By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Jan. 9, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

It was during his tenure as Communications Minister for Chairman Jerry John Rawlings that the rather crude terminology of "Shit-Bombing" became a household word in Ghana. Shit-Bombing, for those of our readers who may have forgotten or were not even born, or were too young then to remember, was the choice weapon of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government to silence Ghanaian journalists and newspaper operatives whose media fare was deemed to be hostile to the policies and activities of the Rawlings Gang.

Shit-Bombing entailed the literal flooding of the premises of newspapers with human excreta, waste or night soil. Is there any wonder, therefore, that these days many an urban-resident Ghanaian lacking access to toilet facilities has absolutely no qualms in hunching over open sewage systems and easing her-/himself as and whenever Nature calls, regardless of what time of the day it is? You see, hard-headed NDC operatives like President John Dramani Mahama have been using raw filth as a choice weapon to intimidate Ghanaians and entrench themselves in the seat of power, and so studious media observers and commentators find it quite amusing when Mr. Mahama self-righteously pontificate about environmental health.

Recently, the political mania has been for the President to declare something called a National Sanitation Day, a veritable exercise in futility aimed at instructing Ghanaians on how to create and live in a clean and epidemic-free environment. And we thought, all along, that Ghana was a leader in environmental health and modernism in Africa. Anyway, even though I expected him to shortly issue a statement unreservedly condemning January 7's terrorist attack of journalists employed at the French-language satirical magazine called Charlie Hebdo, nonetheless, when President Mahama's condemnation came, I couldn't help but stop my sides from splitting with laughter.

I am also quite certain that Mr. Mahama believes himself to be dead-set against the sort of fanatical violence that witnessed the barbarous wasting of the lives of some 12 people, including 8 Charlie Hebdo staffers, two policemen, a maintenance worker and a visitor. Still, I find it extremely difficult to square the preceding up with the equally notorious and barbarous political record of the Rawlings-founded National Democratic Congress. And, of course, that bloody record includes the brutal murder of Supreme Court judges, journalists of conscience and very ordinary Ghanaian citizens, falsely charged with non-existent economic crimes against the state and summarily executed in broad-daylight on our city streets.

Needless to say, the crimes - of graft or kalabule - for which these poor victimized Ghanaians brutally lost their lives, were actually wanton crimes of political depravity committed by the very people who had unconscionably ordered the execution of these practically innocent Ghanaian citizens. In the end, in spite of every thing, one still hopes that at least President Mahama appreciates a remarkable bit of what it means for freedom of speech, and the very fabric of modern civilization, to be so virulently threatened, as was globally witnessed last Wednesday, January 7, at the Paris, France, offices of Charlie Hebdo.

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