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Or is it the water they drink?<br />
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Ordinary mortals like yours truly will never know these top-secrets affairs, but methinks that it is time we all rise up and tell our leaders to stop making complete fools of themselves and embarrassing us further.<br />
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How on earth do we have leaders who cannot produce enough food for their people, or give their people potable water or electricity, going on world stage to beat chests and wax bombast?<br />
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What on earth is Mr. Jonathan Goodluck doing in New York when he should be in his country working hard to solve the myriads of problems plaguing his country?<br />
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With his 100+ advisers (plus their advisers), Mr. Jonathan still appear clueless on how to solve any of the problems Nigeria faces. Boko Haram has made life hellish for Nigerians in the Northern part of the country, and the President has not been able to achieve much, apart from issuing empty declarations of intent.<br />
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We are told that Mr. Goodluck recently forayed into Niger and Mali to discuss with the leaders of those countries, believed to harbor the training grounds of the Boko Haram Jihadists.<br />
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It is incredible that Jonathan plethora of highly-paid advisors failed to tell him what was evident to yours sincerely, when Mr. Goodluck cast a vote at the UNSC to help NATO launch its invasion of Libya.<br />
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One did not need a crystal ball to know that once a strong-man like Brother Ghadaffi is removed from power in a loose, tribal-based country like Libya, one can only harvest a bountiful of chaos.<br />
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Jonathan and Zuma, two embarrassments of leaders, failed to realize that the objectives of NATO were narrow and clearly-defined. They also failed to recognize that NATO’s objectives do not, in any way, augur well for their nations’ well-being.<br />
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They went ahead to offer support to the imperialists. <br />
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Today, Western firms are making a kill from their conquest of Libya, while Africans are left to hold the candle. <br />
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No one in NATO today remembers the support of Nigeria and South Africa. <br />
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The defeat of Ghadaffi opened a Pandora box of mayhem from which Nigeria is today suffering as Brother Ghadaffi’s massive arsenal was looted by Jihadists.<br />
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It is some of these weapons that are today being used to cause havoc across Northern Nigeria. How silly can a leader be?<br />
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We still wonder why Jonathan did not ask for something in return for his slavish support of the imperialists.<br />
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Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama also made his pitch at the UN. <br />
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Many said that it was a well-crafted speech delivered flawlessly.<br />
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The President paid glowing tribute to his predecessor and thanked the world for mourning with Ghana. He also extended condolences to Ethiopian, Malawi and Guinea Bissau countries that also lost their leaders.<br />
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Ghana’s new leader did not forget to make the ritualistic vow to wage war on poverty, disease, oppression, discrimination, illiteracy and unemployment which “<i>still stifle the potential and shatter the hopes of millions</i>.”<br />
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He waxed eloquent on the positive changes in Africa: “<i>Today, Africa boasts some of the fastest-growing economies in the world, with Ghana being one of them. The number of countries engaged in conflict is steadily decreasing year after year.<br />
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You see, today, right now, there is something spectacular happening in Africa. Growth is taking the place of stagnation; tranquility is taking the place of turmoil; democratic governance, founded on the rule of law, is taking the place of dictatorship.<br />
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This new Africa will wean itself off of handouts and humanitarian relief. It will not continue to succumb to the corruption and oppression of despots. This new Africa will stand on the world stage as a mutual partner.<br />
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Africa is ready for that true and sincere partnership.</i><br />
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The president concluded his speech with: “<b>Our time has come</b>.”<br />
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As our time really come?<br />
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In the next breath, the president that tell the world that Africa’s time has come was pleading with more of the same medicine from the World Bank. <br />
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This was how it was reported: “President John Mahama is pleading with the World Bank not to be quick in withdrawing financial assistance to Ghana. The president made the plea at the sidelines of the UN General Assembly sessions ongoing in New York.<br />
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President Mahama told the World Bank President, Jim Yong Kim, Ghana is not completely out of the woods yet and a complete withdrawal of financial assistance could spell doom for the country.<br />
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<a href="http://politics.myjoyonline.com/pages/news/201209/94510.php">http://politics.myjoyonline.com/pages/news/201209/94510.php</a><br />
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President Mahama’s advisors should have told him that the World Bank is not in the business of assisting countries to develop their countries. Au Contraire; it was set up to make countries safe for exploitation by Western concerns.<br />
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World Bank assistance has never helped to develop any country and it never will.<br />
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Apparently buoyed by his well-received UN speech, we are told that the President courts American businessmen to invest in Ghana. <br />
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And this was how it was chronicled: “President John Mahama is courting American investors to invest in Ghana.<br />
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Speaking to top American investors in New York shortly after addressing the 67th UN General Assembly the president said Africa for that matter Ghana is a “good destination for investment”.<br />
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“<i>Ghana happens to be the gate way to West Africa…Whatever we produce, rice maize, and everything many of the traders from Burkina Faso, Mali Niger which are constantly food starved come to Ghana to take their supplies."<br />
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“All the other West African countries have a demand for food supplies and so Ghana could become the hub for supplying all these counties with food</i>," he said.<br />
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He conceded however that Ghana’s weakest link is manufacturing and industry and implored the investors to take advantage of those opportunities, adding the country will provide all the necessary resources and raw materials for such industries to work.<br />
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He also touted Ghana’s democratic credentials which he said will be consolidated in the December elections.<br />
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<i>“Perhaps the best thing going for Ghana is stability and peace. It is seen as an oasis of peace in a turbulent continent.<br />
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“Ghana’s democracy has been consolidated. It is going to be consolidated further in December when we hold the next elections,”</i> he stated.<br />
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<a href="http://business.myjoyonline.com/pages/news/201209/94596.php">http://business.myjoyonline.com/pages/news/201209/94596.php</a><br />
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The gods know that this writer has done his best to tell our leaders in Africa that no investor will set up manufacturing shops in our countries until we get the basics right. <br />
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The world has become globalized and information is freely available. Investors look for safe havens for their money and they are not going to put it in countries with shaky or non-existence infrastructures.<br />
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African leaders should try to fix the roads, water, electricity, and telecommunications and, above all, provide security and investors will flock in like no man’s business.<br />
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<b>We can make this Femi Rules of Attracting Investors 101</b><br />
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Meanwhile, our MPs continue to get in the news for the wrong reasons. <br />
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Rescue me if I’m wrong, please, but I have never seen a single report of one MP sponsoring a single bill on how to improve the lives of Ghanaians. <br />
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Apart from debating and approving foreign loans and grants, no one knows what else our MPs do. <br />
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Our so-called Honourables make waves only when there are salary increases to be discussed.<br />
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It is sad that whilst Ghanaians groan under severe economic hardships, their MPs decided to increase their own pay. <br />
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This was how it was captured by Citi News: “<b>Salaries Of MPs Go Up From GHC3,000 to 7,200 </b><br />
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"Salaries of Ghana’s Members of Parliament have shot up from GhC3,000 to GhC7,200, insider reports reaching Citi News indicate.<br />
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Information reaching Citi News indicates that each legislator will receive the new amount as their new consolidated take home pay. The new pay will take retrospective effect from January 2009.<br />
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The MPs previously earned under GHC3, 000, a situation they complained was woefully inadequate compared to other African countries.”<br />
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<a href="http://news.peacefmonline.com/news/201209/137006.php">http://news.peacefmonline.com/news/201209/137006.php</a><br />
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If people can get such a truly hefty pay hike and a back-dated one for that matter, we should stop wondering why politics have become a do or die affair in our beautiful country.<br />
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We should now know why everyone wants to go to parliament. <br />
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Sadly, whilst our MPs are getting and enjoying their consolidated new pay, no one cares about the hoi polio. <br />
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How about this story from Peacefmonline: “<b>Cholera Outbreak Kills Three; Over 200 People Affected.”</b><br />
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“Three people have been confirmed dead in the latest numbers released by the Health directorate of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly.<br />
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More than 200 cases have also been recorded in the past one month.<br />
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Health officials say the soaring numbers of cholera cases calls for urgent pragmatic action.<br />
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The director of health at the AMA, Dr. Simpson Anim Boateng who spoke to XYZ News said the severity of the cases has reduced a little.<br />
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“The cholera situation is now better, it has reduced for sometime but since the beginning of this month it has started rising.<br />
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“But we are enforcing the by-laws, we are educating the people and it is working, that is why now the number has reduced significantly” Dr. Anim Boateng said. - <br />
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<a href="http://news.peacefmonline.com/health/201209/136986.php">http://news.peacefmonline.com/health/201209/136986.php</a><br />
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And, how about this story, also from Peacefmonline: <b>ECG Intensifies Load-Shedding</b>.<br />
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“If you have been suspicious about the way the Electricity Company of Ghana is going about the ongoing load-shedding exercise, your suspicions may be well-founded.<br />
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ECG says it has had to review the schedule because the power available for distribution to homes and businesses especially during the day has reduced.<br />
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Consumers under the previous schedule would be without power twice every three days, once during the day with the other outage at night.” - <br />
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<a href="http://newsblog.peacefmonline.com/pages/news/201209/137038.php">http://newsblog.peacefmonline.com/pages/news/201209/137038.php</a><br />
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And if you think that now it cannot get worse, they you have not seen this news item carried by Peacefmonline: <b>We Gave Out 215m Cedis For Rituals Before Commencement Of Gas Project </b>- Dr Sipa-Yankey<br />
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"The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana National Gas Company (GNGC), Dr. George Sipa-Yankey, has revealed that his outfit gave out an amount of 215 million old Ghana cedis for ritual purposes at Atuabo in the Ellembelle District before the commencement of the gas infrastructure project.<br />
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Dr Sipa-Yankey said this was done to enable the contractors for the gas project, Sinopec, to cut down the deity tree "<b>Hohor</b>" at the project site.<br />
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The chief priestess of the Tohor deity, Mame Kpolakeh, performed the first ritual on Friday, October 12, and the second one on Wednesday, 17 October, respectively.<br />
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"<i>According to GNGC CEO, the chief priestess, had warned that if the necessary rituals were not performed, she would not allow the tree to be cut, therefore the GNGC had to dole out the money to purchase some items for the pacification rites before it was felled by the contractors executing the project.<br />
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He further disclosed that the chief priestess also dared the Chinese contractors that if "they are men enough" they should cut the tree without performing the rituals adding that since GNGC wanted the project to be completed as scheduled, they negotiated with her for the necessary rituals to be performed.<br />
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The chief priest is also said to have demanded money to perform rituals on another deity tree called "<b>Banzela</b>", which also has to be cut down, so that no misfortune strikes the men working on the project.</i> - <br />
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<a href="http://business.peacefmonline.com/industry/201210/142726.php">http://business.peacefmonline.com/industry/201210/142726.php</a><br />
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To put things in good perspective for us Dr. Sipa-Yankey was quoted as saying: "...<i>we are in a country where superstition in our traditional set-up is very much respected and important hence the decision to convert the items demanded by the chief priestess into money for the rituals.</i>”<br />
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Enough said!<br />
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Femi Akomolafehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11181295541117761340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3102193312603106809.post-28638651998016792062012-10-16T09:56:00.000+02:002012-10-16T10:00:04.588+02:00The Presidents and their speechesYou have been quite of late, my brother. What happened?<br />
<br />
Hmmm…<br />
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You, what happened? I never knew you to be tongue-tied. What happened to you?<br />
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My brother, our elders say when matters passed the stage to shed tears; we should just sit down and look.<br />
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What matters? Why do you want to cry?<br />
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No one is crying; it is a proverb. <br />
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Ah, you know that I’m not into these your African proverb things.<br />
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A great pity that. You really could learn a lot from them.<br />
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But you didn’t answer my question.<br />
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Which was?<br />
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You always try to be clever, ah. See the way you dodged my question by employing one of those hard to understand proverbs of yours.<br />
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Proverbs are actually quite easy to understand; if only you will listen carefully. They are the vessels that our elders used to convey words that are too heavy for ordinary conversations. Some of our elders say that proverbs are the horses of languages; if words are lost, we use proverbs to search for them.<br />
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You are still meandering, my brother. The simple question is: why have you stopped writing about the situation in our Africa?<br />
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And I try to tell you that writers occasionally need to pause, step back and watch what happens around them.<br />
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Why do they need to do that? Does it mean that you’ve ran out of ideas; of things to say?<br />
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Ah! On the contrary; there are always plenty to say. But because there are plenty things to say does not always mean that they have to be said. One always has to remember that we a pair of ears, pair of eyes, but only one mouth. A wise person advises himself on when to open his mouth and when to shut his trap.<br />
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And what do all these mean?<br />
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It means that, as our elders say, a wise man is like a nail; his head should keep him from going too far.<br />
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You are just impossible with all these proverbs things. I was thinking that since you are fond of criticising our leaders in Africa, their performance at the recent United Nations General Assembly is occasion for you sing their praises for once.<br />
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Are you for real?<br />
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Why; didn’t you watch them?<br />
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I did, but what did you find so joyous about their performances at the UN. Apart from Pa Mugabe, which African leader made any sensible contribution?<br />
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You! I thought Ghana’s president performance was sterling. Didn’t you listen to his robust defence of Africa and his condemnation of imperialism?<br />
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And what did he do afterwards?<br />
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What do you mean; what did he do afterwards?<br />
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He called on the World Bank and the IMF not to stop their support of Ghana and ask American investors to come and invest in Ghana.<br />
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And what do you find wrong with that; is he not right to try and woo investors to Ghana?<br />
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Don’t make me laugh…<br />
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What is there to laugh about?<br />
<br />
Don’t you know the English expression about wanting to have your cake after you ate it?<br />
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Do you always have to talk in riddles?<br />
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There are no riddles in what I tell you; the meanings are quite evident for you to see. I wish African leaders will stay at home, rather than go on world stage only to make total fools of themselves. Their appearances at these world stages only increase the contempt the rest of the world has for us. Look at that one from Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan. Why on earth does he have to travel all the way to New York to deliver that insipid address?<br />
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But our leaders have to engage with the world, don’t they?<br />
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No, they don’t. No one forces them to engage with anyone. But as things are stand today, our leaders only make complete fools of themselves at these meetings, since absolutely no one take anything they say serious. They also manage to ridicule us in the process. As they say in Nigeria, rich men are talking and a poor man said he has ideas. What type of idea could he possibly have?<br />
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There you go again with sweeping condemnation.<br />
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Well-deserved condemnation, if you ask me. Can you imagine Mali sending a delegation to New York and these guys stayed in hotel that cost US$10,000 a night. And you and you tell me about sweeping condemnation. It is the unconscionable actions or inactions by our leaders that condemn them, not anything that I say. The truth of the matter is that our leaders continue to make us the laughing stock of the world. You said Ghana’s president condemned imperialism and all that. All jolly and well. But who will take him serious when, in one breath he stands up to condemn American imperialism and, in the next breath, he mounts the rostrum to plead that American investors should come to Ghana? Who is insane enough to take Goodluck Jonathan serious when he asked for direct foreign investment? Who wants to invest a hell-hole that Jonathan presides over? <br />
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Do you call Nigeria a hell-hole?<br />
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We can pretend all we want, but the sad truth is that Nigeria is a failed state in all but name. What should be more important to Mr. Jonathan: going to New York to talk gibberish at a UN Assembly or bring some sanity to the Nigerian body polity and to the Nigerian economy?<br />
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But you also wrote somewhere that no nation has managed to solve all its problems.<br />
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And who talks here about a country solving all its problems? Problems are part of human and national life. It is true that no nation has solved all its developmental challenges. I talk here about governments solving life’s basic problems. We talk here of clean water for majority of citizens. We talk here about adequate electricity to power the few disarticulate industries we have in Africa. We talk about citizens having enough food to eat. We talk about the provision of security for citizens so that they can sleep well at night. I do not even mean that all these should be comprehensively provided. I talk that governments should make it its main business to be seen to be doing its best to do so.<br />
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And you think that our governments in Africa are not doing their best?<br />
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No, they are not.<br />
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But you wrote recently that Africa is forging ahead on the right path.<br />
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That’s correct.<br />
<br />
Don’t you see a contradiction there?<br />
<br />
No, whatever positive things happening in Africa is due to the efforts of ordinary Africans, who do their best to forge ahead in spite of their governments.<br />
<br />
Do you mean that Africans governments do not do anything?<br />
<br />
They could be doing something, but not enough that they should be applauded for. <br />
Let’s take the case of Nigeria. It is very difficult not to feel terribly sorry for that unfortunate country where the leaders have hijacked the machinery of government and run what could only be describe as a criminal enterprise. Where else in the world do we have a shameless cabal of thieves collaring the resources of state and appropriating it for their selfish benefits like we see in Nigeria? Few days after Mr. Jonathan made his impish address to the UN; he sent a budget to the parliament where he allocates close to a billion naira for food for himself and his deputy. He made the right noises about providing electricity for Nigerians, but then allocated close to 700 million naira to fuel generator for his governments. Do you know what the real trouble is?<br />
<br />
Tell me.<br />
<br />
The real trouble is that our leaders are like the naked emperor who continues to dance naked not noticing that he is stark naked.<br />
<br />
What do you mean by that?<br />
<br />
By that I meant that the whole wide world knows the parlous state of the services our leaders provide for their people in our blessed continent. All the countries our leaders are fond of running to have embassies here, and their staff are well abreast of what happens in our land. Sometimes, they even know more than us. They know everything, and we can take it for granted that they inform their home governments about the true state of affairs. So, we can only imagine the chuckles our leaders elicit in their counterparts who see in them only naked emperors unworthy of any attention or respect…<br />
<br />
And why would they be laughing?<br />
<br />
They would be laughing when they see leader of a country like Ghana where people still struggle for electricity coming to New York to talk big. They will laugh when they see leaders from Ghana where people still die from cholera hugging the world stage rather than confront the menace of that easily curable disease. And when they look at Goodluck Jonathan, in his resource-allocation attire, pontificating at the UN, they see only a total misfit who is totally beyond irony.<br />
<br />
But our leaders have had praises from world leaders.<br />
<br />
Don’t make me laugh. Of course, diplomacy demands that they praise them. But do you honestly believe that their hearts are in it? Do you really think that they saw our leaders as deserving of praises? Do they deserve to be praised? When the President of Mali got slapped around by a mob; he was taken to Paris for treatment. The First Lady of Nigeria, Goodluck’s own wife, is being treated in a German hospital. The president of Mauritania is recovering in a Paris hospital after he was shot by his troops. If our countries lack the hospitals to cater for the health of our leaders, who is going to respect us? Let’s get serious. Until we develop the abilities to solve problems that are very basic, no one will take us serious. Take for example the appalling traffic situation on the Accra to Kasoa road. Any responsible leaders would have fixed that perennial problem long time ago. But here we are: our leaders pay no heed as citizens waste upward of four six hours to traverse a journey of about twenty kilometers. This should be intolerable. But our paid officials simply blow their sirens to pave a smooth passage for themselves, whilst the ordinary people suffer from a problem that could very easily be solve by a few road engineers.<br />
<br />
But we find those same problems all over the world.<br />
<br />
No, that is not true. You may find it, but serious leaders will address the problem as soon as they notice them. My example of the chaotic traffic situation on the Kasoa road did not start today or yesterday. But our leaders looked unconcerned while a problem was allowed to develop into a major catastrophe.<br />
<br />
But should that stop African leaders from going to the UN to peddle their case?<br />
<br />
What case have our leaders peddled at the UN that benefited us? What case did Jonathan peddle that was designed to ameliorate the sufferings of Nigerians? To directly answer your question, I say yes, our leaders in Africa should bury their heads in shame. They should stay at home and fix our countries up well before they dare show their faces on world stages. We can borrow a leaf from the Chinese who refused to make any wave on the world stage until they get their internal acts together. The Chinese bided their time, built up their infrastructures and when they were ready, the world took notice of them. The world has to take note because the Chinese emerged as people who have managed to build up an economy that is the envy of the world. They have managed to build highways, airports, hydro-electric dams that could be classified only as world-beaters. That is the great lesson we in Africa ought to take to heart. No one respects anyone who clearly cannot provide his needs. Let our leaders stay at home and take serious the business of building our countries in Africa. When we manage to get our houses in order, we can then emerge to confront the world and demand to be treated as equal. We then can demand a seat on the United Nation Security Council, which is the real powerhouse; and not some General Assembly, which is a mere talk-shop.<br />
Femi Akomolafehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11181295541117761340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3102193312603106809.post-61892191006601303552012-10-11T07:34:00.000+02:002012-10-11T07:35:18.864+02:00Not so fast, Mr. Annan,"<i>The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.</i>" - Albert Einstein<br />
<br />
“<i>An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.</i>” Buddha <br />
<br />
“<i>False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.</i>” - Socrates <br />
<br />
In the course of producing my TV interview programme – Focus on Africans ((FOA) which currently runs on the <b>CineAfrik</b> channel of Ghana’s <b>MultiTV</b> station), I have been privileged to meet an incredible array of truly great, talented and outstanding Africans from diverse backgrounds.<br />
<br />
Producing FOA has been a revelation; it has revealed to me the depth of passion Africans have for our beautiful continent. <br />
<br />
One endearing thing I have found out is that irrespective of national origins, almost African I’ve met outside of Africa is a passionate Pan-Africanist who wishes the continent well.<br />
<br />
Our sociologists in Africa should try and find out why we make so good Africans outside of Africa, only to resort to tribal and ethnic prejudices when we live inside of Africa.<br />
<br />
The main theme of the FOA programme, apart from sharing with viewers the experiences of the guests, is also to pose the question as to why our great continent, Africa, continue to lag behind others.<br />
<br />
The recurring answer we get is the type of poor leadership leaders in Africa provide. <br />
<br />
Almost all the people we have spoken to agree with the great novelist, Chinua Achebe, that poor leadership is at the bane of Africa’s chronic under-development.<br />
<br />
Our guests cite lack of vision as the single issue bedeviling governance in Africa; they all bemoan the paucity of quality leaders with transformational ideas and visions. <br />
<br />
They cite the abundant mineral resources of Africa and the huge pool of young, enterprising and (now) highly educated pool of human resources they believe could propel the continent to super-power status in few years, if properly channeled by leaders with visions.<br />
<br />
None of our guest can mention a single sitting leader in Africa who has any vision to lift the people up. <br />
<br />
Our guests contrast this sad state with the enthusiastic post-independence periods, when the continent was suffused with leaders with big dreams/ideas and who could rub shoulders with statesmen across the world. Mention is made of Kwame Nkrumah, Kenneth Kaunda, Nnamdi Azikwe, Julius Nyerere, Obafemi Awolowo as example of leaders with clear visions about what they wanted to do.<br />
<br />
Almost all our participants have also been very merciless with the perceived greediness, selfishness and the traits of primitive acquisitiveness exhibited by current leaders in Africa. <br />
<br />
Many of them feel shamed that Africa’s current crops of leaders tend to lend credence to the racist stereo-types of Africans as happy-go-lucky, mindless consumers who give little thought for tomorrow. <br />
<br />
Many also opined that African leaders appear to be people who allow the allure of offices to woo them over principles.<br />
<br />
Sadly, our leaders in Africa themselves continue to give value to the perception that they will hold tenaciously to any position however untenable the situation. <br />
<br />
Even were the offices to be bereft of any authority, Africans will still be found to occupy it, as long as they can continue to draw salaries and other appurtenances.<br />
<br />
“<i>Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil.</i>” - Jerry Garcia.<br />
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It is in this light that recent pronouncements by Mr. Kofi Annan, ex-Secretary General of the United Nations become quite problematic and very difficult to swallow.<br />
<br />
“<i>Apathy and evil. The two work hand in hand. They are the same, really.... Evil wills it. Apathy allows it. Evil hates the innocent and the defenseless most of all.<br />
Apathy doesn't care as long as it's not personally inconvenienced.</i>” Jake Thoene<br />
<br />
I don’t know who Mr. Annan advisers were, but methinks that they very wrongly advised him to come out of his retirement, with pronouncements that could only provoke outrage from those who did not allow their memories to be short.<br />
<br />
The tragedies that happened under Mr. Annan’s watch are just too vast, and they are far too recent for him to embark on any stupid PR stunt.<br />
<br />
According to a recent BBC Outlook programme: “Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has revealed one of his greatest regrets was the fact he was not able to prevent the Rwandan massacre of 1994, in which nearly a million people were killed.<br />
<br />
About 800 thousand people were killed in the ethnic war in 1994 in the East African country. <br />
<br />
Mr. Annan, who was then the Head of the UN Department for Peace keeping, however explained why the body had some difficulties in stopping the killings.<br />
<br />
The former UN Secretary General who was speaking on the BBC’s OUTLOOK programme said “we knew we will not get the mandate to do a more assertive action in Rwanda which would also imply additional resources- men and women” however there was just about 600 troops available for his office to work with.<br />
<br />
Mr. Annan described the situation as “very frustrating and we withdrew some of those who were on the ground because the governments didn’t want to take the risk”.<br />
<br />
“And it is frustrating because of as Head of Peace keeping or even as Secretary General, you are as strong as the member states. If they don’t give me the troops and the resources, there is nothing much you can do,” Mr. Annan told host of the programme Matthew Bannister.<br />
<br />
Kofi Annan who felt sorry over the situation recalled making a statement that “if genocide cannot make us move, then what could move us?” in expressing disgust at the low level of commitment member states showed to the Rwandan situation which eventually resulted in the killings.” <br />
<br />
Source: <a href="http://edition.myjoyonline.com/pages/news/201210/95088.php">http://edition.myjoyonline.com/pages/news/201210/95088.php</a><br />
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“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.” - Martin Luther King, Jr. <br />
<br />
Haba, Mr. Annan! If the killing of 800,000 human beings did not spur you to resign your position in protest, what exactly do you mean when you said: “if genocide cannot make us move, then what could move us?”<br />
<br />
What movement exactly are you talking about, Sir?<br />
<br />
If the Rwandan genocide (perpetrated on Africans) did not move you, an African, sufficiently, why do you expect it to move non-Africans, Mr. Annan?<br />
<br />
I found Mr. Annan’s assertion: “<i>And it is frustrating because of as Head of Peace keeping or even as Secretary General, you are as strong as the member states. If they don’t give me the troops and the resources, there is nothing much you can do</i>,” just pathetic. <br />
<br />
“<i>The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.</i>” – Any Rand<br />
<br />
You could have resign, Mr. Annan; you could have resigned!<br />
<br />
If those that employed you refused to give you the means to do your job (in this case troops), it means only one thing viz: that ‘THEY’ did not want you to do the job. The only honourable thing left for you is to resign your vacuous office!<br />
<br />
There is a thing call honour, Mr. Annan. <br />
<br />
African tradition put great value on honour, hence the Yoruba saying <b>“Iku ya ju esin / Death is preferable to ignominy/public ridicule.”</b><br />
<br />
By denying you the troops to forestall a massacre, the powers that be clearly wanted you to fail, thereby exposing you to public ridicule. <br />
<br />
You had the choice then to redeem your name\image simply by resigning, thereby refusing to be part of the massacre. <br />
<br />
Since you elected instead to stay on, you become an accomplice\accessory to the crime.<br />
<br />
“<i>Those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters, for without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves we collude with it through our apathy.</i>” - J. K. Rowling<br />
<br />
Sorry, Mr. Annan, it is a choice you made and it is a choice with which you have to live. <br />
<br />
However hard you might try, there is no way history can absolve you from the Rwandan massacre, Mr. Annan – you are simply just too complicit.<br />
<br />
In your position, Sir, a honourable person position would have resigned and stormed out of the UN Building in protest.<br />
<br />
You didn’t resign and, for reasons best known to you, you went along with the charade that led to the massacre in Rwanda and the wholesale destruction of Iraq.<br />
<br />
This is an unconscionable act and one that is quite unpardonable. But it was a choice you made and it a choice you just have to live with.<br />
<br />
By clinging to your untenable and quite ridiculous position as an impotent Peace Keeping Chief, totally bereft of any power or authority, you did grievous damage to your own personal reputation, and also to the entire Black Race that look up to you.<br />
<br />
History is replete with men and women who honourably chose to step down from their high positions, rather than blemish their character and reputations. <br />
<br />
To refresh your memory, Mr. Annan, your immediate predecessor, Bhouros Bhouros Ghali, elected to lose his re-election bid rather than play the lackey of the imperialists. <br />
<br />
That most principled stand made Mr. Ghali an eternal hero to many people.<br />
Alas, you gladly stepped into the position so honourably vacated by that illustrious son of Africa. <br />
<br />
Mr. Annan, no one forced you; you chose, of your own volition, to be the puppet dog of the imperialists, so kindly spare us any crocodile lamentations!<br />
<br />
Your cries of regrets are pathetically inadequate, Mr. Annan; they are just too late and they help none. <br />
<br />
It would simply have been best had you chosen not to open your mouth and re-open those painful and perfidious and truly dark chapters of history we still try to come to terms with.<br />
<br />
Would your regrets, whatever they are worth, bring back the close to million lives lost in Rwanda? <br />
<br />
Would your apology of an apology bring back the Iraqis killed under your watch, Mr. Annan?<br />
<br />
It is difficult for some of us to think how people like you can look at themselves in the mirror and like what they see. <br />
<br />
How do you sleep well at night, Mr. Annan, knowing full well that on your conscience lies the death of million or so of human beings?<br />
<br />
Since no one has questioned your sanity, we have to think that you partook in the charade that led to the destruction of Iraq and the death of uncountable number of Iraqis on your own volition. <br />
<br />
Not only did you sit on your filthy throne at the UN and partake in the perpetration of vast and evil crimes, your own son benefited from your callous participation in one of the tragedies that ever befell the world.<br />
<br />
And you want us to take serious your dirges of regrets!<br />
<br />
Close to a MILLION souls perished under YOUR watch and all you could render was an apology of an apology!<br />
<br />
It is said that the hottest part of hell is reserved for those that kept silent in the times of moral crises.<br />
<br />
However hard you try to whitewash your connivance with the perpetrators of evil, history will judge you very harshly, Mr Annan, for:<br />
<br />
1. Heading an ineffectual Peace-Keeping operation under whose nose close to a million human beings were massacred; <br />
<br />
2. for heading the UN, the body that authorized the criminal invasion and destruction of Iraq.<br />
<br />
Yes, you had no army and you didn’t give an order for anyone to be killed, but you had in abundance a moral authority you could have used when the occasion called for it. <br />
<br />
Your resignation and very public loud condemnation of the conspiracy against the Rwandan and Iraqi people may or may not have stopped the imperialist aggressions and conspiracies, but you would have written your name in pure gold had you done just that. <br />
<br />
Rather than engage today in silly and contemptible ratiocination, millions of Africans (myself included) would have celebrated you as a genuine hero and I am sure that millions of men and women of goodwill\conscience would have happily join us.<br />
<br />
I say that no amount of stupid rationalization or ratiocination can whitewash your wish-washy acquiescence with the imperialists, which led to destruction of so many million lives.<br />
<br />
Mr. Annan, I rest my case by commending to you these words of Any Rand: “<i>There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.</i>” <br />
Femi Akomolafehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11181295541117761340noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3102193312603106809.post-66410516435815082892012-09-20T02:12:00.000+02:002012-09-20T02:13:30.097+02:00Rational Europe and irrational racism“<i>In the past we made history and now history is being made of us.”</i> – Jean Paul-Satre.<br />
<br />
Europe likes to tout its rationalism, and Europeans like to trumpet this as the main thing that separates them from the rest of us.<br />
<br />
European scholars never tired of telling the rest of us that we are emotional babies (often crying ones), whilst they are sturdy, rational and scientific men\women, whose actions are dictated by pure logic.<br />
<br />
Some Africans, Leopold Senghor among them, bought into this and parroted it in their writings.<br />
<br />
But very few things I see in Europe make sense to me; many actually seem quite irrational when we consider them closely.<br />
<br />
Let us take Europe’s relationship with Africa as an example.<br />
<br />
Africa has plenty of mineral resources whilst Europe has technology in abundance; both parties need each other to engage in mutually beneficial trade. <br />
<br />
It would be marriage made in heaven were Europeans be prepared to marry their technologies with Africa’s large raw materials. Both people would benefit immensely. <br />
Methinks that the only rational thing to do was for Europe, whose industries requires Africa’s raw materials, to look for ways and devise the means by which it can successfully partner Africa, keep things going smoothly so that both economies can keep running and both people gainfully employed and happy.<br />
<br />
Alas, those that touted their rationality did nothing of the sort. <br />
<br />
They, in fact, did exactly the opposite.<br />
<br />
Rather than seek mutually-beneficial cooperation, Europeans devised short-term measures that will guaranteed them all the profits, leaving the Africans only the miseries. <br />
<br />
Rather than strategic long-term policies that will be mutually beneficial, European invested in short-term policies that could not stand the test of time. <br />
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Rather than offer Africa concrete economic development, European politicians decided on lecturing and hectoring and, when that failed, war and violence.<br />
<br />
Of course, the cheating game can last this and no longer. <br />
<br />
It took time, but the Africans finally wised up. <br />
<br />
One by one, they turn their backs on Europe and start to look East. <br />
<br />
In many African countries that the West looked to as traditional playgrounds, the Chinese have made quick job of supplanting them.<br />
<br />
Today we see Europeans scrambling to understand what went wrong. We see their scholars and their media offering some very silly arguments on why they lost out in Africa.<br />
<br />
It is racism, stupid!<br />
<br />
Who in this age want to be treated like an inferior? Who in this time still does know that the European game is finally over? Who in this time does not know that Europe no longer enjoy a monopoly on technology? Who doesn’t know that Africa today has alternatives?<br />
<br />
Africans have woken up and they have listen to the powerful prophecies of Frantz Fanon which enjoined them to leave behind a Europe, where they never tired of talking about the rights of man, but continue to kill man wherever they can find him? Who wants anything to do with a people who continue to think of only committing avalanche of murders?<br />
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Sino-Africa relations have its own problems, but few Africans lament the shift away from Europe. Few of them will miss Europe with all its negative baggage.<br />
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The reasons are not difficult to understand.<br />
<br />
More than any other people, Europeans ought to show a lot more sensitivity towards Africans – a people they have so badly wronged.<br />
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Alas, rather for present-day Europeans to show any remorse or sense of contrition, they want to continue with the wayward ways of their parents. <br />
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And, not only that, they expect us to continue to applaud them for it! <br />
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They continue with the same imperial arrogance, and continue to think that the world still revolves around Europe. <br />
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Rather than engage the Africans like equals that deserve respect, they continue to holler, to hector, to give sanctimonious lectures and to threaten sanctions and, if that fails, inflict wholesale violence a la Libya.<br />
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Few Africans are ready to accept this nonsense in this age. Many of them have lived or visited Europe and they can only shake their heads in amazement as the European Emperor continues to dance naked.<br />
<br />
One by one African countries decided to tell Europe to shove it.<br />
<br />
It is interesting that no serious research has been done to see whether or not there is a direct link between the crises Europe face, and the loss of their Jewel Crown which is Africa.<br />
<br />
Could the European economic crises been averted or moderated if Europe’s had pursued a more informed and more rational policies towards Africa? <br />
<br />
We would never know but it cannot be doubted that Europe lost big time as Africans took their business to Asia.<br />
<br />
In the 1980s, I told the Dutch that they will live to rue their racist policies towards Africa. My caution was occasioned by several instances of open racism I witnessed as I went around with African business people who came to transact business in the Netherlands. <br />
<br />
These men and women, people of substance back home, came to the Netherlands with their own money, to buy Dutch goods. Right from the Schiphol airport, haughty officials treat them like scums. <br />
<br />
Nigerian car dealers, who came to the country and bought over two hundred (yes, 200) cars are treated no better. Very ordinary Dutch police constables will put on air and start to harass these people who have enough money to pay the whole Dutch police for years. <br />
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Today, the Dutch second-hand car business (sales plus ancillary services like shipping) has collapsed. <br />
<br />
Few Africans today come to transact any business in the Netherlands – it is Asia, all the way.<br />
<br />
As the sun sets on Europe, Africa is rising. Africa has become the in-thing.<br />
Few years ago, the Economist magazine carried the stupid headline about an Africa the Hopeless Continent. <br />
<br />
A decade later, the mindlessly racist editors of the Economist were forced to swallow their silliness and ran a story about an Africa that is rising.<br />
<br />
Yes, there is no denying the fact: Africa is rising. <br />
<br />
In 1994, I wrote a piece in the Dutch newspaper, <b>de Volkskrant</b>, in which I told the Dutch that they can continue to peddle their useless statistics about Africa, and that we Africans remain optimistic and shall continue to face the morrow with optimism. <br />
<br />
I also told them that were I a European, I’d be more worried about my future than an African. Africa, I told them has nowhere to go but up. I told them that as soon as we manage to settle our political challenges, we shall have the time to tackle our economic challenges. <br />
<br />
We have the mineral resources and we have the young, energetic and very enterprising people who are hungry and eager for progress.<br />
<br />
Happily, for Africa, my predictions are coming through.<br />
<br />
Today, whilst Europe is sinking literally and metaphorically, Africa is booming. <br />
<br />
Whilst European economies wallowed in the quagmire; some economies in Africa register two figures growth.<br />
<br />
Whilst Europeans today worried stiff about their pensions, plundered by their banksters, Africans look to the morrow that beckons with its brightness.<br />
<br />
The BBC recently aired a documentary on Portuguese immigrants to Mozambique. <br />
<br />
Sadly, not many other western media carried it.<br />
<br />
According to the BBC, Portuguese are now flocking to their former colony, Mozambique in large numbers. They are in search of the proverbial greener pasture. Angola has also lent a helping hand to rescue some Portuguese businesses.<br />
<br />
What exactly is wrong with us in Africa; why are we so generous!<br />
<br />
The question of immigration is another thing that starkly betrays Europe’s irrationality.<br />
<br />
The most shocking thing to this writer when he came to sojourn in Europe in the 1980s was the pervasive racism and the open, naked hostility towards non-Europeans. <br />
Nothing prepared for me it.<br />
<br />
Coming from a place where people with pink skin are worshiped almost like gods, it was quite a shock to live among those that think of you as beneath their dogs.<br />
<br />
It’d have made some sense to me if the open hostility had a rational cause. Perhaps we have wronged Europeans in some ways. Perhaps our ancestors did something terrible for which the children have to pay the terrible price. <br />
<br />
I searched for answers; I failed to find any.<br />
<br />
My readings told me that if anything, it was we Africans that have justifiable and quite legitimate reasons to hate Europeans.<br />
<br />
History is replete with gigantic and quite horrendous injuries Europeans wreaked on us.<br />
<br />
But here we are, happy-go-lucky that we are; prepare to forgive and forget and to let bygones be bygones. <br />
<br />
We yearned only for acceptance. <br />
<br />
Alas, this was even too much for them to grant us.<br />
<br />
While their scholars and media continue to insult and pour scorn on us, their politicians did their utmost to paint us as the ultimate ogre. <br />
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We are in Europe, they lied, to steal jobs and, of course, their beautiful women. <br />
We are said to be the cause of everything that ail their societies. We represent clear and present danger that must be eliminated. <br />
<br />
The European hoi polio, well prepared by the ideological institutions of his land to be gullible, swallowed the politicians’ lie whole, and start to act accordingly. The lower class, who catch the same hell as we were catching, choose race over class solidarity – they became the storm-troopers used to bash our heads!<br />
<br />
Pure racist fascists, called Right-Wing partisans, gained ground across Europe and today, they represent quite a sizable percentage of several European parliaments.<br />
What dangers exactly do immigrants present to Europe? <br />
<br />
This is the question Europeans are not prepared to honestly consider and answer.<br />
The question was posed by Africans to a group of Dutch politicians at a recent gathering in The Hague. <br />
<br />
Dutch elections are slated for early September and the African immigrants demanded some answers.<br />
<br />
There were lots of long faces, but no answer. <br />
<br />
The Africans genuinely wanted to know what exactly the politicians meant when they talk about the problems of immigration. They wondered how people, Europeans included, could ever think that human beings are problems.<br />
<br />
When probed about the nonsense parroted about Africans coming to take away jobs and live on welfare, there was also no one prepared to offer any answer.<br />
<br />
Many Africans that seeks sojourn in the Netherlands are highly educated, often highly skilled middle-class. The majority are from Somalia, Burundi, Congo and now, Libya (total approved figure for 2011 is 3,075). <br />
<br />
They became refugees for one reason or the other – some not unconnected with activities of western governments and multi-national companies.<br />
<br />
Rather than receive a humane welcome, the already traumatized refugee is arrested at the Schiphol airport and locked away until his application for asylum is considered. It is a process that could take upward of five years. His life is shattered and his talents wasted.<br />
<br />
But the same politicians that could not give answer when prompted, would next day go out to tell gullible people that immigration is a problem, and very energetically propose ways to solve a problem of their own creation, and one that exist only in their imagination. <br />
<br />
The solution is, invariably, to strip the poor immigrant of the little dignity and humanity he has left.<br />
<br />
The fact (according to figures from the EU’s EUROSTAT office) is that, contrary to popular myth about Dutch tolerance, fewer non-Europeans live in the Netherlands than in other European country save Finland.<br />
<br />
Only about 4% of the people living in the Netherlands are foreigners, and the majority of these are citizens of another EU member state.<br />
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And hidden from many Dutch is the fact that the Netherlands, for the past years, has being a net exporter of people: more Dutch people left their country and move elsewhere than foreigners moved to the Netherlands.<br />
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According to a study <b>(“Exit, voice and loyalty in the Netherlands”)</b> by sociologist, Hendrik P van Dalen and Senior Researcher, Kène Henkens: <br />
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“<i>For the fifth year in a row, emigration from the Netherlands exceeded immigration last year, reaching 123,000 emigrants, which amounts to 7.5 emigrants per 1000 inhabitants. Dutch media has repeatedly reported this phenomenon because it caught demographic forecasters by surprise. The last emigration wave occurred fifty years ago, and at present the Netherlands is the only Western European country experiencing net emigration, although similar trends are visible in the UK (Salt and Rees, 2006) and to lesser extent in Germany.</i>” <a href="http://www.voxeu.org/article/why-are-dutch-leaving-netherlands">why-are-dutch-leaving-netherlands</a><br />
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This however has not daunted the energetic Dutch from devising more and more ways to strip the non-European of all his cultural identity\humanity in the name of an elusive and ill-defined integration. <br />
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Under new immigration laws that take effect from October this year, family reunion will be further restricted. Non Europeans can no longer marry if they have resided in the country for at least one year – they must go and marry in their countries. Immigrants can no longer bring their child to the country if he’s older than 18 years. The three years waiting list for permanent residence permit has been extended to 5 years. Residence permit can now be withdrawn on the flimsiest of reasons. See: <a href="http://www.ind.nl">www.ind.nl</a><br />
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In discussions with my Dutch friends about this fixation with immigrants, they seem as lost as I am. They all tell me that their politicians do not represent them, which rather rubbished the claim that the country is a democratic one.<br />
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My Dutch friends are as clueless as yours sincerely about what could be done to stop self-serving politicians from further poisoning the relationship between ethnic groups, and further confusing an already confused people. <br />
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They would rather want their politicians to talk about the issues that concerns them and will affect their future: the Euro Crises, the plundered Pension funds, collapsing infrastructures and the worsening health services.<br />
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My Dutch friends yearn also for a healthy relationship among the progressive people of the world, devoid of crass racism and stupid politicking. <br />
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Do unto others as you want to them to do to you is an injunction recommended by almost all the world’s religion. <br />
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Europeans want to be treated humanely and fairly when outside of Europe, why do they (and their politicians) find it difficult to respect the humanity of those that sojourn among them? <br />
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Why do they expect to be treated humanely when they come to our land, when they continue to treat immigrants like beasts of burden? <br />
Why do they expect to reap beans when all that they sow is tare?<br />
Femi Akomolafehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11181295541117761340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3102193312603106809.post-42272207974009923362012-09-12T18:03:00.000+02:002012-09-20T02:13:55.013+02:00It is education, stupid.<i>“On the expansion of knowledge I stand.</i>” – Martin Luther.<br />
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Gladly, two of Ghana’s registered political parties have come out boldly to espouse a free education programme.<br />
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Sadly and, most regrettably, the incumbent party still does not buy into the idea. <br />
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The Minister of Education, Lee Ocran, recently reiterated the government’s stance when he said that, to his party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) , led by President John Dramani Mahama, free SHS can only be possible after the year 2032.<br />
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That is 20 years from now.<br />
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Ah!<br />
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Mr. Ocran even remembered to tell us that were free education to be a feasible proposition, the Ghana’s first president, the Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, would have implemented it. <br />
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He conveniently forgot to remember that Africa’s favorite son implemented a free education programme for the most deprived areas of the land.<br />
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Whatever the nay-sayers say, and whether or not the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) the two parties that have endorsed the free education programme, implement it if they come to power remains immaterial: the discussion on free education has entered into Ghana’s political space and it never will go away. It shall continue to dominate political discourse as it rightly should.<br />
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I just find it difficult to understand why some people seem so dead set against the idea of the state funding education for our children. The excuses they give range from the flimsy to the utterly ridiculous. <br />
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I am yet to read a meritorious argument against the implementation of a programme that not only will benefit individual Ghanaian children, but whose benefits will redound appreciably to the country in the next few years.<br />
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It should be remember that until very few years ago, the most capitalist of countries in Europe had a free, qualitative and compulsory education for citizens.<br />
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In the Netherlands for example, until some few years ago, Dutch children enjoyed free and education up to secondary level, and there was guaranteed student loan scheme for those that desire to go to university. Economic difficulties have forced the Dutch to transfer the state’s guaranteed scheme to bank loans that attract commercial interests.<br />
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What is equally baffling is that it is the National Democratic Party, a self-proclaimed Social-Democratic party that seems opposed to a free education, while the NPP, supposedly a party of capitalist moguls champions it! <br />
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How ironic!<br />
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The question we ought to ask ourselves here is: If some people can announced, planned , find the money and launched a programme that put man on the moon inside of ten years, why should it take us 20 years to find the money to educate our children – the biggest investment we can ever have!<br />
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This becomes more baffling when we see all the wastage and leakages n the system.<br />
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Let us not rehash some old issues, but how could our officials who managed to get some GH¢858 million in three years to pay judgment debts, tell us that they cannot find the funds to implement a free education policy estimated to cost between 700m to one billion cedis?<br />
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How could our officials who managed to create some 280 parliamentary constituencies and are telling us that we need additional 47 more tell us, talk about the unfeasibility of a free education policy?<br />
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Aside from basic salaries and emoluments, each of our MPs also gets a car loan of US$50,000. <br />
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Multiplied by 280, that comes to a neat 14million.<br />
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We also have quite a number of presidential aides who get salaries of some 4,000 ceids; many of them do little apart from hopping from media house to media house to lambast critics and opponents of the government.<br />
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We also maintain a large retinue of ministers (cabinet and state) who also get loads of freebies from the state.<br />
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The state of the art fleet of four-wheel jeeps we gave our officials must also have cost us a small fortune.<br />
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In addition, we give free accommodation to all our MPs and all our ministers.<br />
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It should be said that MPs and ministers in most of the countries from where we borrow the money, to fund the lavish lifestyles of our officials, live in their own house. They buy and fuel their own vehicles. Our nation’s largest benefactor to date, China, operates a part-time parliamentary system of governments, and its officials use cars that are far smaller than what we give to our officials.<br />
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Whilst the British Prime Minister travels on commercial flight, we do our best to buy a jet (or is it two?) for our president. <br />
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We claim not to have money but we manage to operate a very expensive presidential system that is imperial in its opulent majesty.<br />
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When we tallied up all these expenses, they certainly must be substantial.<br />
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If we can raise the funds to give our officials such good lives, why do we continue to hear the lamentations about lack of money to fund a free education programme for our children?<br />
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Life is all about making choices; the economists call it opportunity cost.<br />
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The choice before is stark and it is, put simply, this: do we want to continue with our hit-and-miss approach to development or do we want to make a clean, decisive break, jettison old prejudices, become bold and make bold, if painful, decisions about our future?<br />
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Do we want to continue the to trod the same path we walked for so long, which has left us as the world’s under-achievers, or do we want to be bold and make the necessary choices that will enable us to join the rest of humanity in marching triumphantly into a brave new world of science and technology?<br />
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Our tragedy is this country, indeed in Africa, is that since the time of our Founding Fathers (Nkrumah, Kaunda, Nyerere, etc), we have not had confident and bold leaders who are willing to take us into unexplored territories.<br />
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Whatever we say about those pioneers, they were larger than life leaders who dazzled us with the architecture of their visions. <br />
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Whether or not they realise their visions or whether or not those visions were utopian can be debated, but no one can deny that they had VISIONS.<br />
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Very sadly we cannot say this of any contemporary leader in Africa.<br />
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Sadly, we are being led by mental Lilliputians and intellectual dwarfs, who lack that all important ingredient of all great leaders: VISION.<br />
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A visit outside our beautiful continent will only reveal to us the yawning gap between us and the rest of the human race.<br />
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It will only tell us the painful truth about how far behind we lag.<br />
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The Koreans, through firms like Rlg, Samsung and Hyundai daily dazzle us with electronic and engineering marvels. <br />
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The Chinese plan to send one them to space shortly. <br />
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Both nations follow the trail the Japanese blazed for the Asians three or four decades ago. <br />
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The Asians so thoroughly dominate science and engineering breakthroughs today that few people will believe that we started life at about the same time. <br />
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Modern Chinese history began in 1949 when the communists managed to drive off the US-imposed Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.<br />
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Modern South Korean history started after the bitter Korean war that led to its establishment on 15 August 1948. That is just nine years before Ghana threw off the yoke off colonialism in 1957, and blazed the way for Africa’s decolonization. <br />
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Malaysia, another of the Asian Tigers, got her own independence on 6 September 1963, and was reputedly poorer than our dear Ghana. <br />
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Today, we can only look at the Malaysians in awe. Without jettisoning its core Islamic values, Malaysia managed to build a thoroughly-first world nation in a generation. Its plants manufacture high-grade electronics and pharmaceuticals products. <br />
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Malaysians, like most Asians, now receive respect at ports of entries outside Asia.<br />
As mention supra, our post-colonial leaders did their best. For one reason or the other, they failed to lift us to high level of development. <br />
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There is no need for us to continue to cry over spilled milk. <br />
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But there is a need, a very urgent one, for us to lift ourselves up and redouble our efforts to join the rest of mankind.<br />
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We are starting from a very low level and the optimism in us should tell us that we have nowhere to go but up.<br />
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But very few things in life happen per chance. We have to prepare to build the tomorrow we want today.<br />
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We must try as much as possible to remove the mental shackles with which we imprison ourselves. <br />
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We ought to change, very fast, the mentality that instinctively tells us that: “it is impossible,” “it’s difficult.”<br />
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Of course, it is difficult; who says that anything in life will be easy?<br />
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We need to realize that the main reason we lag behind the other races is that the quality and quantity of our education is POOR.<br />
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Of course, we have numerous schools and universities. But we have to think beyond the box as they say. <br />
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It is not simply enough to keep on graduating people with diplomas who cannot function adequately. <br />
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In a globalized world, we need to produce global citizens who can successfully compete with their peers from anywhere in the world.<br />
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We need to seriously reconsider our education system under which we continue to graduate people who cannot think critically. <br />
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We cannot continue to operate a system whereby our graduates are good at only <b>quotology</b> – swallowing and regurgitating facts like parrots mimicking human voices.<br />
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Our next leader should be someone prepared to break away from the crowd and lead. He should be a confident person and one that is bold enough to tell us basic home truths. Principal among this that there is no way we can continue the way we are going and expect to get anywhere.<br />
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Our next leader should be one emboldened to change the whole paradigm of our education system.<br />
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Our next leader should be an education President. If he only could successfully prosecute an education agenda that give our children quality education, linked intrinsically with our core traditional values, he would succeed beyond measures.<br />
Femi Akomolafehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11181295541117761340noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3102193312603106809.post-64196519709969721972012-09-03T12:14:00.002+02:002012-09-03T12:14:40.925+02:00Time to start creating our own miracles.“<i>Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic</i>.” - Arthur C. Clarke.<br />
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“<i>You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help</i>?” - Mark Twain. <br />
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By now careful readers of this column would have noticed that we are scientific and technological buffs.<br />
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Actually, very few things fascinate me more than to read about scientific exploits.<br />
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Very few things captivate me than to read or watch how ordinary human beings, sit down and use their brains and intellects to achieve what is truly magical and, per definition, should be unachievable.<br />
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I have read my fair share of books, and I have a library a medium-sized college will be proud of, but few books have moved me more than Norman Mailer’s “<b>Of a Fire on the Moon</b>,” an account of the man’s landing on the moon.<br />
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The more I read and re-read that book, the more I continue to be awed by that momentous achievement.<br />
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And yesterday, I watched the documentary, ‘<b>In the Shadow of the Moon</b>,’ twice.<br />
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It’s a video documentary on the Apollo programmes.<br />
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My head still reel just thinking about the mathematics, the science and the engineering that went into that prodigious endeavour. <br />
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I love to watch the stars, and I have two telescopes to aid my enterprise. I also have a couple of planetarium software on my laptop to aid my astronomical curiosity. Gazing at the celestial bodies is truly awesome as well as humbling.<br />
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I can only imagine (with envy, I admit) what the astronauts must have felt as they gaze around in their space crafts!<br />
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What I tell people is that they should take a peep at the planetary motion and their views and understanding of the world will be radically altered. <br />
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Very few who have seriously study the heavens will not be humbled not only by its vastness, its immense complexities but also by its sheer beauty. <br />
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The universe is truly immense and mind-boggling in its majesty.<br />
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What constantly awe me is the fact that mere mortals, equipped with the same brain like you and I, sat down to plan how to get a human being to land on the face of our satellite, the moon, and get him back safely back to earth. <br />
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And they did it!<br />
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And they did it using equipments that were truly primitive by today’s standards.<br />
We talk here about leaving our earth and heeding towards uncharted territory. We are talking here about men and women planning about how to successfully embark on a journey of a distance of 384,400 kilometers.<br />
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And if the moon landing project was awesome, the recent landing of a robotic rover on Mars lacks the adequate superlative to describe it.<br />
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This is how a noted science writer, Ian O'Neill, put it: “<i>The landing of Curiosity alone will be an engineering triumph; anything the rover does after will be a scientific bonus.<br />
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A nuclear-powered, one-ton robotic rover armed with a rock-burning laser and a set of heavy-duty drills is currently preparing to land on Mars. Its mission is to carry out a vast array of experiments to help mankind understand the Red Planet's suitability for life and, ultimately, to help answer the age-old philosophical question: Is life on Earth special?<br />
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After nearly nine months of gliding through interplanetary space, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, known as "Curiosity", will feel Martian dirt crunching under its six wheels at 1:31am EDT (5:31am GMT) on Monday after the (hopefully) successful culmination of the "seven-minutes of terror" - a moniker for the mission's entry, descent and landing (EDL).<br />
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To any hypothetical Martians living on the planet's surface, this strange meteor would streak high across the sky toward Gale Crater, a 154-kilometre wide impact crater in the Martian landscape with a conspicuous 5.5-kilometre high mountain in its centre. But the Martians would be in for a shock as they watch a carefully choreographed series of steps unfold - parachute opening, pyrotechnic bolts firing and heatshield being jettisoned away - heralding the start of arguably the most dramatic part of Curiosity's mission.<br />
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So as we watch the clock count down to the anxious wait in the early hours of Monday morning, we can only wish Curiosity a safe landing. Everything else is in the hands of the NASA's engineering prowess and a heavy dose of Martian good luck.</i><br />
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<a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/201284141854880348.html"> http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/201284141854880348.html </a><br />
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As I have severally commented on these pages, it is time we in Africa start to take science and technology serious. <br />
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If we are to break the jinx of under-development, there is just no other alternative than to embrace science the way other people have. <br />
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We live in a world that, for better or worse, have come to rely heavily on science and technology; we cannot afford to continue to believe that we can, somehow, beat the system. <br />
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That is unless we want to continue to be the world’s under-achievers.<br />
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It is quite simple when we analyse it closely. <br />
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It is said that knowledge is power, and the evidence is quite overwhelming that it is those people who have acquired knowledge who rule the world. <br />
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We do not talk only about political rulership. The economic world is also ruled by those equipped with better knowledge. <br />
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Again, the evidence is incontrovertible. <br />
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We only need to ask why Western Multi-National Companies (MNCs) continue to dominate our economies in Africa. <br />
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We need only to ask why it is possible for these companies to take away 90-96% of profits from our mineral wealth while we receive insulting 3-10%.<br />
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The answer is simple: they have the technological prowess to extract and refine these minerals into useful products whereas, for us, they are just chunks of rocks in the ground!<br />
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I know that there are Africans performing at the highest levels of mathematics, science and technology at the most prestigious of laboratories all over the world – my own brother is among them. <br />
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But when it comes to our nations harnessing the brains of these individuals, we are found wanting. <br />
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For reasons that remain obscure and baffling, we still fail to realize the utility of harnessing the vast potentials our scientists offer.<br />
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Apart from the brief Biafran interregnum, no African nation has made a conscious effort to go scientific!<br />
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We fail to us the powers of our scientists and allow them to go other countries. We then turn around to employ expatriates who cost us far more. We continue to believe that these expats, will somehow, help us with ‘<b>technology transfer</b>.’ <br />
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Rather than give prominence to our men of science, we neglect them and rather give prominence to cassocked charlatans who called themselves men-of-god. <br />
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We give prominence to these fraudulent imposters in our private and national lives.<br />
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These phonies are up there with the presidents, the ministers and all the most important people in the land. <br />
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The shameless frauds have also managed to swindle their ways into the economic scheme of things – so much so that many of them are among the most seriously monied people in our land. <br />
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They own vast properties, even why they keep preaching to their ignorant congregation that everything in this world is vanity.<br />
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The priests also have managed to buy their ways into our media, so much so that today, religious programmes take a big chunk of our airtime.<br />
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There will be little problem, if these priests can show or tell us a single thing all their stupid gyrations, spiritual pyrotechnics and adjurations have achieved for us.<br />
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They only reply in abstractions when you ask them why all the prayers are required of us. <br />
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They talk about prayers protecting a nation and offering a people peace. <br />
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When you ask why religion, more than any other thing, have been the single cause of wars and violence, they scratch their heads and talk about people not following god’s path.<br />
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They talk about Jesus being the answer, when you ask them what the question is, they cannot give you an answer.<br />
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When you ask them what example they can cite where people have staved off hunger or stop a flood by praying, they tell you that the ways of their god is mysterious.<br />
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The ways of god could be mysterious, but that shouldn’t stop us from learning from what other people did to get to where they are today.<br />
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The only lesson we can learn about human progress is that, it is only those societies that have been able to successfully separate the gods from the affairs of men, which have made any progress in their development.<br />
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Religion is and should always be private affairs. Affairs between a man and his creator should strictly be between the two of them. <br />
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Any imposter, who claims the power to mediate, is simply that, an imposter.<br />
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It is quite simple. By equipping us with an awesome machine in the form of a brain, the gods have done the best they could for us. <br />
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It is left for us to use this incredible machine to improve our lot on earth. The human brains contain an infinite numbers of cells which suggest an infinite numbers of possibilities. We are limited only by the power of our imaginations.<br />
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Why do we in Africa then neglect and sentence this brain into exile, and continue to think that prayer is a good substitute for thinking?<br />
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The evidence is all around us that it is only the people who dare to use the power of their brains that have managed to achieve any break-through.<br />
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From the laptop with which I write this article, to the internet I will use to send it to my publisher, to the radio set that offers me background music, to the portable music set tied to your ears, to the cars, the trains, the airplanes that offer transportation, all are products of science.<br />
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Why then do we in Africa continue to believe that some gods are coming from wherever to come and solve problems for us? <br />
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Why then do we in Africa continue to dance ourselves silly in supplications to fathers in heaven, when we should know well that no god has ever solve a single problem for any people?<br />
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Why then do we continue to pray 24/7 instead of sitting down to THINK and look for earthly solutions to earthly problems?<br />
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Rather for our leaders to parley with priests and ask us to fast and pray, our presidents should also throw challenges to our scientists and engineers to solve problems. <br />
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That is what leaders elsewhere did: they challenge their people to tackle any problem that confront them.<br />
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The Dutch did it after a flood in 1953 that took some lives and devastated a big chunk of the southern part of their country. They successfully build the Delta Project to ward off future disaster. The Dutch invented new technologies to solve the problems of flood. <br />
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Till date, the Netherlands have been spared flood of the 1953 scale, and the Dutch today reaps handsomely from their investment in flood control technologies. <br />
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When told that the Russians will beat the Americans in sending a man into space, President JF Kennedy decided to up the ante: He announced the Great New American Enterprise - America will send men to the moon and bring them back within the decade. <br />
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The result is the Apollo programmes that resulted in men landing on and planting the American flag on the face of the moon.<br />
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Wither art thou, Africa!<br />
Femi Akomolafehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11181295541117761340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3102193312603106809.post-9627579211400169002012-08-27T08:47:00.000+02:002012-08-27T08:48:08.103+02:00Good Riddance, Mr. Ambassador“<i>The United States appears destined by Providence to plague America with miseries in the name of Freedom.</i>” Simon Bolívar.<br />
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"<i>Come, then comrades; it would be as well to decide at once to change our ways. We must shake off the heavy darkness in which we were plunged, and leave it behind. The new day which is already at hand must find us firm, prudent, and resolute. We must leave our dreams and abandon our old beliefs and friendships from the time before life began. Let us waste no time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry. Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe. For centuries they have stifled almost the whole of humanity in the name of a so-called spiritual experience. Look at them today swaying between atomic and spiritual disintegration. <br />
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We must leave our dreams and abandon our old beliefs and friendships of the time before life began. Let us waste no time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry. Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe. For centuries they have stifled almost the whole of humanity in the name of a so-called spiritual experience. <br />
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And yet it may be said that Europe has been successful in as much as everything that she has attempted has succeeded.<br />
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Europe undertook the leadership of the world with ardour, cynicism and violence. Look at how the shadow of her palaces stretches out ever farther! Every one of her movements has burst the bounds of space and thought. Europe has declined all humility and all modesty; but she has also set her face against all solicitude and all tenderness.<br />
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She has only shown herself parsimonious and niggardly where men are concerned; it is only men that she has killed and devoured.<br />
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So, my brothers, how is it that we do not understand that we have better things to do than to follow that same Europe?<br />
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When I search for Man in the technique and the style of Europe, I see only a succession of negations of man, and an avalanche of murders.”</i> “ Frantz Fanon, <b>The Wretched of the Earth</b><br />
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To those that ask me why I blast the West now and then in my articles, my reply is often that I hardly pay the West a heed. <br />
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I try as much as possible to leave the West strictly alone, until and unless some idiot from the West made outrageous comments about our continent which calls for decisive and, very often, harsh response from this True Born African.<br />
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I have enough palaver of my own, and the gods know that our beautiful Africa face enough challenges that require all of our energies to solve. <br />
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I try to solve my own domestic worries and, in addition, I also try to utilize the little abilities that I have, to make suggestions on how I think we can improve our situations in our continent. <br />
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I claim no oracular powers, but I try to share the little knowledge and experience that I have.<br />
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What I think and fervently believe is that Africa does not have a problem that Africans cannot solve. <br />
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History teaches us that, more often than not, our woes on this continent were compounded by those we deemed as friends, and invited to help solve matters that should be internal to us. <br />
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History also attested to the fact that all those foreigners we have invited have turned against us. They have, without exception, betrayed, used and abused us.<br />
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No, I do not simplistically blame foreigners for all our woes; but we cannot run away from the fact that foreigners have taken, and continue to take advantage of our trust.<br />
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In the colonial conquest of our lands, our grandparents naively allowed themselves to be used against one another.<br />
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Today, we, their children, continue to pay the heavy price in the numerous tribal and ethnic wars ravaging our societies.<br />
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So, please pardon me if I say that I simply cannot stand to listen to any sanctimonious sermon from Westerners, especially on matters relating to Africa.<br />
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I care very little about what mess Westerners have made of their lives in their own countries; that is their business. <br />
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What I totally abhor is for ANY Westerner to take it upon himself or herself to come to Africa, become all-important, all-knowing and start to give lectures, most especially unsolicited lectures.<br />
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For a people that have so thoroughly messed up their own lives and the lives of those with whom they have come in contact, the arrogance and impetuousness of the average Westerner is truly outstanding and appalling!<br />
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With head full of all the nonsense the ideological institutions his society (schools and media) have pumped into his head, the average westerner still goes around the world with the notion that the world revolves around him. <br />
<br />
He still believes that we live in the eighteen century when Europeans were the masters of all that they survey. <br />
<br />
He still believe, like his grand-parents did, that we live in a 1884-5 world when Europeans still can dictate to people and have their orders carried out like imperial fiats. <br />
<br />
The silly westerner still come to Africa and expected to be worshipped and fawned on. <br />
<br />
He still believes that it is his right to tell Africans not only what to do but how to do it.<br />
<br />
I feel duty-bound to confront any such person with everything at my disposal.<br />
<br />
I have the experience of living in a European country, plus the very vast history lessons I have taken, to know that I should never, repeat never, allow any westerner to don the toga of a moral advocate on issue pertaining to Africa. <br />
<br />
I lived in Europe long enough to see how intolerant Europeans are of other people’s views, culture and what have you. <br />
<br />
I lived there long enough to see European ‘democratic’ government passed legislations to strip non-Europeans of all their humanity in the name of integration. <br />
<br />
I told myself that never again will I ever allow a European (read Westerner if you like) to come to any part of Africa and give unsolicited lecture without a response from me.<br />
<br />
Not until the hell freezes over.<br />
<br />
The wretched history of Europeans in Africa alone disqualified ANY and ALL Westerner from hugging the moral high grounds in African matters. <br />
<br />
The racist-inspired American policies towards Africa over the years (including the latest imperial assault via AFRICOM) make Americans eminently unqualified to come to Africa and deliver lectures on anything.<br />
<br />
These might explain why my blood boiled over when I read the reports of the outgoing US Ambassador to Ghana giving some stupid unsolicited advice.<br />
<br />
According to myjoyonline news: “Outgoing US Ambassador to Ghana, Donald Teitelbaum says the country needs an open respectful dialogue on the issue of gay rights. <br />
<br />
But Mr. Teitelbaum who was addressing journalists at his final official media interaction yesterday said the country could emulate the example of the US.<br />
<br />
“It is not for me to tell Ghanaians how to think or how to act, but what I would say is that I really do believe that Ghanaians, first and foremost, I see it everyday in the way Ghanaians act, Ghanaians accept the idea of respecting people’s fundamental rights, as you threat each other everyday.<br />
<br />
“…it is my view, that Ghana properly need to do something like we have done in the United States, and have open respect for dialogue about how you can reconcile your belief and rights, because the Ghanaian constitution, as I understand it, guarantees rights base on citizenship.”<br />
<br />
According to Mr Donald Teitelbaum, oppressing people because of their sexual orientation was wrong.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://edition.myjoyonline.com/pages/news/201208/92583.php"> http://edition.myjoyonline.com/pages/news/201208/92583.php </a><br />
<br />
Well said, Mr. Ambassador, when you were quoted as saying: “it is not for me to tell Ghanaians how to think or how to act.”<br />
<br />
Yes, it is none of your damned business simply because we do not think you should have the effrontery to tell us how to live our lives. <br />
<br />
You talked about <b>RESPECT</b>, Mr. Ambassador. <br />
<br />
Ah! But the most basic of respects is never to impose your views and culture on other people, especially on your hosts. <br />
<br />
Respect also means that you learn that people are entitled to their views, opinions and choices including the choices they make about their culture.<br />
<br />
I guess all these are too difficult to understand to a cultural philistine like yourself!<br />
<br />
Damn it, Mr. Ambassador, nothing gives you the right to preach to us.<br />
<br />
Just in case you have forgotten, you are simply an envoy of your country. <br />
<br />
Your job description does not include evangelizing to us. <br />
<br />
Your job does not include foisting on us your cultural, moral, and political or any belief.<br />
<br />
Your compatriots will not take kindly to our envoy in your country giving them lectures on how to stop the racism in your country. They will not like to hear from him what we think of your joke of a judicial system. They will be angered if our envoy should tell them that we think it stupid and insane that your government spend more money on building weapons, and spending more money to destroy them, instead of using the money to feed your homeless, or use it to give education to your youth who are hooked on every drug known to chemistry. <br />
<br />
Your compatriots will get angry if our envoy should begin to tell them what we think of your dog-eat-dog, man-eat-shit society.<br />
<br />
Mr. Ambassador, your countrymen and women will be affronted and they will protest if our envoy in your country should tell them those things. <br />
<br />
Why, then, Mr. Ambassador, do you think we should accept unsolicited advice from you? <br />
<br />
Or is it because you think that because you are WHITE, you automatically know better than those of us of darker hue?<br />
<br />
Don’t forget, Mr. Ambassador, Ghana is not some plantation in the south of your country. <br />
<br />
And just in case you have forgotten, Mr. Ambassador, Ghana achieved independence in 1957, which means that we are a sovereign people, with the inalienable sovereign rights to govern ourselves without interference from idiotic busy-bodies like yourself.<br />
<br />
You talked about oppressing people, Mr. Ambassador, ah! <br />
<br />
I wondered about the type of history education you had. <br />
<br />
But if you have read anything more serious than the ‘make-me-happy’ nonsense that goes for historical education in your country, you will know that your country has done very little in its history except to oppress the non-white people of the world.<br />
<br />
It might be uncomfortable news to you, but that is just the fact, Mr. Ambassador. <br />
<br />
Or do you need me to cite for you some good examples, Mr. Ambassador?<br />
<br />
I trust that his not a challenge you’re likely to take up.<br />
<br />
Methinks that it is time for African patriots to wake up the courage to tell these interfering foreigners to mind their own bloody business.<br />
<br />
A time there was when we look up to Europe and the US for models, for shining examples, but truly those days are long gone. And however much we dream, they are hardly ever going to come back anytime soon, at least not in the lifetime of those of us that draw breadth today.<br />
<br />
Sorry, Mr. Ambassador, the US does not represent for us a shining model for which we should strive to emulate. Just in case you have not woken up to smell the coffee, Mr. Ambassador, your country is an imperiled empire.<br />
<br />
Apart from bristling with every description of weapons of mass destruction, there is hardly anything today that makes the US relevant. <br />
<br />
With your economy in shambles, your politics a big joke and your social fabric in tatters, what ideal does your country, the US, present to us, Monsieur Ambassador?<br />
Rather than give us unsolicited advice, Mr. Ambassador, go home and help organize how your own country can get out of its own gargantuan (yes, that word) mess. <br />
<br />
As we say in this part of the word: Charity begins at home. <br />
<br />
And I think in your part of the world, there is a saying that physicians should, first of all, heal themselves.<br />
<br />
As you sail off our shore, I say bon voyage, Mr. Ambassador and good riddance. <br />
<br />
Shove your unsolicited advice up your ass.<br />
Femi Akomolafehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11181295541117761340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3102193312603106809.post-62618101872108189752012-08-26T13:34:00.002+02:002012-08-26T13:34:58.141+02:00Destroying the begging bowlHave you hear the good news, my friend.<br />
<br />
What news, now, my friend? I hope that you’re the bearer of some good tidings, I need some stirrups.<br />
<br />
Wow, the president has done it again. Our brand new president has pulled off another nice one. This is simply magnificent.<br />
<br />
What are you talking about, what has the new president done this time?<br />
<br />
You, sit down there. Where have you been hiding that you didn’t hear the news?<br />
<br />
What news. Pray, tell me.<br />
<br />
The big news is that Cape Coast, our nation’s first capital, is going to get a stadium. And a very modern stadium, at that – ultra modern, world class stadium we talk about here. Wow! You can hear the joyous ovation of the people!<br />
<br />
Oh, that is good news, indeed. Mr. President must be congratulated.<br />
<br />
That’s not all.<br />
<br />
You mean there are more goodies coming to the Cape Coastians?<br />
<br />
Cape Coastian, what kind of appellation is that? Anyway, the stadium is not going to cost our nation a single pesewa.<br />
<br />
Now you kid me plenty; how do you build a stadium without spending money? Things like iron rods, cement and sand cost money, even if our people donate their labour free of charge. Don’t tell me that Mr. President has become a magician, a conjurer who could conjure a whole stadium from thin air! That would be something.<br />
<br />
Ah, you don’t get it, my friend. It is all a gift!<br />
<br />
Now you are talking, who is our generous benefactor?<br />
<br />
Not so fast, my friend. Were you not among those journalist people who wrote that the president, then vice president, was wasting time and money travelling around the world? You call it useless junketing then, didn’t you?<br />
<br />
Yes, I remember writing a thing a thing or two about his constant travelling, what with all those fawning officials who consume per diems like there is no tomorrow.<br />
<br />
Maybe there is indeed no tomorrow, and maybe you can now swallow your word as their efforts are now paying off big time.<br />
<br />
What do you mean?<br />
<br />
Have you not been listening to me?<br />
<br />
It is difficult for me to follow your train of thoughts. You started with stadium, a freebie and eating words. Can’t you get straight to the point?<br />
<br />
I said that you and your fellow poisoned pens fraternity can now eat your words, as the efforts of the vice president, now president, has resulted in the Chinese offering to build a stadium for us at Cape Coast, absolutely free of charge.<br />
<br />
Now, you kid me thoroughly?<br />
<br />
And why should I? The president himself announced it and you don’t get more authoritative voice than that, do you?<br />
<br />
Hmmmm.<br />
<br />
You and your hmmms! Do I read that to mean that you have swallowed your words, and that you will admit that it pays off for our officials to go around the world?<br />
<br />
You can read it whichever way you want, but I still maintain that it is plain wrong for our officials to keep going around the world with begging bowls. It is simply demeaning. I don’t mind their going around the world to get better deals for our raw materials, but they shouldn’t appear to be the world champion beggars. That is not all; you didn’t say why the Chinese decided on giving us a free stadium.<br />
<br />
You, do you have to question everything? Do you always have to look at the horse in the mouth?<br />
<br />
I like that expression, but, sorry, writers have inquisitive minds.<br />
<br />
Are you telling me that you didn’t know that the Chinese built a complete headquarters for our African Union free of charge; and here you are casting aspersions on why they should give us a stadium?<br />
<br />
Ah, that is another of our problem.<br />
<br />
What do you mean?<br />
<br />
I meant that we in African appear to do nothing except to wait for the Americans, the Europeans, the Arabs, the Brazilians and the Chinese to give us freebies, only for us to become giddy with excitement.<br />
<br />
You really can insult, can’t you?<br />
<br />
So sorry you felt that way. But there is something called shame, and I think that it is time we in Africa develop a little sense of shame. Why are we the world’s perpetual beggars and not givers?<br />
<br />
What do you mean?<br />
<br />
I think you know perfectly well what I meant. The last time the government of Ghana gave money to Haiti during the earthquake in that country, many of our citizens were up in arms. They questioned why we should donate our meager resources to other people. But we do not see people ask why we receive this or that from country x or y. Today I do not see our people decrying the Chinese gift of a stadium, when only few weeks ago many of our citizens paraded our streets baying for the blood of Chinese traders. How many of us who today dance for joy about a free Chinese stadium come out to defend the Chinese when our own people molested them? We are such a pathetic bunch of selfish and greedy ingrates.<br />
<br />
Are you done with your insults?<br />
<br />
Call it insult or whatever you will, but hypocrisy in any form or shape makes me sick. We want to eat our cake and have it. We think it right when other people make donations to us – we feel entitled to it; but we cannot stand the sight of other people making it in our country. Actually, that is not my biggest worry. My biggest worry is that we are, as a people, becoming too accustomed to getting freebies that we do not appear to want to wean ourselves off it.<br />
<br />
Those are very grave charges!<br />
<br />
And I do not make them lightly. I am not against receiving help, per se. The trouble starts when we become accustomed to other people helping us that we have stopped thinking about how to help ourselves. At the same time our president announced the gift of a stadium from the Chinese, he should also have announced what steps he and his government is taking to ensure that in few years, we would have developed the indigenous capacity to build our own stadia. And he should have also announced that in, say, ten or twenty years, Ghana will also be donating free stadium to other needy nations. We need to start building indigenous capacities; that is the only way nations become developed. We gain the respect of the world only by letting others see us doing things for ourselves. I mean we should be seen to be trying to lift ourselves up by our own efforts. Our development should not be anchored on what other people can do for us, but what we can do for ourselves. Other people might chip in to help, but we should be the sole developer and motivator of our development agenda. The science and engineering of building stadium is hardly a mystery. We have about ten public universities across our land; we have numerous architects and builders in the country. We are blessed with plentiful labour force and we have highly qualified Ghanaians scattered around the world. Rather than beg the Chinese to come and help us build a stadium, our brand new president should have appealed to our sense of patriotism and call upon all of us, to chip in our widows’ mite to build a stadium in memory of our departed president. Were that not to be possible, he should have begged of the Chinese to help train enough Ghanaians who, in say five years, would be qualified to build the stadium. After all, it was the Chinese who says that it is better to teach a man how to fish than to give him fish.<br />
<b><br />
NB:</b> To those that read and comment on my articles, I say a big thank you.<br />
<br />
As a rule, unless the reader requested a reply or directly asked a question, I do not comment on responses to my articles. I believe that people are entitled to their opinions, as I’m to mine.<br />
<br />
A lot of efforts go into writing. The writer would hardly be productive if he expends his energies to fight wars with people whose raison d’être is to insult.<br />
To those that passed insulting comments, I say: To insult is quite cheap and easy; thinking is the major challenge.<br />
<br />
Below is what I wrote on my blog: <a href="http://ekitiparapo.blogspot.com"> http://ekitiparapo.blogspot.com </a> ; the same rule applies here.<br />
<br />
“You are welcome to my blog; read and enjoy to your heart content. Do, however remember that no matter how strongly you might disagree with the opinions expressed here, they are MY OPINIONS to which I am perfectly entitled.<br />
<br />
I shall endeavour not to write anything herein except that which is true, factual and verifiable. <br />
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If you find errors, I will appreciate your bringing it to my attention. I shall try and take note and correct them.<br />
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If your intention is to bandy insults around, I advise that you set up your own blog.<br />
As my Yoruba people say: <i>"Oju orun teye fo, lai fara gbara.</i>" <br />
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It means that the sky is big enough for all the birds to fly without touching wings.”<br />
Femi Akomolafehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11181295541117761340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3102193312603106809.post-25757865723336612552012-08-18T19:58:00.003+02:002012-08-18T19:58:59.376+02:00A committee for development, please!But why didn’t you call me?<br />
<br />
Call you, why? We saw each other just last week.<br />
<br />
You! Apart from you, almost everyone else I knew burnt good copper to call me. And you, you that I consider my best friend refused to call me, ah!<br />
<br />
Really, what happened; were you sick?<br />
<br />
Me sick? Allah Kiaye. God forbid bad thing!<br />
<br />
Why then were people calling you?<br />
<br />
Even Abena, my estranged part-time girl-friend, called me.<br />
<br />
What happened, does she want reconciliation, a comeback?<br />
<br />
You paa! She knows that I have current affairs with whom she cannot compete.<br />
<br />
Why then did she call you?<br />
<br />
I was on television; my brother I was on television! Didn’t you see me?<br />
<br />
You know that I don’t have a television.<br />
<br />
You! I forgot. I was on television. My old lady called from Dunkwa-on-offin; she was as excited as a girl on her first date. God, I’m popular, ah!<br />
<br />
You on television, how did you manage that?<br />
<br />
Now you are talking. The TV cameras captured me during the funeral for our late, great, beloved president. <br />
<br />
Don’t tell me that you went to the funeral.<br />
<br />
You, what exactly is wrong with you? Why shouldn’t I have gone to pay my last respect to our great beloved man of peace? Or have you join the NPP?<br />
<br />
I beg you not to tar me with the label of partisan political party. I just cannot imagine that you couldn’t find better employment for your time that you have to travel all the way from Kasoa to Accra for a funeral.<br />
<br />
You, what exactly is wrong with you? People came all the way from Bawku, Tamale, Wa to attend the funeral and you are talking about Kasoa! <br />
Hmmm.<br />
<br />
And what is that supposed to mean? Because you choose not to does not mean that people should not honour tradition and culture, and pay their respects to departed leaders.<br />
<br />
Some tradition and culture we have.<br />
<br />
What is that supposed to mean, what exactly do you have against culture?<br />
<br />
I have nothing against culture. The honest truth is that I am a very cultured person; one that fervently believe in maintaining our culturally integrity as Africans. It is just some part of the culture that has become very worrisome and befuddling to me.<br />
<br />
Which aspects are you talking about?<br />
<br />
That part of our culture which makes it appears that we care more for the dead than for the living.<br />
<br />
You, do you have to criticize everything?<br />
<br />
Not really.<br />
<br />
Why are you picking issue with the funeral then? I thought you, like every patriotic citizen, will appreciate the great achievement registered by the funeral committee in pulling off that flawless performance. My friend, let’s learn to give kudos where it is due. Let’s praise our people when we think that they have done a great job. It is OK to criticize, but we should all learn to give praise where and when it is due. Let’s give our people due regard in organizing a great funeral ceremony at very short notice. Do you think that it is easy to organize such gigantic funeral and get all those important visitors, including the US Secretary of State, to drop what they were scheduled to do and come to our shore?<br />
<br />
That is exactly what I meant that we appear to care more for the dead than for the living.<br />
<br />
What are you talking about?<br />
<br />
I am talking about a committee set up to organize a befitting funeral for our departed president which, according to you, delivered a flawless performance. Don’t you think that we ought to ask ourselves some very serious questions?<br />
<br />
Such like?<br />
<br />
Such like why we do not see our people performing also flawlessly when called upon to perform task that will directly benefit those of us that are still alive. Why do we our people care more for funerals than to take care of the sick? I did not see our people showing any care when the president was alive and was rumoured to be sick. Why do our people find it difficult to help a sick relation when alive but pull all stops to give same person expensive funerals? Why do children allow their parents to die in poverty and go ahead to borrow money to give them expensive funerals? Why do we have people who will not hire a bicycle for their father when alive only to go and hire expensive limousine to transport his corpse to the village? These are some of the things that befuddle me. We have been running our own affairs for close to sixty years, yet we still lack basic amenities that people take for granted in other lands. We still do not have enough electricity and many of our people go through life without tasting potable water. We have set up uncountable committees in this country of ours, but we have never seen any of them directly impacting positively on our lives. Suddenly we cannot come up with enough superlatives to praise a committee that organized a funeral. If we have men and women who have the acumen to organize successful funerals, why can’t we find people to successfully run our electricity and water companies?<br />
<br />
Do you have to be such a killjoy?<br />
<br />
Sorry that you felt that way. I am just surprised that we do not think of how other people will think of us. While we pat ourselves on the back for organizing a successful funeral, those that come from outside our continent will wonder why we cannot, with the same passion, the same gusto, set up committees to tackle the myriads of development challenges we see around us. They will wonder why we do not concern ourselves with finding solutions to the question of hunger and want in our country. They will want to know why in this century, our farmers still use implements designed thousands of years ago, or why we still allow our farm yields to depend on the vagaries of nature. They will want to find out from us why, with all our plentiful schools, the simple system of irrigating our farms still eludes us. They will want to know why our women still pound fufu just like their great-great-great-great-great-great grand-mothers did several centuries ago. They will want to know why we, as a people, lack scientific curiosity. They will want to know why our lives continue to be ruled by superstitions, and why we give more prominence to pastors than to scientists and engineers. The visitors will wonder why, for example, we cannot organize a committee to tackle the filth in our nation’s capital. The Odaw River in Accra is choked with human excreta; the visitors will see our people defecating in broad daylight in a river that could, very easily, become a mode of transport or even a tourist attraction. The Korle Gonna and the other lakes in Accra have had the lives choked out of them by feces. The visitor will shake his head and wonder what exactly is wrong with us that make us get excited by things like funerals instead of finding answers to lives’ challenges. Apart from the University of Ghana at Legon, Accra boasts of uncountable universities. Even if many of them are one-man, one-bedroom affairs. They all offer what they call Environmental Studies. The question we ought to ask is that why we all go through this filthy environment day in day out with apparently no care. Why are we not shamed to invite guests to come and look at the filthy environment in which we still live in this age and time? Yes, it could be true that the Funeral Committee did a splendid job of pulling off a fantastic funeral in a short time, but why can’t we apply the same seriousness to other issues. Does it have to be only funerals that get us excited? For your information, we have had no light for four days in Kasoa, and no one can tell us why. And here you are telling me about our putting on great funeral celebration to bury a dead leader and you expect me to dance with joy. Sorry, my friend, but I’m not impressed by any funeral our government care to organize so long as I see us underperforming in almost every other sphere of life. Honestly, methinks that so long as we appear to care more for the dead than for the living our conditions will never improve. In the same week that we are beating our chests for organizing befitting funerals, the engineers at NASA landed a one-ton robot on in a crater on Mars. Thinking about the mathematics and the engineering underpinning that feat alone makes my head reel. Whist we danced for joy over a funeral, other people are splitting atoms and discovering the God’s Particle. I say that it is time we get serious in this part of this world.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Femi Akomolafehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11181295541117761340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3102193312603106809.post-91855051375479982972012-08-04T16:29:00.000+02:002012-08-04T16:29:42.981+02:00Power: Its transient nature and the lessons of history."<i>Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.</i>" - Baron Acton.<br />
<br />
“<i>The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.</i>” - Albert Einstein.<br />
<br />
“<i>The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.</i>” - Martin Luther King, Jr. <br />
<br />
“<i>Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.</i>” - Abraham Lincoln <br />
<br />
“<i>The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself.</i>” - Winston Churchill <br />
<br />
“<i>The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while</i>”- Albert Einstein. <br />
<br />
Readers of this column will remember our many lamentations that the late Ghanaian President Atta Mills was badly served by those around him. We even once asked him to fire his entire communication team if he knew what was good for him.<br />
<br />
Sadly, the late affable leader did not take our advice. Alas, the man passed on to eternity.<br />
<br />
I have often wondered why officials in Africa easily turn to demi-gods as soon as they get into position of power and authority. <br />
<br />
It is as if there something in our centers of power that makes mere mortal transform themselves into supermen immediately they are elevated into position of power. <br />
<br />
I have countless personal experiences with people whom I considered bosom friends but are instantly transformed as soon as they get some post. People with whom I chat on almost hourly basis became instantly inaccessible as soon as they get (mostly schemed their ways) into high office. <br />
<br />
We can safely excuse lack of time as we see and hear them spend too many hours babbling inanities on radio and TV stations. The transformation goes into the way they walk and talk.<br />
<br />
I hope that I’m not the only one that saw the great transformations that overcame many presidential aides as soon as the death of President Mills was announced. <br />
Did you notice how Mr. Koku Anyidoho has visibly shrunk? Gone were the imperial and arrogant mien and nasty countenance we are used to when the going was good.<br />
<br />
Few weeks ago, Mr. Anyidoho was the master of all that he surveyed. He spoke for the president and that was position high enough to make the man believed that he was a cut above the rest of us. <br />
<br />
He vainly bestrode the corridors of power like a drunken Colossus.<br />
<br />
Whilst President Mills cut the picture of a humble, peaceful man who will not hurt a fly; his men were anything but. <br />
<br />
People like Anyidoho, Nii Lante Vanderpuye, Ablakwa et all behaved like attack dogs let loose, unpityingly verbally shredding into pieces those they perceived as enemy of their boss. <br />
<br />
They reduced the presidency into one huge joke where insults and expletives are substituted for good communications. <br />
<br />
Politics became for these uncultured neophytes avenue to abandon culture and respect, as they verbally assaulted people that are old enough to be their parents.<br />
<br />
Apparently promoted far beyond their abilities and qualifications, these verbal Rottweilers did not hesitate to abuse people who are not only older than them, but men who are clearly superior to them in any department we care to examine.<br />
<br />
When his boss visited England, rather than for the Director of Communications to explain to us as to what steps the president was taking to woo investors and sell the country, Mr. Anyidoho turned his verbal assault rifle on the main opposition leader, Nana Akufo Addo.<br />
<br />
This is what I wrote in: “Kofi Anyidoho should resign,”: “Speaking on Focus FM in London, the president's spokesman was at his nastiest. Listen to him: “Let Akufo-Addo…if he says he is a man, a true man from Akyem because he claims God gave all us two balls each unless his is three. Maybe, his is three but if he thinks his is three and for that matter he is man enough than all of us in this country, he should dare make a wrong move.<br />
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“I am saying it today that Akufu-Addo should dare. I know Gabby (Otchere Darko) is in London and listening. Gabby you are my friend and I'm telling you that you and that your Akufo-Addo. If you claim to be men, make…..in this country and you will see where power lies. We are waiting for them since they say “all die be die'.<br />
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“They should be careful they would not be the first to go visit their ancestry; Akufo-Addo, Jake and Mac Manu should be very careful they would not be the first to visit their ancestry because we will not just sit down in laxity and watch Akufo Addo use patapaa, huhuhuhu and kekeke to destroy this country… Ghana is not Akufo-Addo's property. It does not belong to him; it belongs to all of us” and for that matter, Akufo-Addo should stop throwing his weight about as though the country belonged to him.”<br />
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In vain we waited for the president to fire Mr. Anyidoho from his post for such crass mis-behaviour.<br />
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Was this not the same Mr. Anyidoho who breached all protocols and etiquette and announced to the world incomplete report of an ongoing investigation into a cocaine case?<br />
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Again, listen to him: “Today Asem Dake is in custody and ...I can promise you, President Mills is going to go to the bottom of this matter. Nobody, be it a former president, be it a sitting president, be it an erstwhile president, anybody who is involved in this cocaine matter..., you can be sure that President Mills will let the people of Ghana stand and point fingers at those who were involved in this dastardly trade.”<br />
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This was the president spokesman speaking on a very sensitive case that was still ongoing.<br />
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It appears however that Mr. Anyidoho overreached himself when on the night of June 3, 2012 when the nation was embarrassed by a light off at the Baba Yaara stadium at Kumasi, he announced the sacking of the Kumasi director of the Electricity Company of Ghana.<br />
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Bellowing at top voice, Mr. Anyidoho told us that “The president is angry, very angry. Heads will roll.” He then announced the sacking of the Director of the ECG at Kumasi.<br />
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It has since turned out that Mr. Anyidoho was simply telling lies; the president gave no such directive.<br />
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Caught in the web of his inaccuracies, he claimed that some faceless “Senior officials' took the decision.<br />
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How pathetic!”<br />
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Few days after his disastrous gaffe, the President’s Chief of Staff announced that his office has become the clearing house for information, thus effectively discarding with the service of the garrulous and unnecessarily pugnacious Mr. Anyidoho.<br />
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The depth to which president Mills staff hold their man in contempt became apparent evident just two days after his death when one of his aides, Nii Lante Vanderpuye (nebulously describe as Director of Operations at the castle), came out to tell us that he once organized an attack on the Presidential Convoy!<br />
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No, he was not kidding!<br />
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Here is how myjoyonline captured the story: “A Presidential Aide to the late President Professor John Evans Atta Mills, Nii Lantey Vanderpuye, has stated that at one time, he organized an attack on the Presidential Convoy!<br />
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According to him, he organized a community to put up a barrier of stones, blocks, clubs and other implements to block the presidential convoy when the convoy was on its way back to Accra with a tired President!<br />
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Speaking on ‘Talking Point’, a political talk show program on GTV on Sunday evening, Nii Lantey, as he is popularly known, stated that he was responsible for inciting a community to erect barriers to block the presidential convoy in order to force the late President Atta Mills to come out of his vehicle to speak to a crowd of villagers, even though he knew that the President was tired and wanted to come back to Accra.<br />
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“I knew the people wanted to see the President. When I got there they told me they wanted to see the President…we had already concluded our schedule but these were people who wanted to see the President, so, as the man in the lead car, I told them to put up a barrier, to put stones and sticks and blocks on the road so that when the convoy gets there they would be forced to stop. <br />
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After I told them to erect the barrier, I took off! So when they (presidential convoy) got there they stopped and the President got down to talk to them. The President immediately realized that I was the one responsible so he called me on the network to speak to me but I refused to pick the call. I ignored him, but later, when we arrived, he pulled me into an office and warned me that I should never do that again,” Nii Lantey said.<br />
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He was giving a testimony as to the very ‘forgiving’ nature of the late President John Evans Atta Mills and used the rather shocking and macabre recitations above to demonstrate why the late President would forgive his associates any kind of crime.”<br />
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http://elections.peacefmonline.com/politics/201207/126738.php<br />
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What type of an aide would organise an attack on a, take a deep breath, a presidential convoy?<br />
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President Mills was undoubtedly a very decent man. But as I argued in one piece on his style of leadership, leadership, especially at the presidential level calls for more than mere decency.<br />
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It is hard to imagine an aide to JJ Rawlings or President Kufuor behaving the way Nii Lante did and live to boast about it.<br />
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It is equally difficult to imagine either of the two leaders countenancing an aide that so badly behaved as to refuse to pick their calls? <br />
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Who born dog, indeed!<br />
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It is therefore gratifying to see that new president appear to instill some fear of god in the men around him. <br />
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It is like a refreshing fresh air is breezing around the presidency when we see the Eastern Regional Minister, Victor Smith, rendering an unqualified apology to the President for his uncouth comments following the nomination of Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur as the Vice President. <br />
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We would never know what happened that made the minister made his hasty apology, but it show that we could expect things to be done differently this time around.<br />
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In his letter of apology, Mr. Smith wrote: “I wish to render unqualified apology to the President, HE John Dramani Mahama, Vice-President Nominee Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur and all others who have been aggrieved by my comments.”<br />
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“On the issue of the Vice Presidential nominee; I granted a number of interviews intending to clarify that the president’s nominee was not necessarily his Running Mate for the 2012 election. The import of my comment has been misconstrued.“<br />
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“I don’t have any ill feeling against Mr Amissah-Arthur. He is a loyal member of the NDC and I have no question about his credentials to occupy the office for which the President has nominated him.”<br />
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This is good as I cannot remember the late president Mills receiving any apology from any of the loud-mouthed braggarts that surrounded him. His so-called Director of Communications, Koku Anyidoho, embarrassed the late leader on more than two occasions; yet one never heard of him apologizing for his many mistakes<br />
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For long we have watched helplessly as government appointees leave their offices to become serial callers and useless debaters on radio and TV. This should stop. <br />
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A minister should have better employment for his time than engage in political debates 24/7.<br />
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Honestly, I believe that the president should have fired Mr. Smith the way President Rawlings did. <br />
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To begin with, it was not the business of regional ministers to tell the president whom to appoint to what position. <br />
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It shows gross disrespect when subordinates start to question the appointments made by their boss.<br />
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Let us hope that this is the beginning of the end of officials (elected and appointed) running riot with their mouths. <br />
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It is said that those that failed to learn the lessons of history are bound to repeat it. Let’s hope that the new courtiers at the palace will learn from the follies of their predecessors. <br />
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That life is ephemeral is a lesson we all we do well to learn and remember. Power is sweet but it is fleeting. Those that believe themselves Alph and Omega need only visit the morgue to realize the futility of all egos.<br />
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As we journey through the mystery that is life, we should learn to understand that nothing, absolutely nothing, last forever. One moment we are here, crowned in all the glories, the next moment we are gone inert and devoid of LIFE. As we lie naked in morgue, only the good things we manage to do in this life remain etched in the memories of those that had contact with us.<br />
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It is these memories that really matter as they are the only things that we will be remembered by. The fond memories of those with whom we came in contact are all that really matters when all is said and done and we journey to the land of the ancestors.<br />
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“<i>Power is not alluring to pure minds.</i>” - Thomas Jefferson <br />
<br />Femi Akomolafehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11181295541117761340noreply@blogger.com0