As a Ghanaian with inclination to being “Ghanaman”, it pains me to even ponder this, let alone express it. But I believe it’s worth discussing, if not yesterday, then definitely today, in the hope that we won’t have to tomorrow.
Earlier this month, I read on Ghanaweb about the brutal beating of former President JJ Rawlings’ personal cameraman in Kumasi by the personal security detail of the defeated Presidential candidate of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akkuffu-Addo. The cameraman’s crime was that he was videotaping Nana Akkufo Addo at a public place! The news even had it that the incidence happened at the full glare of Nana Akkufo Addo! The self acclaimed Human Rights Advocate did nothing to stop the primordial behavior of his out of control security. As if that was not enough, the former president, Jerry John Rawlings’ personal security guard was also beaten at the Akwasidae festival in the full glare of the president of Ghana, John Agyekum Kufour , Otumfuo, Nana Opoku Ware II and Nana Addo Dankwa Akkufo Addo!
Earlier this year, at Cape Coast, the security guard of the NDC presidential candidate, John Evans Attah Mills was beaten into coma by the security detail of John Agyekum Kufour, the president of Ghana!
After the certain defeat of Nana Addo Dankwa Akkufo Addo in the recent presidential elections, NDC sympathizers are believed to have been beaten by enraged NPP supporters, apparently taking cue from the behavior of the security detail of President Kufour and Nana Addo Dankwa!
I almost came to tears when I read these news. Who are these innocent Ghanaians suffering at the hands of the self acclaimed democrats? I asked myself.
Was this the kind of behavior we are to see the next four years if Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo were to win the current elections? No “daabida”, the almighty Lord will not allow that to happen!
These so called-democrats will tell you they came to power to promote democratic values! I’m not going to argue the merit (or lack thereof) of these claims; we each have our opinion about that. What is clear is that President Kufour and Nana Addo Dankwa are leaving a bloody trail of their kind of democracy in Ghana, Africa and the world!
President Kufour supervised the mauling of the Paramount Chief of Dagbon, Ya Na Yakubu Andani II and Alhaji Issah Mobila . Alhaji Mobila was killed ala Steve Biko of South Africa. He was beaten in military custody to death! A first year student crime investigator could solve this crime within 24 hours! Nana Addo Dankwah and his boss, President Kufour did not care to find the killers of Mobilla let alone prosecute them!
These kinds of behavior by our leaders almost make you wish for the swift action of coup d’etats.
It’s a shame really. But it seems the story all over Africa since the pro-African euphoria of independence waned. War is everywhere on the planet, but Africa is the only continent that has had the word genocide associated with it at least three times in the last decade. If you broaden that to include conflicts that were/are just notorious for their sheer destruction, then add Sierra Leone to that, add Liberia to that, add Uganda to that, Mozambique, Somalia, and Angola.
Behaviors such as we saw under the leadership of Kufour and Nana Addo Dankwa leads to the genocide we see across the continent!
Everywhere you turn, Africans are killing Africans. Unfortunately that is just one of many ways Africans are dying prematurely. AIDS is killing Africans, malaria is killing Africans, dictators are killing Africans, famine is starving Africans to death. Anything that can kill a man is killing Africans.
But dying is just one of many scrooges plaguing Africans. When we live, we live in poverty, we lack basic health care, we lack education, we lack good leadership, we lack opportunities, we lack vision, our dreams are stifled before we wake, our economy is considered good at levels unacceptable anywhere else, our environment is going to shambles, technologically speaking we are still in the womb when the world is approaching cyber age.
The old rhetoric of blaming the White Man is old and played-out. After 51 years of independence, Ghana should be showing signs of progress. But for the most part, we are not. The few seem to be progressing only vis-à-vis the backsliding majority, especially during the reign of Kufour when fleecing of the Ghanaian tax payer reached its epitome!
And it doesn’t look like it is going to get better any time soon. Because Africa’s best and brightest are everywhere but Africa. We are fanned out around the globe helping other countries advance, leaving Africa further and further behind. In other words, the hope of Africa is somewhere else, in the hands of western benefactors such as the IMF and the UN, but more importantly in the hands of those of us that are in the Diaspora. We try to keep the spirit alive and send the $100 and $200.. When we die here, so does the light. As much as we would like our children to carry the torch, they won’t. They will be the Obamas of the world outside of Africa.
So I ask myself, is Ghana and Africans cursed? Has God forsaken us? Why did we fall victim to slavery, to colonization, and now to the paralysis of our own hands? Some (including myself) will argue we were not always like this; that once upon a time we were at the helm, we held the admiration of the world. When are we going to capture a sliver of that light? Are we ever going to? When we were the most, did we do something so awful that God decided to punish us by making us the least? Maybe Adam and Eve being chased out of Eden is a metaphor about us. What was our apple? We are stranded and lost, the exile has been hard on our body and soul. God, we just want to come home.
To the President-Elect, John Attah Mills, I urge you to rule wisely, eschew divisiveness, tribalism and payback .Tackle the age old canker, corruption, with verve! Redesign the pay structure of all public officials and take away the colonial pecks! God bless you and our dear country, Mr. President-Elect, Mr. John Attah Mills!