My Secret Letter To Bernard Avle

And The Citifm Morning Show Team

…on why the Ghanaian ‘murderer’ won’t go away

and how our Memories Are Weak

By Cletus Abaare

Dear BernardKoku Avle And Your Morning Show Team,

I listened very carefully to your discussion yesterday, Wednesday, April 10, 2013

with the greatest passion of my life and will like to share my worries about

the mind-murdering subject with you.

But before I go on with whatever I’m

going to share with you, knowing very well the brand of country we have been living

in for the past many years, I will involuntarily caution you and your team to

keep this letter as secret to yourselves.

Why, you asked? Simple, we have been and

are living in a country where everything is watched with and measured by big political

eyes. We live in a country where expressing your mind (whether professionally

or objectively) on an issue can simply define your political family.

And since am not really ready to be

looked at with those wicked man-made eyes, I will want this letter to forever

remain a secrecy between me and citifm morning show team led by your good

yourself, Bernard Avle. You can also involuntarily disregard my caution especially

if doing so will serve our common purpose; our campaign of ‘putting Ghana first

and chasing for Mr. Right Thing Be Done In Ghana’.

Lest I forget, are you and your team

somehow close to that mysterious man, ‘Mr. Right Thing Be Done in Ghana’? For

me, the more I travel, the farther he becomes from me and the warriors on the

way to him are simply brilliant and fantastic fighters. Don’t talk about their

cruelty, heartlessness and their swift manner of launching the attack on you. I

hope you and your guys have had your portion from them.

Now here is to what am going to share

with you in respect to discussion yesterday; an old feature article I wrote

three months back about the subject of flooding in the country, the

recklessness of our leaders, the stubbornness of the citizens and why it will

comfortably continue to murder us.

Why

I have not published it till now even in the newspaper I write for is not your

problem. Is it? All I know is that you and your team have physiologically

forced me to do what I’ve been trying hard to dodge. This is the unedited

feature article:

The Ghanaian ‘Murderer’ Is Here Again

When an

issue about human life is continuously kept under the carpet to only attract

some so-called wailing and pretended sympathetic looks from unwatchful eyes, my

mouth finds it too shameful to shut and simply say—“let that damn go, it is not

on your door steps, why border your hungry thinking brains?”

I am talking about an issue

as grave as what I am about to tackle that has suddenly disappeared from the

minds of everybody, as if its occurrence was a way to entertain the public into

a weeping show.

One is not only tempted but will not be wrong to simply call it

“the gross attitude of the Ghanaian”; both the leader and the ordinary citizen.

There is no really much difference. Yes. It doesn’t really matter who you are,

where you stand and the position you hold in the society. No. Not at all.

The totality of our mindset is easily comparable to that of the

frog—we make noise when there is a problem at hand, but when it is gone beyond

our sight, we simply dash it off and wait for its revisit for us to start

weeping all over again as if it was a new cinema. Just think about our

childhood days and the jubilant noise of frogs after heavy rain and juxtapose

that with the dead silence that we used to experience when the rains were far

gone. This is the exactitude of the Ghanaian mind; the Ghanaian leaders and the

Ghanaian citizens. Don’t ask me whether I’m a Ghanaian. Yes, I am and am not

exempting myself from this.

You can also relate our attitude to the old wisdom “when the fool’s

sore stops paining, he thinks it has healed”. Call it Abaare’s first principle of

the Ghanaian approach to solving

problems; by simply talking and seriously formulating theories that will never

be implemented to serve the purpose intended.

Is it true that only a madman goes to sleep with his roof on fire

as suppose by Ola Rotimi in his book “the gods are not to blame”? This question

urges me to slap my forehead with my palm and proclaim loudly, perhaps a

shameless laughter “oh, hahaa” we are if it is as it is. Then we need President

John (IV) Mahama to yet form a special mental committee to seriously probe the

pretended sound minds of our politician and the rest of us of a seemingly

disorderness in our thinking caps, comrades. Think about it as you do think

about issues and you will see the sense I am proposing.

Remember the terrible floods in the capital city, Accra and across

the country in the past few months? Remember how cars, properties and more

importantly some beloved friends and relatives were being carried around the

streets like pieces of unwanted papers?

These are still milling through my conscious mind, they have

refused to leave my thinking veins alone like every politician has comfortably

done as if it never did happen in this country.

It’s as if no human life was taken by this unfortunate disaster;

don’t even talk about the countless collapsed houses and not even the lost

properties. It is wiped clean off our here yesterday’s minds. The northern

plight is a difficult subject on its own right. Let’s not dare there for now.

Imagine, after all that horrifying, sickening and ghastly

scenes, the so-called efforts of the

politicians to rescue victims and the too much empty noise of the National

Disaster Management Organization(NADMO) that was drumming so loud to our ears

and now all is a distant memory. The only National Disaster Management

Organization in the world that does think about prevention. That does not see

education of the public on issues relating to disasters even nearly important.

An organization simply waiting for in silence for disasters to occur before you

smell its voice.

All that remain about those terrible floods is a forgotten history

waiting for another season to repeat itself for yet another talk show in a well

polished different language.

And our television stations have also simply dumped those video

clips far away from their reach so they can’t remind the authorities

responsible of what happened in the just ended rainy season. At least to tell

them that the rains will surely set in again this year and the same

frustrations and weeping will register in the faces of most Ghanaians who say

no illegal structure on waterways must go down by the teeth of the wicked

bulldozer.

This was a hugely unfortunate episode, and looking at it from the

prospective of history, we can see that it really put a lot people on the

thunderbolt. But yet, it's an episode that most of us and the politicians don't

even know had happened. As I was writing this article, I had the sense that I

was dredging up an incident that had been largely forgotten.

So during my work, I realized these were not the first floods in

the country neither could it be the last, the floods started before I was born,

they have been our seasonal and murderous visitors and had always been welcome

with the usual attitude; ‘we will take the necessary steps attitude’.

I went through some trouble

and I finally located some copies of newspapers including the newspaper I write

for on these floods and the lives and properties they (floods) happily gutted

nicely arranged on these papers.

And it gave me the feeling that, not only am I digging up this

episode again, but I'm bringing back to life this murderous incident that is

always washed off our minds after its destructions and short disappearance. And

that the floods have produced effects which we're still living with today.

One of the reasons I wanted to write this article was because I've

always been curious about exactly how we always implement the talk shows during

these disasters, year in and year out. I have been furious on how the leaders

responsible always become so reluctant, indisposed, and hesitant after these

unfortunate disasters in the country where lives are the central issues.

What do they do after spending a lot of money to assist victims?

Waiting to spend and beg from donors? Exactly how do they go about their

policies to safeguard lives during floods? I really think the wonderful way to

answer to these questions is, what if our memories are weak?

What happens is this: we all simply

forget and dash clean our minds, so when the same thing repeat itself, we treat

it like it was the first ever occurrence in the country. We spend time talking

without actually putting the talking in practice.

We spend huge sums of money setting committees to investigate into

the reasons of our misfortunes but what we do with these findings is what

nobody can tell. I will urge the authorities responsible for disasters to wake

up from their long sleep and do what the taxpayers’ money is wasted on them

for.

I think the President Mahama’s government will put politics aside

for just a moment and make sure all structures found on water ways are

relocated to prevent floods disasters in years to come. I don’t think this will

make somebody look so ugly to scare people away from him. And I don’t think

this my pleading advices will earn me the title “serpent in the garden of

Ghana”. If it will, so be it. May God safe us. The only country waiting for

disasters to find preventive measures.

I will be back

cletusabaare@yahoo.com