Opinions of Monday, 22 April 2024

Columnist: Anthony Obeng Afrane

Missing BVDs matter: Walahi-talahi, baamu yaada

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Cough, cough, cough; sneeze, sneeze. Friends, sorry; I'm recovering from a cold and still feel pretty groggy. I intended to rest a little bit, but for me to come out at this point means wahala dey. Hmmm, matter dey paa.

A very good friend of mine has just been fired from his job as a cook. I went to his boss to plead on his behalf, but it didn't work. William, my friend was told to chop some cooked meat into much smaller chunks. His boss was expecting some very important visitors and wanted them to be served with meat and drinks.

It was time for William to serve the visitors with the chopped meat, but he failed; he had eaten it! His boss felt embarrassed and decided to sack him. William did not know that "to chop" means "to cut" he was misled by the wrong usage of "chop" by many people in his community. For example, a restaurant or eating bar is referred to as chop bar. And this is what caused William his job.

Reminiscing this unfortunate incident, I dredged up some unpleasant memories from the past, and I'm not going to flinch from talking about them. Many years ago, about 500 supporters of Yaanom and their fiendish pressure groups who had always displayed intolerance, incitement, and even outright partiality, staged a tacky demonstration in Kumasi dubbed BAAMU YAADA, a Hausa phrase which means we will not agree.

The problem of these kooks was that the EC must do validation, purported to be a recommendation of the panel set up to look into claims by Yaanom over the voter register.

These envious snits in their insatiable quest for power were bent on raising the political temperature of our peaceful nation.

About 9 years down memory lane, on Tuesday, March 19, 2024, the Minority Caucus raised concerns about some stolen BVDs and called on the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service to promptly investigate the matter.

The EC reacting to this in a press conference on Wednesday, March 20, 2024, said none of its biometric verification devices had gone missing, but only five of the EC's laptops were missing.

Conversely, in a recent development, the EC says it has handed over individuals suspected to be involved in the alleged theft of the missing Biometric Verification Registration (BVR) devices to the police. This sounds a complete departure of their earlier statement which is causing tongues to wag.

Tsoo, what kind of wahala be this? In one breath EC is saying no biometric device is missing, and in another breath, they are saying that some suspected individuals alleged to be involved in the theft of the devices have been arrested. So, which is which?

People of Ghana make na shine your eyes oo, ayoo. For this BVD matter paa diaa, walahi-talahi, baamu yaada.