JJ is a Thief & Ocquayes are Pen-Armed Robbers

*By Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, Ph. D.

**Dedicated to the thousands of marginalized and impoverished street kids at the Nkrumah Circle.

“Speaking on Okay FM, Prof. Mike Ocquaye accused the chief herald of “probity and accountability”, Mr. Jerry John Rawlings, of being a “thief” who came to falsely accuse hardworking men and execute them” (Ghanaweb June 5, 2013).

“The second deputy speaker of Parliament and NPP MP for Dome Kwabenya, Professor Mike Ocquaye, has once again rejected suggestions for the indemnity clauses in the 1992 constitution to be removed. The Tuesday’s edition of the Daily Graphic reported that the Constitution Review Commission has recommended the expunging of the clauses that seek to protect all coup makers from prosecution, in its report expected to be presented to President Mills on December 12. The indemnity clauses of the 1992 Constitution have shielded coup makers in Ghana including ex-President J. J Rawlings from possible prosecution for acts and omissions committed during their reign” (Ghanaweb November 30, 2011).

Let us be fair to JJ

The priest of sanctimony

The bold priest is a thief

JJ is a gun-armed robber

Speaking in hurried tongues

Preying on the benighted masses

The Mike Ocquayes are pen-armed robbers

Praying for the preying pen-armed robbers

Mike Ocquaye calls JJ a thief

Yet Ocquaye makes JJ a SAINT

The sanitized SAINT of Ridge

The SAINT makes Ocquaye a pen-armed robber

The pen-armed robber of Dome-Kwabenya

Mike Ocquaye has it all

The MP of Dome-Kwabenya

Pimping wealth for himself

Retailing poverty for all

Like all pen-armed robbers

Mike Ocquaye has it all

Mansions in Dome-Kwabenya

Hotels in Dome-Kwabenya

Plots of land in Dome-Kwabenya

That was his work as an MP

Dome-Kwabenya has nothing

It has beleaguered gutters

It has pot-holed roads

It has poor electricity

It has poor sanitation

It has no health centers

It has no pipe-borne water

The Mike Ocquayes

The pen-armed robbers

They treasure Indemnity

Treasure it more than JJ

Yet calls JJ a thief

Indemnity is their oxygen

In the sadistic mirror of guilt

Oquaye evokes Indemnity

Mike Ocquaye’s Trojan virus

Of militating against coups

Of nursing national stability

Mike Ocquaye, the old professor

The petal of yesteryear

Who used to wear faded khaki

Who used to wear aging sandals

Beaming in a bored car

Straddling roads of uncertainty

Today the poor Ocquaye is rich

Rich and enriched by politics

Rolling along in new cars

Tied to a tired colonial tie

The old Professor has it all

He has it all to call JJ a thief

Let us be bold, bold, bold

Bold to call them thieves

JJ Rawlings

The gun-armed thief

The Mike Ocquayes

The pen-armed robbers

Worse than gun-armed thieves

Vultures that kill in the millions

Killers of the dream

Who kill the masses

Bureaucratic mosquitoes

That suck the masses dry

That dehydrate the masses

Like grass in Harmattan

That dehydrates the masses

Of empowerment

Of conscientization

Of enrichment

Go to Dome-Kwabenya

Go and count the mansions

Several huge mansions

On acres of land

Ocquaye’s mansions

Ocquaye’s hotels

Ocquaye’s lands

Mansions he didn’t have

Not as a Professor

Mansions he has as an MP

Pen-armed robber MP

In the mirror of guilt

Ocquaye makes JJ a SAINT

Among greedy politicians

Among greedy bastards

Among the killers of the dream

*Akadu Ntiriwa 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. My poems and essays on Ghanaweb and elsewhere must not be reproduced in full or in part for any academic or scholarly work without my written permission.