From empirical observations, crookedness is gradually indisputably becoming, if not already become, an acceptable smartness in Ghana, my beloved country of birth. Everywhere one turns their eyes, acts of repugnant crookedness are uncontrollably in prevalence. When you are not a crook but decent, people think you are not smart but a village person.

When you look at the way politics is done in Ghana, as typified by the NDC resorting to all foul means, intimidations and propaganda, they think they are smart. When aspiring parliamentary nominees bribe the delegates to be elected parliamentary candidates, those paying the bribes with those accepting the bribes think they are smart. They see themselves as being smart by paying bribe to get elected. Those accepting the bribes see themselves as smart for being able to avail themselves of their position to get free and easy buck.

When you go into our traditional setups, the chiefs are the custodians of the land. It is very rampant in Ghana to see a chief sell the same piece of land (plot) to about two or more people at an exorbitant price to each person. He pockets the money while the two or three purchasers of that same piece of land battle it out in court, or resort to juju, to claim the ownership of the plot. The crook chief is left alone to enjoy in peace the money he has so fraudulently earned. When it does happen, he thinks he is too smart to have cheated the victims.

The same traditional chiefs are allowing their lands to be savaged by illegal small scale miners headed by ruthless Chinese nationals. They take some money from these foreigners and do not care what degree of devastation they cause to our fertile lands, virgin forests, water bodies and the air. Once they can get money to purchase luxury cars or build houses for themselves, they don’t care about the adverse effects of their actions on the environment and society. By achieving their selfish motive, as crooks as they are, they think they are smart.

Still on the chiefs, if a so-called powerful overlord fraudulently imposes someone on a division within the union of divisions of which he is only a ceremonial head, exploitatively availing himself of that division’s stool lands to the detriment of the subjects of the division, he thinks he is smart.

When our soldiers dubiously supervise illegal small scale mining (galamsey) of which they have been tasked to stop their operations, they think the fact they can make money for themselves as selfish individuals as they become, they are smart. When some doctors and nurses resort to lying to people by manipulating their test results on intent to exact money from the victims, or secretly selling babies delivered in their hospitals by telling the mothers their newborn babies have died with their bodies supposedly disposed of, although false, they think they are smart.

When at all did Ghanaians come to accept acts of crookedness for smartness? Has the influx of Nigerians into Ghana had adverse effect on them? I know that Nigerians see themselves as smarter when they successfully engage in illegal activities.

When the Ghanaian politician abuses their power to enrich themselves or their family, he thinks he is smart. When at all did being a crook turn into smartness for the culprit?

By the time we become aware that it does not pay to be a crook and that crookedness is never smartness, foreigners will have taken over the control of Ghana to make us slaves in our own land. When the NDC faithful allegedly kidnaps innocent people, set fire to markets, insult people and seek to intentionally delay court proceedings, all in attempts to achieve their selfish, greedy, and diabolical intentions, they think they are being smart.

Oh poor Ghanaians, let us please wise up, for crookedness is never smartness. Who then is a smart person, someone may ask? This is a topic for discussion on another day.