I was recently introduced by a friend to a Nigerian lawyer who had just arrived from Lagos on a business trip to London. I struggled to maintain my composure and stifle my giggles when he was presented to me as ‘Hon. Barrister Chief So-and-So of the Nigeran Senate’. You could see the man literally puffing up like a peacock as his titles were reeled off. His business card was crammed with a host of letters after his name, stretchng from Axim to Timbuktu and beyond. Haba! Was ‘Barrister’ now a title to address a person by in Nigeria in addition to ‘Chief’, ‘Senator’, ‘Alhaji’ and a host of others? Was there simply not too much information on his card?
But even as I teased my friend much later, I could not help but note that I was behaving like an ostrich, with my head so deep in the sand that I hardly realised that my posterior plummage was exposed to the vagrancies of the weather. For when it comes to the obsession with titles and rank, we Ghanaians seem to be of the same mindset as our friends two doors away, and as frenzied about it.
A PhD seems to get you far in public life, never mind if your thesis was on the eating habits of the pygmie peoples of the Congo forest. It would not escape many ( and perhaps it is not a coincidence) that Dr. Nkrumah, Dr. Busia and Dr. Limman won the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Republic elections respectively. Ex-president Rawlings is the only non-degree holder to have beaten a professor ( Adu-Boahen) at a presidential election. President Kuffour is the only ‘Mr.’ in our presidential/prime ministerial electoral history to have beaten a person with more advanced degrees ( Prof. Mills). This is not to suggest that in other countries, there are no PhDs in public life, or that our distinguished professors and doctors should be restricted to the lecture theatres. In the USA, for instance , Secretary of State Condolezza Rice and General David Patreus ( the Commanding General of the Coalition Forces in Iraq) do hold PhDs from very prestigious universities. In the UK, the current Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, holds a PhD in Economic History. But the vital difference between these intellectual powerhouses and our assorted doctors of letters is that they do not go about trumpeting their titles all over the place, nor do they insist that these be integrated fully into their name. Their work does the talking. On the other hand, our academic doctors in public life would consider it the gravest insult if you addressed them minus their cherished PhDs/professorships etc. Never mind if they obtained them from some obscure college the size of my back garden-a degree is a degree to them, full stop. They have earned them so they’ll be damned if they shall not let the whole world know this by wearing them on their sleeves, goes the mindset. I believe I read somewhere that doctors of letters are traditionally supposed to resort to their PhDs only when in academia, perhaps to emphasise their expertise in their chosen field of study.
So what is it with this rather unhealthy obsession with academic posturing in Ghanaian public life? Does your intelligence/sound judgement/awareness rise directly ( or even indirectly) with the number of degrees you acquire? Of course not, as some of our PhDs in public life have aptly demonstrated over the years.In many cases, the trumpeting of these letters seem to me to be a vain attempt to mask their holders’ incompetence at their position of responsibility, very much like the man who hasn’t had a bath in three days and desperately drenches himself in cheap perfume to try and hide this fact. I suppose a reason why PhDs are so strewn about in public life is that the Ghanaian public places such high value on them and associates them with intelligence, even if the evidence suggests otherwise. Academic intellect seems to have replaced ‘efie nyansa’, political nous and sound judgement as well as empathy, all essential requirements for a politician. Krobo Edusei of CPP fame was an unlettered man but reputed to be a very wily political operator and survivor. But then, the title ‘professor’ or ‘Dr’ sounds very appealing when you are dealing with a population with a high illiteracy rate. It bestows a sense ( or is it illusion?) of grandeur, of a person who has all the knowledge of the world packed into his brain, of a person who has all the solutions of the world. After all, the reasoning must go, if this person has been able to acquire all this knowledge, then surely it must stand for something. And so in all fairness, maybe our learned doctors are simply reacting on a demand and supply basis. Even governments past and present have fallen for the charms of academic doctors and have routinnely appointed them to head public bodies and chair various commissions, perhaps to demonstrate that they really are getting the creme de la creme for these roles.
Of course, the obsession with titles does not stop with academia. In our society, almost every ‘ 2 by 4’ ‘Nana’, ‘Alhaji’, ‘Odikro’ or some otherwise titled person seems to command immediate and almost unquestioning, gloating loyalty and deference, and again this points to the wider sense in Ghana of such titles making an impression on a largely impressionable citizenry. In the country, it seems almost criminal to mention an MP’s name without addressing him/her as ‘Honourable’, a term one would have thought should be restricted to the floor of the House. But of course they revel in it when addressed as ‘Honourable’ by their constituents or the media, even if their conduct is anything but. And one could be forgiven for assuming that our christian religious leaders would be the hallmark of simplicity and eschew showing off grand titles, but they seem to have caught the bug. ‘Apostle Dr.’, ‘Archbishop Dr.’, ‘Rev. Dr’ are examples of grand-sounding titles that pervade many churches in Ghana and always appear on church literature.
In many places in Ghana, even those without formal titles are called ‘Chef’, ‘Governor’, ‘Big Boss’, ‘Master’, or accorded some other ridiculous label simply because they do have some money or influence and need their boots licked in order to bestow one favour or the other. Is this a spillover from our chieftaincy institution, or from colonialism, both with their ‘yessa massa’ relationship between pliant commonners and their overlords? In our ‘big man’ , quasi-feudal, less than egalitarian culture with its vast political patronage and the wide gap between the haves and have-nots , it is not perhaps suprising that there will always be people available to massage the fragile egos of these grand men and women by singing their praises and forever announcing their titles/degree.
Of course, given the state of affairs in Ghana, it is unlikely our fascination with degrees and titles will abate anytime soon. And so these professors and doctors and alhajis and nananom will continue to disturb our eardrums and seek to remind us that they are men and women of greatness and intellect. It may be symptomatic of this fascination that the four main contenders for the presidential elections in December 2008 are a Nana ( NPP), a professor (NDC), a doctor of medicine ( PNC ) and a doctor of letters ( CPP). Come to think of it, I quite fancy the trappings of a ministerial car and the power and privelage that comes with it, so I think I need to update my single degree that tops my ‘O’ and ‘A’ level certificates. I am seriously considering a PhD in African Anthropology at the University of Fernando Po. Or maybe my PhD thesis could be on the African obsession with PhDs. You never heard of Uni Fern. Po? Anyway, never mind... Who knows, I might in the process even be able to secure occupation of a minor, obscure stool in my hometown as well, and then try to get into Parliament in 2012. ‘ Hon. Nana Dr. Nkrumah-Boateng ’ has a rather nice ring to it, don’t you think?
You see, even if I don’t manage to get up the greasy pole of Ghanaian electoral politics armed with my shiny PhD and my minor stool, I am sure I can work my way to getting appointed as CEO of some public body or the chairman of one commission or the other.
After all, was it not said by someone that ‘If you can’t beat them, join them’?
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