*By Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, Ph. D.
“The Minister of Health, Joseph Yieleh Chireh, has received the blessings of
President John Evans Atta-Mills to go on a week leave at a crucial stage when public
sector doctors have taken off their stethoscope and refused to attend to emergency
cases. The Minister of Communication Haruna Iddrisu, who is acting in Yieleh
Chireh’s stead, said his colleague will be off for seven days and does not think it
would affect the current crisis ongoing in the health sector” (Ghanaweb, October 14,
2011).
“A statement from the Ministry of Information and signed by Hon. John Tia Akologu
disclosed that the President granted the Health Minister his request for leave on
the 11th of October, 2011 purely on medical grounds” Ghanaweb October 17, 2011)
Ah! Filmic signification of it all
The neocolonial elitist thieves
The pen-robbers of our doom
Moronic elitist thieves, thieves
Killers of postcolonial dreams
Garlanded in expensive SUVs
Prefer state-owned SUVS
Instead of better healthcare
Atta Mess-iah’s messy NDC
Atta Mess-iah’s theater
Of a better Ghana
Of a year in action
Of miragic sod-cuttings
Tumbling in a cesspool
Where chaos is kinship
Of enduring anomies
Of birthing mediocrities
Of stunted progress
Like Saharan rivers
Dry at the source
Luxuriant-ing futility
Circuses of train-wrecks
Of deploying chaos
Of deceitful declarations
Of vacuous speeches
Of savage policies
In search of strikes
In search of anomies
Atta Mess-iah’s messy NDC
Dazed troubadours of chaos
Watersheds of letdowns
Fetishizing messianic chaos
Career gyrations of chaos
Moronic elitist thieves
Thieves who prize SUVs
CARS they never make
CARS above all things
Above HEALTHCARE
Above good roads
Above good education
Above GOOD food/water
Above good electricity
Above future generations
Minster of Health strikes
Yieleh Chireh is on strike
Strikes & poised for overseas
Strikes for better healthcare
Better healthcare overseas
Yieleh Chireh is on strike
Like doctors
Like nurses
Like pharmacists
Elitist entitlements
Yieleh is on leave
Leaving his SUVs
The elitist prize & honor
Not good healthcare
Not good infrastructure
Not good education
Not good food/water
But obsessed with SUVs
Elites diseased in SUVS
Ministering SUV cargo-cults
Of lethal doses of strike
Ah! Minister of Health
Has gone elsewhere
To heal his own strike
So all strike, strike & strike
Strikes from local doctors
Strikes from local nurses
Strikes from local pharmacists
Strikes from local hospitals
Hospitals of strikes
Of dilapidation
Of mismanagement
Of indiscipline
Of corruption
Our viruses of healthcare
Our trappings of health
Our deathtraps of health
*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
