Mr. President, I’ve Found a Veiled Message Meant For You!

In a week in which plagiarizing in whatever form is likely to attract scorn, disapproval and severe rebuke in the Ghanaian media, it is unnerving, unwise and quite suicidal of me, to transpose wholesale another’s ideas and thoughts and put them out in the media, not as mine, but even as being in agreement with them! Armed with the warnings that adoption of someone else’s work may expose me to public ridicule and opprobrium, I humbly preface my verbatim reproduction of Oladipo Salimonu’s work by saying that the portions of his article which I am ‘copy-catting’ (if there is such a word) are entirely his.

I lay no claim to having authored Salimonu’s work and lay no claim to thinking it up. I have been thinking about what to say in my intended “Letter to our new President” for weeks. I couldn’t put it together… Someone has; I share his views, admire the way he puts them, and will quote from his script for you.

In the February 2009 edition of the “New African” (No. 481) in a cover story titled “The dream has come true”, Oladipo Salimonu writing on the inauguration of Mr. Barrack Obama as the first black President of the United States stated his profound expectations of Barrack Obama among other things as follows;

“But this man became president on a message of “hope” and “change” and a promise that he would be different. And we must assess his presidency on his ability to fulfill those promises. In light of the hopes and expectations invested in him by millions of people …. it is important to bring scrutiny to bear on these promises and how close they come to being fulfilled… “Of course, it is almost always the case that those in whom we invest hope are seldom fully aware of the depth, or nature even, of that hope. And it is ridiculous to expect them to be, as those hopes often emanate from highly personal and largely subjective points of view, and do, themselves, shift, as in the sand of time. What the best leaders do, however, is gather our many realities sand sift through them to extract common themes and a course of action that redounds to the benefit of all, and not just some, or many. To accomplish this, leaders need not even be articulate-the late Levy Mwanawassa was a politician not even his staunchest supporter would call articulate, yet he was a good man and a better president than this continent has had in a long while. No, a great leader must, with great emotional intelligence, collect our longings, our aspirations and our fear and trawl through these incoherent and frequently incompatible expressions, to return to us concentrated and purified, ideals we can all recognize, honour, respect, feel grateful for, and in the end feel comforted by…….A leader must then with intelligence and great discernment, craft and see implemented, actual policies that will entrench and sustain those ideals. That is the job before President Obama (substitute Mills for Obama). It is not easy, but leadership seldom is. And besides, he asked for the job. Voters have done their part. Now he must do his”.

Need I add anything? Thank you, Mr. Salimonu. But were you talking to us?

Johnny Blukoo-Allotey, Accra, Ghana