*By Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, Ph. D.

** Dedicated to Col. Roger J. Felli who was killed by Rawlings and his lunatics for taking a legal loan of 50, 000 “old” cedis to build a house in his hometown. And dedicated to the jobless single woman, who “stole” five fingers of plantain to feed his three children, and was jailed 5 years in prison.

“Meanwhile, Mr. Nerquaye-Tetteh, the controversial Chief State Attorney interdicted on the findings of the Economic and Organized Crime Office [EOCO] for his role in creating the avenue for bungling state officials to hand over the whopping GH¢51 million of state cash to Woyome for no work done, has sneaked back to the Attorney-General’s Department… he [is] playing the role of a Chief State Attorney without any official blinking, Mr. Nerquaye-Tetteh is, in fact, scheming to be named the next Solicitor-General of the Republic of Ghana” (Ghanaweb, June 17, 2013).

“The EOCO report said Mr. Nerquaye-Tetteh was the Chief State Attorney directly in charge of the Woyome case. [Nerquaye-Tetteh] admits that he drafted all the letters… concerning the transactions leading to the payments to Mr. Woyome…” (Ghanaweb Feb 4 2012).

“The EOCO report uncovered… that Woyome had paid a gigantic amount of GH¢400, 000 (¢4billion) into Gifty Nerquaye-Tetteh’s account” [after he had been paid GH¢58million]” (Ghanaweb Feb 9, 2012).

“Samuel Nerquaye-Tetteh [writes that] ‘My only crime is that I allowed my wife to accept help from Mr. Woyome with regard to her business’” (Ghanaweb March 3, 2012).

The Nerquaye-Tettehs
Killers of the dream
Let us treat them
Treat them like pests
Like sanguinary pests
Blood-thirsty pests
Like Korle mosquitoes
Let us kill them
Kill them like MOSQUITOES
The Nerquaye-Tettehs
The educated thieves
Pen-armed robbers
In suit
In kente
In batakari
They are the killers
Of our dream
Of our hope
They are the creators
Of street kids
Of women dying in childbirth
Of families unable to pay school fees
Of jobless youth
They are builders
Of pot-holed roads
Of saddled electricity, water, oxygen

Oh! The elitist pen-robbers
Killers of the dream
Of our postcolonial dreams
Of managing our own affairs
Of our eternal self-sufficiency
Of Africanizing independence

Ah! Nerquaye-Tetteh
The pen-armed robber
Uses his bloody pen
Ah! Write to all of us
Judicial letter of dishonesty
Judicial letter of deceit
Ah! His letter of conceit
Just like indebting his wife
His collateral wife
His pawn
Prostituted to greedy Woyome
Gifting Gifty to greedy Woyome
Oh! For the gift of ten percent
Poured into Gifty’s ACCOUNT

Samuel Nerquaye-Tetteh
Put up his wife for sale
Pawned his wife as pawn
Indebted to Woyome
The pawn-credit to steal
Samuel Nerquaye-Tetteh
Steal millions of our cedis

The Nerquaye-Tettehs
The pen-armed robbers
The delirious foes
The vultures among us
That carcass our bodies
To feed on our body-politic
To canonize their thievery
As a right, birthright
As rite of their right
Elites who exploit us
Elites who imprison us
The impoverished
The marginalized
The disempowered

Let us treat them
Treat them like pests
Like sanguinary pests
The educated thieves
Who make us poor
Let us treat them
Treat them like pests
Like sanguinary pests
Blood-thirsty pests
Like Korle mosquitoes
Time to kill them
Kill all the Nerquaye-Tettehs
Like Korle MOSQUITOES

*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.