“Nkrumah is the single most important African politician of the past century. Almost all ideas that are vetted by contemporary leaders have appeared in Nkrumah’s writing. He is the seminal African political philosopher.”

“Who made that critical statement above?” asked The Question, otherwise called Mr. JB Danquah, the self-induced hallucinating Chancellor of The University of Ghanaweb, a doggish instructor of Archaic Period Drama who suddenly found himself trapped in a meandering thoughtless soliloquy, a self-talking concert-party conversational style in which The Scarab Beetle’s ghostly legacy continually haunted and systematically gnawed as his bruised conscience as well as at those of his foster family wherever they went, whether in their deathly sleep or in their wakeful deathliness.

“Dr. Molefi Kete Asante,” went The Answer.

“Who was he, this Dr. Molefi Kete Asante?” replied The Question.

“Well, Dr. Molefi Kete Asante,” Chancellor JB Danquah, The Answer, began to tackle his own question, “is one of the world’s respected and leading Nkrumah scholars. Dr. Asante has published 74 books and authored more than 500 scholarly articles published in respected peer-reviewed journals around the world. He’s the founding editor of the ‘Journal of Black Studies,’ the most innovative, dynamic, and creative research on the Black experience in the world.” The Answer further explained: “In fact, some of us are fortunate to serve on Community High School editorial boards whose memberships are purely voluntary, not based on intellectual meritocracy, as you may have known. Moreover, the ‘Journal of Black Studies,’ like any respected peer-reviewed scholarly mouthpiece, is scientifically and philosophically rigorous in its editorial oversight of scholarship. Having said that, his, that is, Dr. Asante’s, high school textbook, ‘African American History: Journey of Liberation, 2nd Edition, is used in more than 400 schools throughout North America.”

Expectedly, Chancellor JB Danquah paused briefly for the words to sink deep into his own stilted consciousness then continued: “Dr. Asante created the first PhD Program in African and African-American Studies in the world and Chancellor JB Danquah, myself, and my father, God bless his soul, were happy, just fortunate, to get quality education under his wise Chairmanship and able professorial tutelage. What is more, he has also directed close to 150 PhD dissertations covering students of all races, Asians, Whites, Africans, men and women in leading positions in the American academy. In the 1990s, for instance, ‘Black Issues in Higher Education,’ a well-respected and widely-read magazine, described Dr. Asante as ‘One of the Most Influential Leaders in the Decade.’ In addition, the ‘Utne Reader’ also ranked him ‘One of the 100 Leading Thinkers in America.’ In 2001, the Harvard Univeristy-based ‘Transition Magazine’ described him in the following eulogistic terms: ‘Asante may be the most important professor in Black America.’”

Then, Chancellor JB Danquah, The Question, asked of himself again: “What do all these accolades mean?”

“It means,” Chancellor JB Danquah said to himself, and with his voice trembling like a cold chick’s, he added almost as an afterthought: “If Dr. Molefi Kete Asante, one of the world’s most respected and recognized intellectual giants, critically says ‘Nkrumah is the single most important African politician of the past century,’ then, The Question, so be it! The man, Dr. Asante, has been awarded the 2002 distinguished Douglass Ehninger Award for Rhetorical Scholarship from the National Communication Association, been named to the TAA Council of Fellows (TAA for Text and Academic Authors Association, America). The African Union cited him as “One of the Twelve Top Scholars of African Descent.’ He has also received over 100 awards all over the world for outstanding scholarship and teaching including the Fulbright, honorary doctorates…The man is one of the most widely cited American scholars as well as one of the most distinguished contemporary scholars…”

Understandably, Chancellor JB Danquah, The Question or The Answer, a mere pamphleteer, found his misty makaranta-voice lost in the thick cacophonous richness of Dr. Molefi Kete Asante’s scholarly authoritativeness and therefore quickly consigned his whispery voice of Ellisonian invisibility to the un-creative zoo of intellectual sloppiness. Namely, when global intellectual giants like Dr. Asante made authoritative and critical observations about Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, another global politico-intellectual giant of the 20th century, makaranta-stationed high school louse-tutors did not interfere, in fact, their anthropoid mouthparts simply vanished into the rapidly receding brothel-Shangri-la coal-night of intellectual oblivion. Ideally, could gales of bêtises hold their own against hurricanes of saneness, if of The Past should ask?

After all, who did not know the David-Copperfield pamphleteer Chancellor JB Danquah, the midget granddaddy Don Corleone of political and intellectual un-importance, was also a political 419, the latter being his Membership Identification Number (M1-6) associated with the violent terrorist organization, The Nation of Lousy Monsters (NLM), while the number “6” probably represented the totality of “scholarly” pamphlets he wrote all his life? Yet, The Porcupine knew more about 419 activities, the brainchild of Chancellor JB Danquah’s, taking place in The Frigid Land of The Cottonians than about the “true” history of The Empire of Hollow Emptiness, thinking he was more intelligent than the world, himself, his ancestors, gods, and The Cottonian. “I beat his system! I beat his system! I beat his system!” he absentmindedly bleated about himself, about his intellectual aloneness. “Whose system did he beat?” The Porcupine asked himself of The Past, of The Present, of The Future, even of Today!

Mmm! No more wahala! I beg ooo! “What actually drove you to beat his system?” asked of The Past, of The Future, of The Present. However, Today, himself of The Porcupine, of The Past, of The Future, of The Present, a she-ness of pundic woman-manliness, replied: “The superiority of my inferiority complex made me do that.” Oh that! That again? “Monsieur Porcupine, selling members of your own family and stealing others from The Salaga Market, innocent he-men, he-women, and he-children who culturally, anatomically, and physiognomically took after you, a whole society of humane ethno-humans you forced by arms, a largesse from The Cottonians, to help you build and to defend your Empire of Hollow Emptiness, a seeming he-manly Empire made of the crying-blood of pregnant and infirm he-women, blind he-nieces, and earthly Yaa Asaasewaa?” That asked of himself.

So-and-So ignored that question for obvious questions, as he did not believe in that kind of psycho-emotional soliloquy, more so because that paint of treachery, of wickedness, of betrayal, remained an indelible blot on the fractured conscience of The Porcupine, the fallen Empire of Hollow Emptiness. But, The Porcupine, O God of Mercy, who now called himself The Politician, among other things, knew he was nothing, hollow emptiness, without the benevolent presentiality and martial centeredness of the good ethno-animals of The Salaga Market, whom, he, ironically, referred to as “she” in a song attributed to U2 (“With Or Without You”):

See the stone set in your eyes; See the thorn twist in your side; I wait for you;

Sleight of hand and twist of fate; On a bed of nails she makes me wait; And I wait, without you;

Through the storm we reach the shore; you give it all but I want more; And I’m waiting for you;

Without or without you; with or without; I can’t live; With or without you

And you give yourself away; And you give yourself away; And you give; And you give;

My hands are tied; My body bruised, she’s got me with nothing to win, nothing left to lose;

The alphanumeric infrastructure “U2” itself roughly translated to “uniting opposites.” Ironically, The Porcupine or The Politician failed to realize the song specifically spoke to a harmonious community of ethno-humans, Ubuntu, or comity! Sadly, he was ready to sell his subjects for outlandish extra-terrestrial currencies, anything, even for EPA-DA, GMO-DA, Ghana@50-DA, Hotel Kuffour-DA, SADA, Galamsey-DA, GYEEDA, Ghana Telecom-DA, DA, DA, DA, sleep, sleep, sleep…Oh The Politician. “Beautiful Day,” of The Future recalled of U2. But what was he doing in his capacity as The Politician to bring everyone on board on that un-Beautiful Day of political polarization to address the problems plaguing The Empire of Hollow Emptiness?” Methinks consequently asked of I, An, You, So-and-So, Today, A, Some, that peculiar situation of yesteryear…

Then, as if by providential design, The Politician heard The Scarab Beetle’s titular song “The Avoidance of Discrimination Act,” alternatively rechristened by Ziggy and the Melody Makers as “Brothers and Sisters,” cyclonically blasting in the volcanic background of ethno-human consciousness via the stamping-feet furor of a mushrooming baritone, of a vocal-earthquaking fire:

I am my mama’s son; You are your father’s child;

Sometimes we act as if we hate each other; A different faith, different state of mind;

That don’t mean we all can’t be satisfied; We are all brothers and sisters;

Some are black and brown; Others white and light; That’s the difference I can remember;

A different face, a different kind of smile…Earth is my mother, there is no other;

So for you, so for all I; Don’t look me with a scorn; In time mankind was born;

Love must live, hate must die; Don’t draw no line, don’t you be so blind;

We are all brothers and sisters;

Those great Rasta words of Ubuntu meant nothing to the hard-of-hearing ear of The Politician, The Porcupine. Neither to Today, of The Past, of The Future, of The Present. That fractured conscience of An’s, of The Porcupine’s, of I’s, of A’s, of Some’s, of Methinks’, oh ye she-men of great-little faith, constituted the source of his inferiority complex. That, on the other hand, outsourced his, The Porcupine’s, inferiority complex to the fermented dung of The Grasscutter caught up in the neural matrices of his midget brain. Besides, that coward of a she-ness, The Porcupine, boasted on The Battle of Giants by flapping, tail-fanning, flipping, tail-bobbing, ruffling, and tail-wagging his erectile quills in a beastly manner typical of a sickly, frightened bird, but, comically, bolted, eloped with his deflated atom of osteoporotic mind when the battle got tough like a piece of buckskin, when the embers of historical lies turned into a conflagration of contemporary moral truths?

Admittedly, the most important of the embers of historical lies centered on The Politician’s blatant failure to face or own up to public charges of dung-eating. Yet he claimed he had driven The Cottonians away. Lying. Lying. Lying. Always. The Scarab Beetle did. In fact. “Why not clear yourself of the charges of dung-eating leveled against you by the public conscience, your private conscience?” The Porcupine asked Today, of himself.

“What is dung-eating?”

“Political corruption, political lies, and leadership ineffectiveness!”

“Oh!”

“I say your work in inequity will ultimately lead you to achieve vanity!” said Ziggy Marley and The Melody Makers to The Porcupine’s public conscience, his private conscience. “How good and pleasant it would be before God and man to see the children of African unite! That may constitute one major step toward overcoming the chronic problem of dung-eating!”

In that case, was The Porcupine, namely, I, Methinks, or even That, a bird, a fowl, after all? Methinks thought so. Eagles solved the chronic problem of dung-eating, not sickly and frightened birds! True! I had no question about that question either, so too, were of The Past, of The Present, of The Future. Even of The Present. However, it turned out also that, like his tottery ant-like mentality, The Porcupine was not Elephant, neither Eagle. Not even a taxidermy calf. The she-ness of a woman-man was an Ant, an existential dot of physical timorousness. And The Empire of Hollow Emptiness was not emphatically of his own making. As a matter of fact, as I, Methinks, That, of The Past, and others had already acknowledged, his ethno-animal look-alikes from the topmost part of his forehead, innocent he-men, he-women, and he-children atop his pate, the cardinal location of The Salaga Market and of other contiguous localities, as well as his pregnant he-women, blind he-nieces, and earthly Yaa Asaasewaa had built that Empire of The Past, of The Present, of The Future, from scratch.

The citizens of The Empire of Hollow Emptiness had known this hidden fact from the beginning of conscious time. And all that The Porcupine, The Politician, did, as a cautionary measure and diversionary tactic, was, to say the least, sing and hum Culture Club Boy George’s “Karma Chameleon” at the top of his lungs whenever historians, folklorists, and archeologists approached The Silver Stool of Lies, knowing full well secrets to tackling his dung-eating malady were hidden right there. The Politician, a firm believer in political coprophilism, knew these facts as well. Moreover, The Silver Stool of Lies had been a supernatural calabash of concoctions constitutive of fermented fufu and Grasscutter dung soup, a priceless gift, which, a powerful Dahomeyan high priest, called Okomfo Notsie the Ewe, had given The Porcupine to seal the fate of the she-womanly Empire of Hollow Emptiness.

“Sealing the fate of the she-womanly Empire of Hollow Emptiness” was prognostically equivalent to curing the social and political malady of dung-eating, a serious disease associated the political office! Admittedly, that history, that whitewashed history, was not entirely true, however. It was part of the cottonized history of Antian revisionism, otherwise referred to as Anti-history, Anti-history because The Porcupine had come from a cowardly lineage of Ants, not of Elephants or Eagles. In truth, the simple truth stood firm on the dais of historical consciousness claiming that Okomfo Notsie the Ewe had actually given The Porcupine The Golden Stool of Truth, which, they, The Politician, would eventually lose to The Cottonians at The Battle of Giants, in 1957 BC.

How could Ants, The Porcupine, ever have dreamt of thrashing The Cottonian Giants without the spiritual assistance, superior statesmanship, and intelligence of The Scarab Beetle’s? The Battle of Giants got so intense that The Politician did not have any choice but to take to his heels leaving the he-men, he-women, and the he-children origination from his forehead, as well as his pregnant and infirm he-women, blind he-nieces and he-sisters and he-daughters to do the fighting of he-men.

Importantly, the true history of The Porcupine and his vanquished Empire of Hollow Emptiness had been carefully concealed in The Golden Stool of Truth, which, unfortunately, had also been lost to The Cottonians forever. Thus, The Politician’s bragging, rumor-mongering, and gossiping replaced an otherwise genuine sense of historical consciousness. This is the true state of affairs in modern times. Today. Ask Today! That. I or Methinks may as well ask of The Past, of The Porcupine. As well, it had not been told that Arabs from across the Red Sea, what The Porcupine called palm-nut soup, married into the royal household of The Porcupine, The Politician, nor had the full Anti-Story been told of the blood of the he-men, he-women, and he-children brought south from The Salaga Market flowing via the veins of the royal household. That had been part of the rich tapestry of human geography from the beginning of conscious time.

The “war” or “warlike” of the Giants came and went like the dreamy experience of ethno-animal ejaculatory transiency! The end was a pugilistic flagellation of Antian the Porcupine, of The Porcupine, a fate unknown in the entire history of Antian or Elephantine civilization. In fact, The Cottonian Giants necklaced many Ants and also burnt down The Empire of Hollow Emptiness leaving an “island of ash,” a dot of nihility, in its wake. Hence, The Island of Ash in the middle of a strange Rain Forest littered with all kinds of humanized cnidarians, polypoid crocodiles and human alligators, aquatic birds, feline dinosaurs, crocodile birds, river elephants, human goats, and what have you—some three-headed, four-headed, others headless—with the Rain Forest located deep south of The Porcupine’s cleft chin.

Historians have come to label this Island of Ash Anti-Ash, literally meaning “self-hatred” or “burning Ants to ashes,” though its true orthographic image in The Mirror of Historical Truth indubitably rendered it as Ash-Anti, with the pinkie-letter “I” standing in for “island” or “inferiority.” Technically, ancient historians had preferred the orthographic variant Anti-Ash nonetheless, because of a putative harmonious cadency associated with its existential rhythmicity in the enunciative company of other words, given the coloniality of the politically incorrect “Ash-Anti.” On the other hand, other scholars had speculated that the word “Ash-Anti” or “Anti-Ash” etymologically meant “dung-eating” or “corruption” in the linguistic paterfamilias of Akanuage, probably the earliest or original language spoken by The Politician, and that the best solution to its eradication was The Cottonians! In the final analysis, historians unanimously settled on the eponymous “Anti-Ash” as a suitable descriptive nomenclature for the primatial Antians or Ashtownians.

Then again, the dot of nihility, that is to say, the island of political inaction was itself an Amazon Forest of coal-black ethno-humanized Dwarf Gorillas and de-ethno-humanized Grasscutters, so-called Cane Rats, with the two defining the membership constitution of The Nation of Lizard Monsters (NLM). Anti-historically, KA Busia, or Komodo Dragon, had come from the latter, the de-ethno-humanized cane rat Grasscutters, and JB Danquah, or Tasmanian Devil, from the former, the coal-black humanized Dwarf Gorillas, with the Ashtownians or Antians calling Busia “Bush-Meat” behind his back, even falsely claiming he had a crocodilian snout or toothy-proboscis plastered on his gargoyled face as a Valentine’s Day gift by General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong.

Others jocundly addressed Danquah as Crocodile Man-Eater. Both Tasmanian Devil and Komodo dragon represented two of the worst politicians Africa ever produced during the 150 billion years of her material existence! Regrettably, putting all aside, the primatial Ashtownians regularly went on slave-raiding and plundering missions for the blood, dung, and meat of The Grasscutter, some of which they ate and some of which they sold to The Cottonian on the cheap. How could The Politician eat corruption? Meanwhile, The Cottonian Giants forcibly took The Golden Stool of Truth and replaced it with The Silver Stool of Lies. Antian posterity “to this day,” by the way, that, in accordance with Antian chronology, does not know this factual history. Yet Today was unwilling to spill the beans about “their,” The Politician’s, real history, the “the,” not “a,” “an,” or “some” of their history. Anti-history had conveniently replaced the history of corruption in Anti-Ash, The Empire of Hollow Emptiness!

The 1957 BC Battle of Giants forced Antian citizens of The Empire of The Past, of The Future, of The Present into exile. Their King, The Politician, joined the exodus out of The Empire of Hollow Emptiness, taking along with him millennia-old Crown Jewelry and selling them to a band of street urchins in No-Way, another country of The Cottonians situated on the pate of his head, The Politician’s, as one way of eradicating the social canker of dung-eating, of corruption, that is. As if that was enough he stole the Crown’s money, the animals’, his subjects’ money, here and there, and bought celestial castles in the Amazon Forest, a secret location lodged somewhere in the lower section of his cleft chin. He also threw millennia-old Crown Oath of the Anti-Ash Empire, of The Empire of Hollow Emptiness, into a dug-out latrine of pro-colonialism, joining hands with The Enemies of the State, another species of The Cottonians, via a terrorist organization called The Nation of Lizard Monsters (NLM), to assassinate The Scarab Beetle as well as to thwart national liberation.

The worst part of it all was the criminality of the exiled citizens, The Porcupine, of the erstwhile Empire of The Past, of The Future, of The Presence. In No-Way The Politician shipped off stolen cars to his Empire of Hollow Emptiness; in America, another Cottonian country, he got involved in identity theft and 419; in Canada and Australia, two other Cottonian countries, he pimped his wife, daughters, sisters, nieces, mother, girlfriends, grandmothers, and Sister Sure, his Catholic Church twin sister. That was the brutal nature of The Politician! Greed! Anything for money. That. Of The Past. Of The Future. Of The Present. Further, The Politician carried his ethnocentrism and kleptomania everywhere with him as a national badge of honor, along with his lingering shadow of criminality, something Today, of The Past, of The Present, of The Future, were never ready to publicly admit.

His dwarfy mind assured him that he was too smart for The Cottonians and that his criminality would never be found out, not knowing that The Cottonians had already blacklisted him as Kleptomania. Yet, rather than building a new forward-looking Empire of Hopefulness, of Unity, of Progress, The Porcupine, The Politician, went about disturbing the peace of nature with a vanished Empire of Hollow Emptiness, a nostalgic nothingness which psycho-historians appropriately have called “Romanticizing The Empire of Hollow Nothingness.” That. I. A. Of The Past. An. Of The Future. Some. That. And the like. Of The Present. That. Methinks. Of The Present. So-and-So. Per Adventure. The Porcupine. The. You. That un-ordinary situation of yesteryear. He was all that and more.

The Porcupine was also Ethnocentrism and Kleptomania. The Politician! Let the world-famous rhetorician Great Molefi Kete Asante, one of the world’s intellectual minds, speak so eloquently of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, The Scarab Beetle, while Tasmanian Devil and Komodo Dragon and their makaranta-disciples enjoyed their interment in The Kpeshie Dustin Lagoon of Anti-history!