*By Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, Ph. D.

**Dedicated to the thousands of marginalized and impoverished street kids at the Nkrumah Circle.

“Speaking on Okay FM, Prof. Mike Ocquaye accused the chief herald of “probity and accountability”, Mr. Jerry John Rawlings, of being a “thief” who came to falsely accuse hardworking men and execute them” (Ghanaweb June 5, 2013).

“The second deputy speaker of Parliament and NPP MP for Dome Kwabenya, Professor Mike Ocquaye, has once again rejected suggestions for the indemnity clauses in the 1992 constitution to be removed. The Tuesday’s edition of the Daily Graphic reported that the Constitution Review Commission has recommended the expunging of the clauses that seek to protect all coup makers from prosecution, in its report expected to be presented to President Mills on December 12. The indemnity clauses of the 1992 Constitution have shielded coup makers in Ghana including ex-President J. J Rawlings from possible prosecution for acts and omissions committed during their reign” (Ghanaweb November 30, 2011).

Let us be fair to JJ
The priest of sanctimony
The bold priest is a thief
JJ is a gun-armed robber
Speaking in hurried tongues
Preying on the benighted masses
The Mike Ocquayes are pen-armed robbers
Praying for the preying pen-armed robbers
Mike Ocquaye calls JJ a thief
Yet Ocquaye makes JJ a SAINT
The sanitized SAINT of Ridge
The SAINT makes Ocquaye a pen-armed robber
The pen-armed robber of Dome-Kwabenya

Mike Ocquaye has it all
The MP of Dome-Kwabenya
Pimping wealth for himself
Retailing poverty for all
Like all pen-armed robbers
Mike Ocquaye has it all
Mansions in Dome-Kwabenya
Hotels in Dome-Kwabenya
Plots of land in Dome-Kwabenya
That was his work as an MP
Dome-Kwabenya has nothing
It has beleaguered gutters
It has pot-holed roads
It has poor electricity
It has poor sanitation
It has no health centers
It has no pipe-borne water

The Mike Ocquayes
The pen-armed robbers
They treasure Indemnity
Treasure it more than JJ
Yet calls JJ a thief
Indemnity is their oxygen
In the sadistic mirror of guilt
Oquaye evokes Indemnity
Mike Ocquaye’s Trojan virus
Of militating against coups
Of nursing national stability

Mike Ocquaye, the old professor
The petal of yesteryear
Who used to wear faded khaki
Who used to wear aging sandals
Beaming in a bored car
Straddling roads of uncertainty
Today the poor Ocquaye is rich
Rich and enriched by politics
Rolling along in new cars
Tied to a tired colonial tie
The old Professor has it all
He has it all to call JJ a thief

Let us be bold, bold, bold
Bold to call them thieves
JJ Rawlings
The gun-armed thief
The Mike Ocquayes
The pen-armed robbers
Worse than gun-armed thieves
Vultures that kill in the millions
Killers of the dream
Who kill the masses
Bureaucratic mosquitoes
That suck the masses dry
That dehydrate the masses
Like grass in Harmattan
That dehydrates the masses
Of empowerment
Of conscientization
Of enrichment

Go to Dome-Kwabenya
Go and count the mansions
Several huge mansions
On acres of land
Ocquaye’s mansions
Ocquaye’s hotels
Ocquaye’s lands
Mansions he didn’t have
Not as a Professor
Mansions he has as an MP
Pen-armed robber MP

In the mirror of guilt
Ocquaye makes JJ a SAINT
Among greedy politicians
Among greedy bastards
Among the killers of the dream

*Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, Ph. D., is a nationalist Denkyira beauty. She is a trained oral historian cum sociologist and Professor in the USA. She lives in Pennsylvania with her great mentor and teaches Africa-area studies at a college in Maryland. In her pastime, she writes what critics have called “populist hyperbolic, satirical” poetry. She can be reached at akadumensema@yahoo.com. My poems and essays on Ghanaweb and elsewhere must not be reproduced in full or in part for any academic or scholarly work without my written permission.