*By Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, Ph. D.

“The General Overseer of the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN), Prophet T.B
Joshua, has donated vehicles, office equipment and a parcel of land valued thousands
of Ghana cedis to the Accra Regional Police Command. In addition to the vehicles – a
Nissan Sentra, KIA Pride and KIA Spectra- laptops, a fridge and a bed, in addition
to two plots of land situated at Nsawam… The two plots of land… were to be used to
build a police station to ease the pressure on the existing ones. He added that the
Synagogue Church of All Nations thought it appropriate to support the police in
their efforts to curb crime in the system” (Ghanaweb October 1, 2011).

Ah! Nkrumah’s Ghana
The Black Star of Africa
The national poise is lost
The national gleam is gone
The national hope has faded
Nigerian TB preys on us
Snaring our police
With toxic gifts
A circus of religiosity
Gifts parceled in heresy

TB has coughed it all
Phlegm-ing Ghanaians
Coughing TB toxins
Patenting TB police
TB must cough in a hospital
To be saved by God’s doctors
TB shouldn’t cough on police
To spread loyalists’ TB Toxins
Of tithes of corruption
Of prophesies of deceit

In Ghana foreigners rule
Running around us all
Running us all around
With disfiguring processes
Seeking our elites’ pieties
Elites who have sold us all
Oh! Into parasitic dependency
Foreigners exploit our anomies
Like Korle Bu mosquitoes
They feed on our sickness
They feed on our weaknesses

Ghanaians defer to foreigners
Like rats do to morbid dogs
In the land of their birth
In Nkrumah’s country
Of the Black Star
Today on a precipitous horizon
Horizon of euphemistic spasms
Of watersheds of foreign taint
Of incandescent guarded civility
Of so-named Ghanaian hospitality
Of so-named Ghanaian respectability
Of “Fama Nyame” syndrome of timidity

Oh! TB thou giveth
Thou shall give us
But give to hospitals
But give to orphanages
But give to schools
But give to NGOs

Oh rudderless Ghana
Nkrumah’s Ghana
In the mill of Atta Mills
Ah! Reckless harmonies
Ah! Colossal incompetence
Regalia of fraudulence
Of prophetic horizons
Oh! Horizons of confusion
Sunset of doom
Sunrise of decay
Prophetic doom
Of the disempowered
Of the benighted
Of the bamboozled
Of the impoverished
Of hopelessness
Of GHANAIANS
As Nigerians take all
As Indian take all
As Koreans take all
As Chinese take all
As Lebanese take all
As Syrians take all
As Europeans take all
As Americans take all
Take all take all
Our minerals
Our water
Our oil
Our timber
Our lands
They are taking all
Denigrating us
Mocking us
Dehumanizing us
Disempowering us
Impoverishing us
Calling us Monkeys
Calling us animals
Caging us like birds

Ah! Nkrumah’s Ghana
The Black Star of Africa
The poise is lost
The gleam is gone
The hope has faded
TB preys on us
Toxins of dialogues
Dialoguing heresies

*Akadu N. 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