*By Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, PhD

“Retired Supreme Court judge, Justice Francis Kpegah, has fired back at his critics
who have raised issues with his continuous stay in a government property several
years after retirement. This followed calls for him to vacate the five-bedroom
bungalow located at number 15, 5th Avenue, Edward Nasser, Ridge in Accra” (Ghanaweb
March 22, 2013).


The Kpegahs
The Sekyi-Hughes
They fleece the masses
The poor masses
These arrogant educated elites
Pen-armed robbers
The local imperialists
Predators in suit
Fleas feeding on the masses
They fleece the masses
Of Asante shoe-shine boys
The marginalized
The mocked
Who manage to put up houses
Of benighted Zongo tenants
Of impoverished cocoa farmers
Of drought-haired street kids
The Kpegahs fleece them all

Francis Kpegah
The decrepit-ing judge
The frantic-ing judge
In the NDC’s trappings
Of propaganda
Of demonizing
Of mediocrity
Of divisiveness
In our postcolony
Of quotidian struggles
Of archives of mediocrity
Of enduring celebration of thieves

The Kpegahs
The Sekyi-Hughes
The vultures
That never built nests
That soar above and beyond all
The bloody-beaked vultures
Look down
There
There
Hard-working shoe-shine boys
Hard-working street kids
Derided
Disparaged
Disdained
By the Kofi Awonoors
Ah! Shoe-Shine boys
They build palaces
They own palaces
Kpegah owns it all
His pride of place is tribalism
Kpegah owns his tribal supremacy
That is his asset even in old age

Francis Kpegah
Kpegah can learn from them
Asante shoe-shine boys
The derided
The disdained
The disparaged
Those hated by Awonoor
They are Asante Shoe-Shine boys
Who sweat to build their own homes
Kpegah must learn from them
Kpegah may be too old
Too old in tribalizing
Too old in peddling idiocy
Too old in being used by NDC
Too old in his anti-Akanism
Too old in his anti-Akufo-Addo-ism
Too old to learn a new trade
The art of self-help
The art of independence

The Kpegahs
The Sekyi-Hughes
The preying vultures
That hope to build tomorrow
That soar with homeless pride
It is their pride of place
To feed on the masses
Seasoned preying predators

Kpegah
The supremacist
The tribalist flea that fleeces the poor
Ah! Kpegah never built a hut
Never built a hut
Not in Alavanyo
Not in Accra
Kpegah
The tribal supremacist
The aging bigot
Forgot to build a nest
Like the bats of 37 Hospital
Hang in trees
Bottom up
Face down
To the world

*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.