Ghanaian politicians must end dalliance with violent types

By Kofi Thompson

The terrible events resulting in the murder of over seventy innocent people and injuries to over a hundred individuals in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, clearly show the indiscriminate nature of terrorism.

Africans of goodwill everywhere on the continent share the pain of the people of Kenya, at this tragic moment, in their nation's history.

Who would have thought that a leading poet and influential Ghanaian politician, in the person of the late Professor Kofi Awoonor (may his soul rest in peace), would one day be counted amongst the dead victims of the murderous Somalian terrorist group Al-Shabab, and in faraway Kenya?

No matter where in Africa we live, we are all potential victims of the evil and unhinged criminals in our continent, who join terrorist groups such as Al-Shabab, in order to impose their warped views on others, using indiscriminate violence of the type that resulted in the carnage at Nairobi's Westgate shopping mall in the Kenyan capital's suburb of Westlands.

There ought to be a concerted continent-wide effort to rid Africa of terrorist groups - such as those in northern Mali, Algeria, and in Central and East Africa.

They are dangerous and cancerous cells in the African polity. The time has come for all the nations in African to work closely together to remove such terrorist groups from African soil.

One hopes that the tragic and dreadful events in Kenya, will lead to introspection amongst Ghana's ruling elites.

As a people, we must work towards narrowing the huge disparities in wealth between the well-off and the marginalised in Ghanaian society - lest those at the bottom strata of society become cannon fodder for terrorist groups.

Above all, the intolerant extremists amongst our political class, who have a penchant for hiring thugs and criminal types to do their dirty work for them - particularly at election time - must now understand that the step from being a paid hireling of ruthless and amoral African politicians and political parties, to becoming a paid agent of Al Qaeda planting bombs across nations in the continent, is a small one. They must end their dalliance with such violent and criminal types once and for all.

They must all refrain from the type of selfish politics that leads to their having to employ such violence-prone individuals in their quest for power. A word to the wise...