Interview with Nana Konadu Agyemang-Rawlings

Amsterdam (22 May 2011)

Ghana’s former First Lady, Nana Konadu Agyemang-Rawlings is one of the two leading members of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDC) who have challenged incumbent President John Atta Mills for the party’s presidential slot for the 2012 elections.

Following a protracted internecine battle, Ghana’s ruling party announced that the party’s Congress will take place on 8 July 2011 at the Brong Ahafo capital, Sunyani. Although the congress will discuss other matters, election of the presidential candidate tops the list.

Former President John Jerry Rawlings, a man known for expressing his mind on national and international issues, however vexatious, led the attack on the leadership style of his chosen successor.

According to Mr. Rawlings, a former military strongman later turned civilian president, the performance of the Mills government betrays the hopes and the aspirations of party’s supporters, who worked assiduously to ensure that the party scraped a razor-thin victory in the 2008 elections – the margin of victory was just 40,000 votes!

President Rawlings partisans gave as example of incompetence the string of judicial defeats the Mills government has suffered, including the famous fiasco in the Ya-Na murder and the throwing out of all the corrupt cases the government has initiated against officials of the former New Patriotic Party (NPP) government.

The rising cost of living, widespread corruption and the deteriorating state of water and electricity provision in the country are also cited as examples of the ineptitude of the Mills’ government.

President Mills supporters countered that his collegiate and non-combative leadership style is the best to build consensus and foster in a country that is highly polarized along ethnic religious and political lines. They argued further that rather than go on wholesale prosecution of former officials, they believe that their energies is best utilise to implement what they call their Better Ghana Agenda.

The quarrel, which was rumored for several months, finally blew open. Party supporters pitched camps with either Rawlings or Mills. Bitter accusations and insults were freely traded by NDC cadres who less than three years ago pride themselves as a united family of Akatosomanians (meaning?).

Ghanaians are not amused to watch their ruling party in such open disarray. They feel short-changed that a ruling party could expend so much energy in internal bickering whilst national problems cry for attention. They also worried about investors’ confidence in their fragile economy.

Attempts to reconcile the warring parties apparently failed as Mrs. Nana Konadu Agyemang- Rawlings resigned her Vice-Chairmanship position in the party, and went on to pick the presidential nomination form on 3 May 2011.

Three days later, President Mills partisans supporters pulled out all the stops as they escorted their candidate to the NDC office to pick his own form.
Traffic in the capital, Accra, was snarled up for hours as the president’s supporters turned the occasion into one giant street party.

Then followed a spectacle that would have brought tears of joy to the faces of die-hard communists of the old Soviet Union: In a performance broadcasted live on Ghana national television for six (6) hours, ministers of state and party hacks took turns to pledge fidelity to President Mills with many using the opportunity to castigate their party’s Founder, former president John Jerry Rawlings.

It was an unedifying spectacle and an expensive one at that. The GTV bill for the jamboree alone was reported to have cost GH₵18,000.

Nana Konadu was recently in Amsterdam to address a conference held on 21st May 2011 by the Amsterdam branch of the NDC dubbed ‘Ghana’s National Interest First.’

Femi Akomolafe met with her (on 22 May, 2011) to find out, among other things, the reasons for her seeking her party’s presidential mantle. Here is extract from the interview.

1. Thank you Nana for taking time from your busy schedule to talk with us. Can you tell us something about yourself?

Ans: I am Nana Konadu Agyemang-Rawlings, Ghana’s former First Lady and, hopefully, the next president of the republic of Ghana. I was born in the Ashanti Region of Ghana into a part of the very large Asante Royal family. It is a very extensive family.

2. In which part of Ghana did you grow up?

Ans: I grew up in various parts of Ghana, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. My father worked with the United African Company (UAC) and he was constantly on the move. Naturally, we went along with him.

3. Given such an almost nomadic life, what type of upbringing did you have?

Ans: Ah! It was not such a nomadic as we stay a while in the places my father was posted. It was like we will stay a few years in a place, and then he will get posted again. To their credit, my parents did their very possible best to create normalcy in our family. I had the best parenting a child could ever hope for. And you must also remember that in almost all the places we lived, there were always sizable Ashanti communities, so it was not altogether totally alien environment. I felt no cultural alienation because there are always people around with whom I could relate.

4. What are some of the things you remember from your youth?

Ans: I remember quite a lot. I remember that our house was always full of people. My parents are always taking care of different kinds of people all the time – both family members and total strangers. Being relatively well-off entails a lot of social responsibility in our culture. At any given time, my parents were paying the school fees of several people, taken care of hospital bills of indigents, those sorts of things. My parents cannot stand the sight of suffering people. Of course, that imbued in us deep sense of empathy with the down-trodden. My parents made us realize that it was purely the circumstance of birth that made our own privileged position possible. It was a lesson you don’t forget.

5. You are a wife and mother; tell us something about your family life?

Ans: I have a very close family. I have a loving and a caring husband and we have children all of whom we love very dearly. I tried to create the same caring family I grew up in – loving, caring and with deep sense of responsibility and social justice. We care and we share.

6. Of course, you are the wife of the famous JJ. Your husband is many things to many people; what sort of husband and father is he?

In short a great man. It is difficult not to love my husband once you got to know him. He is a man with the deepest sense of social justice. He relates easily to people because he does not believe or care about all the things that divide people – ethnicity or tribalism. He is a totally detribalized person. He cares very deeply, perhaps too deeply about the common people. He’s also very unpretentious and is the most unmaterialistic person you can ever find. It gives me great joy when I travel across Ghana and see the tremendous affection the ordinary people have for him. Ask yourself, how many leaders in Africa, in the world, have the same touch with common people. He is equally well loved across Africa; wherever we go, the common people relate very well with him.

7. You and your husband seem to be very close, can you tell us the areas where you have differences of opinions and how you resolve them.

Ans: You don’t expect me to come and wash my family dirty linen in public (laughs). But seriously, Femi, we do have our differences but we discuss them like matured adults and we reach compromises. On the family level, he has ideas about how to bring the children up and I have mine. We sit down, consider the interests of the children and based our decisions on what we think is the best for them. On the political level, we share a lot in common. Ideologically, we are both appalled by the level of poverty we see around us and we always like to do something about it. We believe that people should be at the center of any development, be it social, economic or political.

8. Apart from your husband whom you obviously adore, which other people have inspired you; who are your role models?

Ans: My parents had the profoundest influence on me. I drew my inspiration from them. I remain grateful for the upbringing they gave me.

9. Your husband has the distinction of being Ghana’s longest-serving head of state, what to you are his most important legacies?

Ans: I don’t feel like blowing my husband’s trumpets; but his record in office clearly speaks volume for themselves. The best way to judge him is to compare the Ghana he met in 1978 and the Ghana he left in the year 2000. We should judge leaders by their accomplishments and on this, in fairness, he did very well. Whatever our political disagreements, people should not forget that in 1978, Ghana was a collapsed state; a laughing stock. By the time he left in 2000, the country has rebounded. Of course not all the problems were solved, but Ghana has regained its lost luster and Ghanaians were once again proud of their country. The economy has been transformed beyond recognition. Gone were the empty shelves, the unpaid workers, the queues for essentials, including for agbelemo (cassava dough). My husband left a Ghana that was consistently adjudged the least corrupt in West Africa. Those are very important legacies.

10. After almost twenty years in power, your husband is retired but appears not to be tired. He continues to make what many consider incendiary statements on national issues. Why do you think that he finds retirement a difficult thing to deal with like, say, former President Kufuor?

Ans: Of course, quiet retirement would have been the easy option. But you must try to recognize and appreciate the tremendous efforts invested in bringing the nation back from the brink. It was a titanic struggle and no one who participated would like the country to slide back into those bad old days. That explains why he occasionally voices his concerns. Naturally, because of the way he relates to the ordinary people, they came to him to voice their concerns about the direction the country is going, and he tries to articulate these frustrations. Initially he tried to use the party’s internal communication systems to voice his concerns, but no one listened to him.

That explains why he went public. If some things in the country are going terribly wrong, we do no one a favor by burying our heads in the sand and pretend otherwise. The country will pay very dearly if we do not collectively let our leaders know the true position of things. We have come a long way, and we should do our best not to allow the situation deteriorate to the bad old days.

11. Let’s move to your own politics; you recently announced your candidacy for your party, the National Democratic Party (NDC), presidential slot. To many people, this is an aberration. The question is why are you challenging an incumbent president who represents your own party?

Ans: Femi, this is among the most difficult decisions I ever took. We have to begin by understanding that in our system of government, people vote for political parties and not individuals. Since people are elected on the platforms of their parties, it is only right that they remain faithful to the party’s ideals and guiding philosophy.
Our party, the great National Democratic Congress (NDC) came from a social democratic tradition. Our philosophy is guided by a desire to represent the down-trodden and ensure that citizens are not deprived of a reasonable life because of the circumstances of their birth. You also have to note that the NDC came from a revolutionary background, so we frown heavily on corruption in both party and state affairs.

The people of Ghana voted for the NDC based on the programmes we presented to them. We promised to effect a recognizable change in the governance of the country. We promised to fight corruption among other things. The people trusted us and we should try not to betray that sacred trust.

It became quite clear soon after our party narrowly won the 2008 elections that the new leaders were deviating from the party’s core principles. We tried all possible best to solve them using the party’s internal organs. This was not possible. I thought I could help the party by contesting and winning one of the Vice-presidential slots, but unfortunately, party executives continue to be marginalized. Party matters were left unattended and there is a great deal of despondency among our rank and file. Every attempt to thrash out the intra-party disputes was thwarted.

For the first time in the history of this country, members of the ruling party were defecting to opposition party. Something has to be done.

12. There is also the question of dynastic rule being impose in Ghana. How would you counter this?

Ans: This question ought not to arise because I am standing on my own merits. I am touting my own accomplishments. I should be judged on my own merits.

13.Whichever spin we try to put on it, the internecine warfare is not a good advertisement for your party. Elections are less than two years away, do you think that you will manage to patch things up or is the NDC on self-destruct mode?

Ans: Sorry, but I don’t like that self-destruct word you used. The NDC was built on the foundation of trust, accountability, probity and social justice. These are principled ideals to which we expect members to adhere. The NDC is for all those that subscribe to its philosophy and believe in its publicly espoused ideals.

14. Politics in Ghana, or in Africa I should say, have been reduced to gutter levels where insults are freely traded, are you going to do things differently? What are the issues you are going to address in your campaign?

Ans: The politics of insults is alien to the NDC culture because we have always seen ourselves as a united family where every member is treated with the utmost respect. I have not traded insult with anyone and I am not going to do it. The issues at stake are far bigger than individual egos; they concern the fundamental values of our party and of our nation.

There is a great despondency not only in the party but across the country. We got elected because we promised people that we are going to do things differently; that we are going to stop the corruption and provide them with amenities to make decent living possible.

The people have not seen any improvement in their lives and there is massive corruption all over the place. As I speak to you, Accra is experiencing acute water shortages and the electricity situation has worsened. Our party members are bitterly complaining about the direction the party and the country is taking and no one listen to them. The party structure has collapsed from the constituency to the national level. Officials and ministers are today calling the foot-soldiers that got us elected nuisance.

15. We have a woman elected in Liberia; do you think that Ghana is prepared and ready for a woman president?

Ans: And why not, Femi?

16. Unlike Liberia, Ghana has a sizable Muslim population some of whom believe, rightly or wrongly, that women should not be leaders. How do you address their concern?

Ans: I honestly don’t believe that the issue of gender is something that should agitate us in this age and time. Islamic countries like Turkey, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan have all elected or appointed women into high positions, so why are we debating my gender in Ghana?

17. Apart from the gender card and the famous Rawlings name, what is Nana Konadu bringing to the table?

Ans: I am bringing my vast experience to the table (laugh). Femi, I have a track record that no Ghanaian politician, male or female, can match. No president or

Minister have visited more places in Ghana that me. I have been to every nook and corner of Ghana. Through our movement, we have directly impacted the lives of several Ghanaians than any other organization. Through thick and thin, we struggled against all odds to empower women throughout the land. I have had several occasions to meet and share ideas with the best brains in the world.

The President John Jerry Rawlings name is definitely big; but Nana Konadu is a woman of substance on her own.

18. Across Africa, people have become disillusioned because of the many unkempt promises by their politicians, what are you going to do differently?
Ans: Again, I will answer that our track records clearly shows that we could be different. Do you know what; wherever I go in Africa, people come to express their appreciation to how we managed to transform Ghana for the better.

We did it before and we clearly can do it again. I am not claiming exclusive credit for my husband and me, but we managed to assemble the best available brains in the country to help deliver quality services to the people.

We also make Ghanaians part of the development agenda. You see, part of the problem I see in Africa is that leaders sit in the capital cities and make big pronouncements about development. I think this is wrong – leaders should go to the people and get them involved in whatever developmental project is being implemented Any development plan that fails to carry the people along is bound to fail.

You don’t sit in Accra and plan projects for Walewale. No, you have to go the people of Walewale and sit down with them to draw up the plan. That is the only way you can bring the people on board. And once you fail to get them on board and make them part of the project, you will never get their full support. Of course, they will come and clap when you come around but they won’t feel that they are part of it. Don’t plan over people’s head.

19. Naturally, you are going to the Congress with the hope of winning, but in case you lose, would it be possible for you to make a volte face and ask your supporters to support a man you deemed and have called incompetent?

Ans: I don’t like hypothetical questions. But you should know that the easiest thing for me would have been to stay aloof and join the Chorus boys.

20. And in case you win, do you expect president Mills partisans to support you?

Ans: Again, I don’t see this as a personality contest. I expect loyal party members to support whoever emerges as the candidate.

21. Let’s suppose that you win your party’s congress and the national elections, what type of Nana Konadu presidency should we look forward to?

A presidency, in which Ghanaians will, once again, be very proud. A presidency that will fight corruption, ensure accountability and probity at every level of government. Mine will be a presidency that trusts Ghanaians enough to carry them along in all its developmental efforts. My presidency will strive to ensure that no child’s future is jeopardise by the circumstance of her birth. Mine will be a presidency that will promote and ensure social justice.

On Party And National Interests

We in Africa lend great credence to the saying that new converts make the worst zealots. We appear to do nothing but take foreign ideas we barely understood, copy them blindly, use and abuse them, and turn ourselves into grotesque caricatures. Little wonder we are the laughing stock of the world.

Let us take this Christianity thing as an example. Starving Europeans, escaping hunger, left their desolate, god-forsaken icy abodes to invade our land. They brought with them their brand of religion and the book they claim their god wrote for them. Although we find their notion of god at variance with our own conception, they managed to persuade some of our folks to embrace their faith.

After much struggle, political agitation, and open warfare, the Europeans finally left for their shores.

Fifty some years later, a European visiting our land will barely recognize the Christianity that our people practice as the same one that he introduced to us.

In his country, the European knows that people go to church only on Sundays. And on that day, they spend only about one hour in service and go back to their homes until the following Sunday. Even on that day of worship, the churches in Europe are quiet, the service a somber affair to afford people the opportunity to commune silently and directly with their god.

A European that went to the streets of Europe to make noise about his god would be deemed insane and consigned to a lunatic asylum. No European, in his right senses, would disturb his neighbor because he wants to praise his god.

The European will be confounded to see that in Africa we practically live in churches nowadays. There is a church of one description or the other in every square meter of Africa.

African Christians believe that national laws are of no significance when it comes to worshipping their new god. Laws on not establishing churches in residential areas are flouted with impunity. Ordinances against street worship or conducting religious services in public transport are broken with abandon. Church services in Africa have become giant noise-making affairs where laws and orders are broken willfully as men and women profess their version of piety.

Christianity is everywhere on our beloved continent -- in the churches, homes, streets, markets, farms. No place is spared in the new business of Christian evangelism sweeping across Africa.

No bus leaves a station until a Christian prayer is said. Shouts of "Thank you, Jesus," fill the air as planes touch down on our tarmacs. Today, no state occasion takes place until a Christian priest invokes the blessings of his god.




readmore.

Miss Ghana 20xx

It was a hot, very hot and breezeless November noon. The great African sun hung in the cloudless sky as though in great anger. Its needlelike rays cut through the atmosphere with effortless ease to sear my skin. It was hot, very hot. I perspired intensely. The air was balmy; there was no breeze - the leaves were stilled as though in great mourning. It was one of those hot, windless afternoons when the heavens seem prepared to choke lives out of terrestrial mortals.

I sat at my usual spot, nursing a cold larger. By this time of the day, the No 1 Spot at Osu is just waking up to life. Clientele were coming and going in ones and twos. A well-graffittied bus disgorged a horde of European tourists. They must have traveled long distances for they were dirty, unkempt, shaggy and waggy. The seats of their trousers, mostly jeans, were browned from grime from far and wide. The men wore week-old beards and the women among them were disheveled, their hair hung on them without style. They giggled loudly, animatedly as though sharing a great joke.

The blue car raced up to the parking lot, Accra dust following in its wake. It screeched to a dramatic stop, millimeters away from the plank barriers. The driver was either showing-off or s\he knew his\her onions well. The door flew open, and a tall, bony lady scrambled out and melodramatically kicked the door shut. She raced to the bar, her populous hair, made up in the style of Whitney Houston when drug has not ravaged her life, flying. From the bar, she collected a glass of what looked like, from where I was sitting, Campari or Mandigo and a bottle of Soda. She made straight for the empty seat beside mine, the hard soles of her shoes abrading the dry ground. The scent of her expensive perfume wafted into my nostril - it had the fragrance of cherries.

"Can I take the seat?" She purred, looking at my face directly while pointing to the empty chair.

“You may." I replied, meeting her very steady gaze.

"Thank you." She crooned. She sat down, taking time to brush the seats of her dress. She mixed her drinks and took a long draught. Placing the glass down, she breathed very deeply, Yoga-style, and apparently felt better. She swept her populous hair back in a deliberate, almost sensuous movement. Although, she cannot exactly be described as crunchingly beautiful, she's nice looking and looked well polished. In the parlance of the fashion-industry, I think she'll be called a sophisticate. She has a slender, almost delicate physique, very flat buttocks, and a long face. Her small breasts were straining against the tight, chic dress she wore.

“Feeling better?” I asked, trying to strike up a conversation.

“Wow!” She intoned. “I had a thirst that would kill a donkey. Sorry, that phrase is overused, but I cannot come up with a better one.” She pouted her mouth, eye-lashes flashing. She was really over-made-up. Her face was like a rainbow - painted in different colors and shades. And I will be damned if she’s wasn’t flirting very openly.

“Nice wagon.” I said pointing to the car.

She smiled shyly, “Thank you. It’s a prize.” She added as an afterthought.

My interest in the lady was re-kindled. I gaped at her anew. I beckoned to a passing waiter pointing to my empty glass. He gave me a chauvinistic stare and went to an Arab, beefy and hairy like a pig. I ignored the slight.

“A Prize?” I wondered.

She smiled another of her airline-hostess smiles. “Miss Ghana.” She proclaimed watching my face for the inevitable shock.

I kept my face straight, “To what do I owe the privilege of hosting the most beautiful woman in Ghana?”

If she wasn’t so over-processed, the smile would have been Epicurean. “Point of correction, or of order as they say, you’re not hosting me. I paid for my own drink,” She accused, “Secondly, I do not believe in throwing my weight around.” She found herself witty and laughed.

The 007 driving style. The false smiles. The make-up that will fill the faces of many street-walkers, and she doesn’t believe in throwing her weight around. I decided to aggravate her.

“How does it feel to be the most beautiful damsel in Ghana?”

Another skittish smile. A dab at her psychedelic face. “By HIS grace, it is now handleable (sic). It was difficult to cope at the beginning. What with all the attentions! The press, the journalists, the TV lights, the dinner parties, the charity balls, the various visits to this and that do, the family pressures, the peer jealousies, the bad-wishers, the hanger-ons, the loafers who would like to take to take advantage. Not to mention the uncountable Valentines. The beginning was really, really difficult. Thank God, it is now copeable (sic). I can go on, but I will only bore you. I guess you’ve better things to do than listen to the wailing of a Beauty Queen. ”

“Try me.” I urged her on.

She called a passing waitress. My companion was either not well-known or not a regular, the service girl gave an insolent look before ambling to our table. Her tray held in front of her, she hovered over us like an Ijesa debt-collector. She ordered Campari and Soda. The steward was still engaged with the Arab. I asked the service-girl to bring a drink for me. I offered to pay, my table-mate refused, “Let’s go Dutch: You pay yours, I pay mine.”

“How did you get into the Beauty business?”

She laughed. “You made it sound so, how should I put it, lewd?”

“I’m sorry, but my English vocabulary is rather limited. Were you a professional model?”

“My God, no! I was, sorry, I am a student.”

“A student!” I was genuinely shocked.

“You may it sounds so awful. Yes, I was a student. Pedagogy and Child-Psychology. I came into the, I guess I’ve to borrow your expression, ‘Beauty Business’ by accident. I just entered for the fun of it. Imagine my astonishment when I was selected. The biggest trouble now is how to go back to the campus and become an ordinary student again. My term is almost over.”

“Are you regretting it?”

“Hell, no. Sorry, I guess that it is rather un-lady, rude thing to say. No, I don’t regret it one bit. I am having great fun. It has been a tremendous pleasure.” She took her drink from the waitress, mixed and took a sip.

“Pleasure, “ I repeated. ‘Are you happy? There is a big difference between happiness and pleasure.”

“And I thought I was the pedagogue, or should I say the Pedantic.” She found humor in her sarcasm.”

“Beauty doesn’t last forever; knowledge is eternal.”

“You are a nut case.” She seemed genuinely horror-stricken by my presence.

“How so?”

“Most men would be dreaming about how to jump into bed with me, here you are philosophizing about my future. Your concern for my welfare is appreciated, really. You don’t imagine I get to where I am without been able to take care of myself, do you?”

She’s a good actress. No one watching us would imagine her volcanic eruptions. She kept her voice low, her arms swaying as though emphasizing important points.

“There’s more to life than horizontal jogging, aka sex. No, I am not imagining anything. I am just wondering why an intelligent woman will throw away a chance to get a good education for the transient pleasure of pretending to be the most beautiful girl in Ghana.”

She looked as though I’d slapped her. “Pretending.” She cried. “I am not pretending. I won it fair and square.”

“May I ask you a question?”

“I won’t cry.”

“Do you honestly believe yourself to be the most beautiful girl in Ghana. Pretense aside.”

“Pretense,“ she howled like an affronted Imam. “Why do you think that I am pretending? There was a contest and the experts say that I am the most beautiful girl. What have you got against that?”

“The experts,” I sneered. “What makes them the experts?”

“You seemed to be a supreme cynic. If they are not experts, how do they get into conducting the show. How do they get on TV and the newspapers. God, I won the contest fair and square. How dare you?”

“Getting on the TV or into the papers does not an expert make. What qualifies your experts to judge beauty - a most subjective thing in the world? What conceited egos moved your experts to declaring themselves the Solomons of Beauty Contests?”

“Why are you trying to aggravate me? If you are a woman, I’d say that you’re jealous.”

“Aggravating you is not what is on my mind. The whole system stinks, that’s what is getting my goat. See,” I bellowed, shaking with Yoruba emotions. “What’s exacerbating me is the whole gamut called Miss Ghana Show. Don’t take it personal, my dear. I have nothing against you personally. I am grinding an ax against those stupid jackets-and-ties with their moribund colonial mentality. Those who are perpetually under the tutelage of the Aryan Masters. Those who will sell their souls for dollars. Those dirty old men who runs the show are the people vexing me. Dirty old men who should be in bed with their wives staying up night to watch, admire and pass judgments on the legs and buttocks of girls young enough to be their grand-daughters. They and those cultural imperialists, those grinning Aryan bastards whose White Supremacists heads are filled with the notion that any stupid European idea should be universalized. Those colonial tricksters hell-bent on polluting the world with Euro-junks. I blame you not, my dear. You are just a victim, like the rest of us.

“Look,” I cried. Of course, she was looking. “It is not enough for the European to mis-educate us, he has to tell us who our gods are. He has taken it upon himself to lecture us on what political, economic and social systems are good for us. He now has taken over the function of determining for us what our notion of beauty should be. As in everything, the clever Aryan has chosen an image that best approximate himself. Our Jesus must be white. Our socio-political system must be Western. Look at you, the whiteman has decreed that our Beauty Queens must be those who look anything but Africans. You have bleached your skin, your figure is skeletal, you’ve got no backyard - to use our street expression. In fact, were you a fossil, no archaeologist will classify you a Black woman. And on your head has been placed the crown of our Beauty Queen. And your head is swelling with vain-pride. Instead of staying with your studies, you abandoned it to turn yourself into a whore. Whoring with the high and the mighty. What future do you see for yourself, ask those who had gone before you? Of course, they have to justify themselves, the rogues. They have to justify the gigantic fraud they call Miss Ghana Show. They threw you a car, made you attend endless parties, get you into radio stations, put you on the TV, made you smile like a cheap whore and your head is swaying with vanity. Why don’t you look around you? When it comes to beauty, I mean real beauty, however biased our opinions might be, do you think that you can hold a candle to the waitress over there?“ I asked, pointing to the girl who served us drink. The service girl saw us looking at her, said something silently and looked down.

Miss Ghana was astounded. Her face burned with fury. “Perhaps, your daughter or your girl-friend lost the contest. That’s the only thing that could explain your unbridled antagonism. I thought I was with a gentleman. Fancy the put-downs. I didn’t sit down with you in order to allow myself to be insulted like some street-walker. I am not a trollop.”

I was undaunted. My Yoruba blood, incensed by the burning heat and the haughty Beauty Queen, was boiling with rage. I met her gaze with gaze, matched her anger with anger. I was angered by her supercilious manners and was determined to provoke her further. “Me, jealous” I cried. The waitress cut the drift that things were not all jolly with us and ambled closer. She needed some gist to make the gossip circuits. I said nothing to discourage her. “I cherish intelligence far above good looks. I will not be caught dead with a woman stupid enough to participate in that vapid pageant. I will not have a daughter who feels herself justified by some dirty old men. No daughter of mine will expose herself to such public ridicule for the sake of being declared a Beauty by some lubricious, moronic old-men, however long their ties. No daughter of mine will dress up in those filthy, flimsy rags and sauntered up and down, shaking her ass like a low-priced quean to be admire by some mindless, unprincipled, amoral, wanton, coarse, unconscionable sugar-daddies who has lost all claims to human decency. No daughter of mine will have a need for the stamp of approval from some low-keyed, depraved, immoral parent who have time for such debauched, decadent affairs. No offspring of mine will have time for ancient sexual-perverts. I will not sire a daughter who will choose prostitution over a good education. I will have no daughter who will have such low-opinion of herself that what some morally-bankrupt and spiritually-decadent old men think will count for anything with her. I’d like to be the proud father of a daughter who knows that what is in her head is worth more than good looks. You know what is getting my goat?” I asked Miss Ghana.

She gave me a withering look, threw a dirty look at the waitress who ambulated away quietly. “I thought you were never going to stop your insults.”

“What’s is irksome is that otherwise intelligent ladies like yourself, on whom parents and society has expended so much energies, financial and otherwise, should allow themselves to be bamboozled by cheap vain-glories and all the show-biz glitters to abandon their studies. Once again, the whiteman has succeeded in turning Africans into a caricature of himself. Have you read ‘Soul on Ice?’

Miss Ghana pouted her mouth, “No. Why?”

“I was just reminded of what Eldridge Cleaver wrote about the white man and his woman. The white man is launching an assault to turn our women into what he’s made of his own woman.”

“And that is?”

“According to Cleaver, ‘The white man has turned the white woman into a weak-minded, weak-bodied, delicate freak, a sex pot and place her on a pedestal.’”

Killing Osama, Again!

Hello...

Hello, yes. Who is calling?

Hello. Femi, wake up, are you still asleep?

Yes, can't you see what time it is? Why shouldn't I be asleep?

Ah, my friend, get up. How can you sleep at a time like this?

What happened, what time like this are we talking about?

You can't be serious, Femi. Don't tell me you can sleep at a momentous, historic time like this. I am dying of pure excitement. I could die now and go straight to heaven and feel very fulfilled. Femi, this is too good to be true. What! Don't tell me that you've not heard the good tiding?

Don't tell me that you woke me up to peddle your version of piety. Let me get back to my sleep. Some of us have to earn our daily bread.

Come on, man. Turn your TV on and see and hear the glorious news.

What, Jesus came back?

Don't be blasphemous, my friend. They got him!

Whom did they get? Who got whom?

Turn on the TV, Femi, and stop asking silly questions. CNN, BBC, FOX, al-Jazeera, Deutche Welle, France, China, Ghana, Burkina Faso, every television station in the world is running live commentaries, and you're sleeping. I am lucky that I have this satellite thing; I am switching channels like crazy.

I don't have a television, I told you that several times.

Yeah, I forgot you live your hermitic lifestyle. Now you have missed the biggest news of the century.

Come on, tell me now. They got whom?

It is now you want to know? American Special Forces have got their man...and in Pakistan, of all places.

I thought they always got their man. Whom did they get this time around?

Don't be daft, my friend. Who have they spent the past ten years searching for? Who is the world's Terrorist Numero Uno?

I would say Tony Blair or George Bush, Jr. Now, we can add King Sarkozy and maybe Emperor Obama.

You really think that this is funny or that it's time for wise-cracking?

No, I am not wise-cracking; those guys top my list of wanted terrorists.

Who cares about your puny and insignificant list? Who cares about any list you care to draw up?

So, now that you have managed to disturb my sleep, can you tell me what all the excitement is about?

Osama bin Laden is dead. He has been killed in Pakistan. He was killed in "Operation Geronimo" by the US SEALs in Abbottabad, near Islamabad.

Says who?

The news circulated for hours but now we have heard from the horse's mouth. President Obama just gave a speech at the White House. He has confirmed the deed. Wow, the man is good. The delivery was flawless. A real Commander in Chief! Do you know what Geronimo means?

How would I know and why should I care?

Geronimo is a Chiricahua Apache leader who resisted the US government policy to consolidate his people on reservations and led series of raids against Mexican and American settlements in the Southwest. Ah, I Googled it up, my friend.

Hmmmm.

For your information, the terrorist leader was killed in a lavish mansion near a huge military base. Americans are good, terribly good. We need their type of "can-do" spirit in Africa. Wow!

Hmmmm.

Is that all you have to say, hmmmm? Are you not going to join in the huge celebration? The world has seen the end of a mass murderer! Crowds have gathered and they are dancing around the White House and all the streets of America. America feels tall and proud as it rightly should. This is a good time to be an American.

Hmmmm.

Come on, Femi; learn to give credit where it is due. I know you don't like America, but at least on this occasion they did the world a tremendous good.

Hmmmm.

Why all the hmmmms, Femi?

I was just wondering how many times you can kill a man...



readmore.

The Mills Gambit

‎"A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the quality of his actions and the integrity of his intent." – Nicole Rae Lewis

“If you bite the hands that feed you, you will go hungry.” – African proverb.

The supreme military strategist, Tsun tzu, gave this advice: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer?”

It is not an advice the president, Professor John Atta Mills, seems to have ever heard. Whatever his other attributes, no one can accuse the president of being a consummate politico, a decisive leader, a brilliant political Strategist or even a Tactician.

It is said that if you don’t stand for something, you will fall for everything. It is pretty difficult to know what president Mills stands for. Two and half years into his presidency, the professor has not come out to boldly articulate his vision for his nation or his party.

The president looks increasingly like a man who is just swimming with the current.
Not being able to able to rise above the common hoipoloi is not the hallmark of a true leader.

Whatever one says about presidents President John Jerry Rawlings and President John Kufuor, they are decisive leaders. It is difficult to imagine either man crying himself hoarse to collect his party’s nomination paper. It is equally difficult to imagine someone having the temerity to challenge them for supremacy in the party they led. The image of an Executive President hectoring Customs and Excise officials is also not very re-assuring.

If our good-natured, humble, god-fearing president commands no respect within his own political party, how does he hope to be respected in the country at large?

The honest truth is that the president is being badly served by those close to him and has his ears. Increasingly president Mills behave and look more like the former Nigerian President, Shehu Shagari.

Like Professor Mills, Shagari was touted as a humble, god-fearing and deeply religious man. Whilst all these could be useful attributes in someone aspiring to a position in the priesthood, they are hardly sufficient in the rough and tumble, shark-infested world of modern politics where it is all about barracuda eating the small fishes.

It is not the ideal; it just happens to be that way.

The problem with Shehu Shagari, and also increasingly with president Mills, is that both are men of very little vision or competence in public administration, and very sadly they surrounded themselves with sycophantic advisers, who refused to tell them unalloyed truth. Both are not leaders who could galvanise men into greater heights.
In countries like the US with very strong national institutions, bumblers like Bush jr. can ramble their ways through their eight years term, but a country like Ghana needs a confident, decisive, inspired and inspiring leader. It needs a leader with both passion and vision.

President Mills ill-articulated Better Ghana Agenda contains no vision to move the country forward and not even his most partisan supporter can accuse the president of being a passionate man.

Like President Mills, Shagari advisers also confused meaningless perambulations for great momentum. While the lots of Nigerians sank into the abyss, Shagari traveled around the world and embarked of sod-cutting and other exercises that should not at all engage presidential attentions.

To cap it, Shagari officials were insanely corrupt. Whilst Shagari pontificated about good governance and a fight against corruption, his officials looted the treasury to extent that left Nigerians stupefied. Many Nigerians danced on the streets when General Buhari and co terminated the kleptomaniac rule of Shagari on 31, December 1993.

President Mills cannot claim to be unaware of the monumental rot that is taking place under his watch. He shouldn’t just glibly dismiss the allegations, some of them well-documented, of corruptions against his officials.

President Mills, luckily, is not likely to meet Shagari’s fate; he nevertheless faces challenges of almost cosmic proportions.

On July 8, his ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) will organize a congress to its elect officials and presidential candidate for the 2011 elections.

This is serious business which also represents a gross slap in the face for Professor Mills. His is the ruling party and to have someone within the party challenging his candidacy is serious indictment on his type of leadership.

Whatever the outcome on 8 July, 2011 NDC elections, president Mills is not going to come out smelling like roses. It is for the president a situation of head he loses, tail he cannot win?

Although national elections are still more than a year away and that a day is eternity in politics, but by allowing the situation within his party to deteriorate to the extent that he was openly challenged leaves open several questions about competence, judgments and a serious question mark on the president’s political astuteness.

An astute politician is one with good radar to detect potential troubles and nip them in the bud before they turn to calamity. This was not the case with President John Atta Mills.

Everyone knew that all is not well within the NDC, and for the president to have left it unattended leaves serious question mark on his political judgment.

Surrounding himself with sycophantic ‘yes-men’ also reveals the president as a man with deep character flaw. Men with self-confidence hardly have time for feeble-minded palace jesters.

Whatever we think of him, President John Jerry Rawlings is a titan of both the Ghanaian and NDC political landscape. To have conspired to marginalized and antagonized such a man rather than seek ways to accommodate and massage his ego leaves the president’s political judgment open to serious questions.

There is no way that President Mills will come out of the congress looking good. And should he emerge victorious, it will be a pyrrhic victory as the Friend of Nana Konadu agyemang-Rawling (FONKAR) faction in his party is sufficiently aggrieved to sabotage his re-election efforts.

All these are sweet music to the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP).

For the FONKAR group, the president has committed the gravest sins in politics: betrayal and ingratitude. Their belief that the president was ‘Rawlings –made,’ was valid as far as they are concerned. And to have him treat their hero with such huge disdain and ridicule is a sacrilege the President John Jerry Rawlings partisans are not likely to forget in a hurry.

The spectacle of the president deploying the likes of Ablakwa to flay President John Jerry Rawlings is enough to send the FONKAR group ballistic and rumours are already rife that the group would leave the NDC should the president wins.

Not to be discounted is the perceived marginalisation of the ‘foot soldiers’ that helped the NDC prosecute the electioneering war.

The foot soldiers consider the president and his team a bunch of ingrates. The insults rained upon them by member of the government and threats to ‘deal’ with them are sufficient to move the foot soldiers to thwart the president’s ambitions.

There are also those within the NDC that believe that the monumental corruption in the Mills administration has betrayed the core principles of their party. They are not likely to be moved by from their position that their party needs a change in its leadership.

For all these factions within the NDC, nothing but a massive purge of their party will do after the congress. We might see enough blood-letting on 8 July 2011 to make Hitler’s Night of the Long Knives look like a child’s play.

Then there is the big question of why? Why did president Atta Mills allowed the situation in his party descend to this gutter level? Why didn’t the elders of the party use internal party structures to help stabilized the situation before it got out of hand?

It would have helped if the president has come out openly to fight the Rawlingses and state his case against them robustly and clearly.

This would have endeared him greatly to a large section of the populace who are fed up with the Rawlingses and would love to see a courageous president that is proving to be his own man.

But, alas, the President refused to show his face. He allowed political charlatans and opportunists like Ablakwa, Haruna Iddrisu, Boateng and his other minions to do his dirty works for him.

The question is: which of these stomach politicians count for anything in Ghana politics? Who born dog, indeed!

When it matters the most, President Mills refused to come out swinging and this leaves him open to ridicule as a coward. Little wonder the cartoonist had field day caricaturing him as a mindless child.

With the authority of his office as the Executive President, the president is invested with awesome power and authority to firmly stamp his authority on the nation and, especially, on his party. He’s the leader of the party, for crying out loud!

President Mills failed to do so and his advisors thought the best way to sell him is to have him travel across the land cutting sods here and there like a common mason!
The presidential time should be more productively deployed than having him cutting sod for bore-holes, toilets and eateries at universities.

A president can be excused if he’s shown cutting sods for large-scale agricultural project, big industries but lavatories, ah - that’s not something that should engage the attention of even a minister!

In July last year, I wrote a piece entitled, ‘President John Jerry Rawlings is getting his comeuppance,” http://ekitiparapo.blogspot.com/2010/07/rawlings-is-getting-his-comeuppance.html.

Here is an excerpt: “Post mortem: Every patriotic of Ghana should be concerned about the inner wrangling in the ruling party. No, it has nothing to do with whether or not we support one faction or the other. Self-interest makes it imperative for us to show our concerns. As the party entrusted with running the affairs of our nation, it is our concern to know what is going on.

President Mills is a human being and according to biologists the first concern of any organism is self-preservation. Whatever he professes Professor Mills is a politician, period. He cannot pretend not to be concerned about his re-election. This concern will, of course, translate into ensuring that he uses some of his time on tackling the problems besetting his party. He knows that he cannot launch a new party and hope to win the next election. It is also inconceivable that he will join the NPP or any other party. So, he‘s stuck with his NDC party. Given the formidable opposition of the Rawlingses (they won quite a sizable chunk of the party executive posts contested at Tamale), they cannot be discounted.

All these mean that our president will be a very worried man, indeed. We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that any time our president spends on intra-party squabbling is time that could have been put into productive use in solving some of the problems facing our nation.

This precisely is the President Mills Dilemma.

How did President Mills get himself into this fine mess? It’s difficult to imagine President Rawlings or even President Kufuor facing the same problem in their parties.
Unlike President Mills, both men do not come across as one whose authority is open to questioning. Methinks that is the hallmark of a true leader.

Leaving the Young Turks (Rawlings ‘greedy bastards’) in his party to fight his battle for him also portrays the president as a coward.

So what are the options open to him? Methinks that he should come out boldly and confront the problem head-on. He should let one and all know where he stood on any of the issues confronting his leadership style and the way forward for the party. He has the whole authority of his office to back him up; it is time he uses it. These are not the times to be meek; these are occasions for decisiveness.

It is said that if you do not stand for something, you will fall for everything. As things stood, no one knows where our president stood. He needs to come out candidly and forcefully to declare his stand. Anything less would not jell.

Alas, I am not his advisor!

President Mills Comedy of Errors

Were President Atta Mills to know what is good for him, he will fire all his advisers.

The sad truth is that the good professor does not appear to have been the recipient of good advice from those that are close to him.

The president’s advisors have done little but badly mis-advised him and this has led to the high office of the presidency been reduced to a huge joke. It is a crying shame.

There have been too many unnecessary gaffes and faux pas that should normally not have reached the presidency, but which the president has had to deal with. The presidency appears increasingly to function more and more like a fire service department than being an effective, proactive and dynamic institution.

The current crises engulfing the ruling party, the National Democratic Party, NDC, is just the latest unnecessary national embarrassment to a president whose appointed (well-remunerated) aides lack the capacity to shield their chief.

The president must also share in the blame. There is a saying that: “Show me your friend and I‘ll know the type of person you are.”

The type of company you keep, says a lot about your character.

The question ought to be asked why any intelligent man would surround himself with an incompetent crew. The president’s appointed crew was of such low caliber that it was promptly and appropriately dubbed Team B. What are men like ET Mensah doing in any modern cabinet? Even the president’s men joke about it like it was a laughing matter.

Ok, they are Team B, but at the level of the presidency, where ponderous decisions that affect the destiny of the nation are crafted and implemented, a country deserves to choose the best available brains. Ghana has a large pool of highly competent professionals so the president must give an answer why he chose to go for low-grade aides.

We would never know whether the president's own inadequate psychological make-up makes him uncomfortable with talented professionals.

The depth of the incompetence of president Mills’ men was laid bare for the whole world in that unsavory public masturbation the public was treated to on 5 May 2011.

Whoever advised the president to block traffic, inconvenient the people he pledged to serve and have the state-owned GTV run live commentary of his going to pick his party’s nomination paper, deserve a tremendous kick in the ass. Whoever dreamt that asinine plot up deserve an immediate sack.

What an un-presidential farce! What a mindless abuse of state (even party or private) resources on a useless enterprise that does nothing to elevate the politics of the nation, or enhance the office of the president.

What an unedifying spectacle to see the president of a nation that aspires to become middle-Income in five years reduced to blocking traffic, having his police, soldiers and security details manhandle people, all because of he wants to appear strong in his party’s internecine war?

Sorry, but that was a very unedifying spectacle! I didn’t see a strong president; I saw a charade, a circus.

Some things just do not appear right no matter how much gloss we paste over them. Does a president, in two and half years of his four-year term, need to self-flagellate himself before the public in order to secure the loyalty of his party members?

It is inconceivable to imagine former President John Jerry (JJ) Rawlings been reduced to the level of puppetry president Atta Mills exhibited on May 5!

It is doubtful if anyone in his party would have dared challenged JJ, to begin with. Whatever accusation we might tar him with, president Rawlings simply has the gravitas to firmly stamp his authority on his party that leaves no one in doubt of who is in charge.

We also witnessed how former President John Kufuor firmly and robustly stamped his authority on his party when voices of dissension arose. A chairman and a secretary-general were casualties when they crossed the Gentle Giant.

That is the mark of true leader.

Among the qualities necessary in leadership are boldness and decisiveness. It is said that a ship cannot afford to have two captains, and it is equally clear that two chefs cannot coexist peacefully in a kitchen.

Mr. Machiavelli rightly informed us that it is better for a Prince to be feared than loved. Maybe it is time someone lend President Mills a copy of The Prince.

Our elders have many wise sayings to support the position that a good leader must show strong and decisive leadership attributes; one of them is that two rams cannot drink from the same bowl.

There are enough warnings about the rumblings in the NDC that the only surprise is why the president left thing to degenerate to the gutter level without doing a darn thing about it.

Political survival instincts alone should have informed the president to stamp his authority on the party as soon a she was elected. His political antennae should have long picked up the threat posed by former President John Jerry Rawlings’ and his gang, he should have either reined or roped them in.

For whatever reason, President Mills did not do this, he is today reaping the harvest of his indecisiveness and the country is the worse off for it.

Expensive presidential time that should have been utilized to address the nation’s myriads of problems is now devoted to solving inter-party bickering.

President Mills appears like a leader who is afraid to rock the boat, and want to sit on the fence and be liked by all and sundry. This is not good enough. Leadership is not a popularity contest.

In the management of human affairs, there will be occasions when the whip needs to be swung and heads cracked; a leader should not shy away from doing so.

Human interests being what they are, it is simply impossible to please all the people all the time. It should not be the leader’s job to be Mr. Nice Guy. At the end of the day, it is results that count. It is through their achievements that leaders are judged.

What are we supposed to think of a president who needs to drag party and state officials from their duty posts to come and pledge allegiance to him on national television? C’mon, we are not in the Soviet era? Why should a leader need public declaration of fidelity from his appointees?

This was a badly scripted act that did little to enhance the president’s stature! President Atta Mills needs to do more. He needs to sit up and raise the bar of his performance. Whether or not he wins the party’s nomination, the president needs to crack the whip. He needs to change the perception that he’s an effeminate and indecisive leader with no mind of his own.

Who needs the sycophantic declaration of political jobbers? Mr. President should start to credit us with some intelligence. By dragooning his cabinet and party hacks to swear public allegiance to him, the president more than declared that all is not well.

Public declarations of support for a president are disgusting sight to which we should not be treated. Those are not what we want to see and they are not what we should be seeing from our Executive President.

We are not interested in the president’s ruckus with his party members. A wise man does not bring his family palaver to the public square. The president should solve his party’s problem at his own time; his time with us should be spent on addressing our pressing national issues.

We have enough brain to know that political jobbers owe their bread and butter to the president, and will do anything and everything to ensure that their positions are not threatened, so what exactly is Mr. President telling us?

Was he hoping to surprise us that his ministers support him publicly? I just cannot get the message the president’s handlers tried to send to us.

It is indeed sad to see the governance of Ghana reduced to such spectacle. 5 May 2011 mark a new low in the political life of the nation. All these bring us to my biggest beef with president Mills.

The president’s handlers never lose any opportunity to remind us about his academic accomplishments. A professor at twenty something, they keep on telling us.

The question is thus beggared why a professor who get elected to lead his country appear so bereft of great ideas on how to move his nation forward in giant leaps and bounds. What is the point in brandishing one’s intellectual pedigree if it is not to think big?

More importantly, why would an intellectual giant surround himself with mental Lilliputians who are incapable of generating any useful ideas or raise the level of any intellectual debate?

A great mind will surround himself only with like-minded people and will have no time for lickspittles and sycophantic hanger-ons.

Truth be told, President Mills have not enunciated any big and bold action plan into which we can sink our teeth.

Did the president handlers expect us to be enthused by the sight of Ghana’s Chief Executive cutting sods for KVIP toilets and canteens in universities?

We expected our president to cut sods for giant industrial, scientific and agricultural projects, not one that takes great pride in cutting tapes for primary and secondary schools.

We have many public and private universities in the country. We also have lots of town planners, surveyors and architects, yet we cannot fathom how to build affordable and decent houses for our people. Our president is reduced to a mere sod-cutter and we are expected vibrate with happiness and gratitude.

The job of our president is to utilize the human resources of the land to improve our lives. It is duty to think and dream big and make us part of his big ideas.

Alas, the people that surround our Chief of State cannot fathom the need to raise the standard. They are contended to trumpet the building of KVIPs as solid achievements for their over-flogged Better Ghana Agenda!

I sometime try to imagine what type of brains some of our officials are endowed with! Rather than think of how to build houses with toilets, they are thinking in terms of public toilet in the year 2011 and beat their chests in triumph!

Why on earth should our people in this age and time still build houses without toilets? That should be question to agitate our minds.

Again we are told that Mr. President sleeps and breathe with the gods, and we often see him parleying often with priests.

But why can’t he find the time to call the scientists and engineers in the land and gave them very SPECIFIC NATIONAL ASSIGNMENTS to solve within a specific time frame?

Let us take electricity as example of a major problem that requires bold leadership. Despite lots of noises, we still cannot generate and distribute enough electricity for domestic and industrial needs.

But for the foresight of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana Inc. would have grounded to a halt by now. The Akosombo Dam built by the Osagyefo continues to sustain us.

The Osagyefo also established the university that today bears his name at Kumasi. It is a university of science and technology and was set up to help with the nation’s quests for scientific and technological breakthrough.

Sadly, not much has been achieved as we continue to import all our technical needs. We can take solar lantern as an example of a specific problem we can set our minds to solve within few months. KNUST should be given a marching order to develop and get affordable solar lantern on the GH market within two years.

Another example is the dirty waterways in the nation’s capital, Accra. Legon should be tasked with coming up with solution that will breathe life into the dead waterways. The water can become arteries for transportation, agriculture and pure leisure.

Those who argue about how we are going to get the money should ask themselves where other people get theirs. They can also ask what could be done with all the money the telecomm companies waste on their useless jamborees or what we waste on parties.

A friend told me something few years back that still leaves my head reeling: He said we should remain grateful to our forebears because without them he cannot imagine what we would have done with our lives. He gave examples of the cutlass, hoe and the mortar\pestle. He said without formal schooling, our ancestors invented those useful things. Thousands of years later and with many universities, polytechnics, SSS, JSS, we have not improved upon any of them.

Why can't we also dream BIG?

Why can't we also dream BIG?

"The future belongs to those that believe in the beauty of their dreams." - Anon

For some unfathomable reasons while I enjoy producing TV programmes, I seldom sit behind a television. Yesterday was different; I actually sat down and watch two TV programmes for close to five hours.

National Geographic is one of the channels available to Cable television subscribers in the Dutch city of Amsterdam, and the programmes were ‘Big, bigger, biggest,’ the other was ‘Building the future.’

The programmes show how human beings compete to build the tallest buildings, the largest dams, the biggest wheels and that sort of things. They were very engrossing and well-produced programmes – otherwise it won’t have consumed five hours of your truly.

What struck me the most was that none of the projects was in Africa; none of them was conceived by Africans.

From the Cape to Cairo, from Algeria to Zimbabwe, no African nation is thinking big; none is engaged in any big idea. In none of Africa’s 53 countries are the people mobilized to solve one of the myriads of problems confronting the people.

The pungent question that immediately agitated my mind was: why can’t we Africans also dream big? What exactly is it with us that our minds are not also agitated to build big things. Why are we no longer participating at the highest levels of science and engineering? Why do our cities lack eye-pleasing parks; fountains, swimming pools, libraries, monuments and other imprints of our passing through this life?

Our ancestors left their huge imprints in the sands of history. We have their Pyramids in Sudan and Egypt to attest that they did great things. What are we leaving behind?

If it’s true that the future belongs to those that believe in the beauty of their dreams, why are we Africans not also dreaming big? We are we not following our dreams? Why are we not agitated to leave behind solid legacies of achievements? Why are those leading us not mobilizing us to aim higher? Why our lives still consume by the mundane, the inanities, the senseless and mind-boggling pettiness.

Let’s get something straight: I am not in any way advocating that we copy European’s path of irrational development, or that we pursue the mindless rat race of the West, or turn our habitats into concrete jungles like they did in Europe. But there are some very basics things in our lives that our intellect should challenge us to improve.

Most part of Africa enjoy all-year round sunshine, why then do most Africans lack access to cheap solar energies. Why can't all the universities and polytechnics in Africa come up with dirt cheap solar lanterns for our people? Why can't any leader in Africa simply determine that enough is enough and give a challenge to African scientist to come up with a solution. Why are all the rich people in Africa uninterested in solving a single problem?

Mr. Mo Ibrahim generously give a grant to encourage good governance in Africa, why can't other African businessmen emulate him and start encouraging science and technology on our continent?

Over fifty years of self-government, there is no reason whatever why our folks still live in houses without water, light and, wait for this, bathroom and toilet.

It should be a national shame to us when we see families trooping to thick forest, braving snakes, in order to answer nature’s call. We should bury our heads in shame when we see our women folks squatting by the roadside to do their thing. And why do we not die of embarrassment when we see our beautiful beaches continue to be defaced by human faeces? What type of brain do we possess when people can still, in this age and time, build houses without toilet facility?

The sad part is that it wasn’t like this few years back. Then houses are supposed to be equipped with a toilet facility, however primitive. There are health inspectors in their khaki khaki and pilt helmets that goes around every week to ensure that the ordinances on health are complied with.

Sadly, we have jettisoned this very good idea.

There is also the question of our inability to feed ourselves. Our leaders, without a sense of shame or irony, keep telling us that we are spending about US$600 million to import rice.

Now, rice is really a very simple plant to grow and harvest. It takes between 3 to 6 months from planting to harvesting. And with modern methods, it can be grown virtually everywhere in our beautiful country. And what we have in some abundance is arable land, especially in the north and the Accra plains, where rice can easily be cultivated. We also happen to have another critical ingredient in abundance: dirt cheap labour.

Any intelligent leadership would have married these two together to make us a world leader in rice production.

But sadly, our elite, slaves to their masters at the IMF and the World Bank, continue to short-change us.

While our youth cry out for employment, we continue to use our hard-earned income to keep American and Asian rice farmers in business. We are doing the same for Italian and EU tomato farmers. We are doing it for Brazilian and Argentine beef and chicken farmers.

Our leaders, like mindless obedient children, continue to follow the instructions of their masters in London, Paris and Washington.

Just few years ago, the IMF admitted that three decades of their diktat ruined our economy, yet today our leaders are asking for more of the same.

It is sad really when we see that those who are today embracing the IMF were the same guys who just few years back (when they were in opposition) were loudly vociferating against the Bretton Woods institutions!

What is truly terribly galling is that western countries continue to pursue policies that are contrary to what their institutions are prescribing for us. Do our leaders follow the news and current affairs at all? When their own economies crashed, we saw all western countries frantically printing money or borrowing huge sums to keep their economies afloat and their people in work. Yet IMF and World Bank officials have the audacity to come and tell us to remove subsidy to our distressed economy, and our leaders are not putting a fatwa on them or calling upon us to lynch them!

From the Greece, through Portugal, through Spain, France, the UK, to the US, the whole capitalist economy is in tatters. Capitalism is truly discredited and western nations have intervened massively to shore up the casino economies that unbridled capitalism created, yet our leaders continue to listen to western officials giving us lectures!

Can’t we be original, for once? Can we think original thoughts?

Some time ago, it was announced that there were plans to create a Dry Dock port at Ghana’s second city, Kumasi. The question is why Dry Dock? The distance between Accra and Kumasi is 270 km or 168miles. Why cannot our minds conceive of a large canal to link the Garden City to the Atlantic?

If human beings were able to link the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean through the Panama Canal (a daunting engineering feat by any standard), why can’t we be able to build an ordinary water channel?

More than four hundred years ago, the Dutch people conquered their lands from the sea, and they successfully build large canals to enable them move up and down their below-the-sea-level country. They successfully connect many large rivers to the sea. And some few years back, they successfully created a brand new province, Flevoland, from the sea.

Again we have the human resources, but we lack the imagination. Those leading us are too pre-occupied with little silly things to think on grand scale. They lack the minds to dream big ideas and challenge us to accomplish them. They continue to think low scale, as though the creator forgot to adequately equip them in the brain department. They continue to operate as though rest of the world is still waiting for us. A president of our dear land, a former professor, happily commissioned public toilets and expect us to dance for joy!

Iran has successfully mastered nuclear and space technology; China will soon be sending a Chinese to the moon and the Indians are leading the world in software engineering, and our president is calling on us to pray and fast!

Our president is asking for a national day of prayer. He conveniently forgot to tell us what all our prayers all over the years have accomplished for us. He disingenuously forgot to tell us which country on earth has solved a single problem by praying.

Actually methinks that we should be affronted by that type of talk from anyone ruling us. No one campaigned on the premise that we would require heavenly intercessions to solve our basic problem.

Our parliamentarians each took US$50,000 as car load without bending their knees in supplication to a god. That is addition to generous salaries and allowances they are receiving.

Our ministers continue to enjoy good salaries, emoluments and other freebies without offering prayers. We do not see our officials offering prayers when they are looting our treasury or selling off our national assets to their friends in the West. Why on earth do they then need prayers to provide basic services for us?

Basics things like water and electricity are no longer considered hard-to-master Rocket Science, yet they continue to pose serious challenges to those ruling us.

Don’t get me wrong, I know that there are individual Africans brilliant enough to participate at the highest summit at NASA, the ESA and other hallowed institutions. So, we know that it has nothing to do with race or color.

What is easily noticeable is that whilst individually we might excel, collectively we continue to flounder. We can also easily see this wherever we go in this beautiful continent of us. We have individuals who are brilliant enough to perform well and run their own companies competently, but in our national life, everything is still topsy-turvy. We have the incredible situation recently whereby the company providing water for the our capital city had to go all the way to South Africa to look for an engineer who could help them fix a broken down plant.

The news has died down and we have forgotten it until next time when we encounter the same problem. This, sadly, continue to be the way we run our national affairs. No one was fired for the water corporation fiasco. No queried was issued to anyone over the national embarrassment. No effort was expended to ensure that the same thing will not happen again. Few days later, like little children, we have moved to other things.
Let’s take a look at the perennial flood causing havoc in our national capital, Accra. Like acting some macabre rituals, our leaders yearly troop to our Alajo and Asylum Down and Sahara and the other numerous ghettos sandwiched within our nation’s chief city. There, our leaders will look their grimiest, make the same sanctimonious, ritualistic promises and depart with their expensive motorcade (foreign made, of course). End of story.

I saw President Rawlings during his long years sympathizing with flood victims in Accra. President Kufuor followed exactly the same script and President Mills have also started doing the same thing. Nothing, absolutely nothing will be done to put proper structure in place to ensure that the same flood does not happen the following year. Maybe our leaders are afraid that it’d spoil the macabre fun they thought we are enjoying with their visits.

Our lives continue to be consume by politics, religion and gossip.

Thousands of years ago, our ancestors built high culture in Axum; they build pyramids in Sudan and in Egypt; they built the great Zimbabwean walls, yet today we cannot mobilize to feed and, clothe and decently house ourselves.

It is a crying shame.