Our reverence for posts and long-sounding titles

In the compound house where I once lived at Kpehe, Accra, in the 1970s also lived a gentleman who owned a small Printing Press at Accra New Town otherwise known as ‘Lagos Town’. On the centre table in his sitting room i.e. the ‘hall’ of his chamber & hall which also served as the children’s bedroom was a name tag bearing his name and his official title of ‘MANAGING DIRECTOR’. For the five or so years that we lived together I never heard this man’s wife address him by any other name than DIRECTOR. In other words, even far away from the workplace and in the privacy of their home you needed nobody to tell you that the man was indeed a director while his housewife mother of his three children was nothing more than the messenger in his office. The master-servant relationship was so evident for everyone to see especially when the wife was seen by ‘Director’ as having done something wrong.

Name Versus Profession

Before going any further, let me emphasise that I do not see anything wrong with according people the honour and recognition rightly due them whether achieved it by their own hard work, heritage or even luck. What I find intriguing is the attitude in Ghana where so much premium is placed on titles that with time people become better known by their profession or title rather than their own names.

I met a gentleman on public transport one day and through our conversation I realised that I happened to be working in the same office as a friend of his. Interestingly, it was only when we came to parting separate ways and he asked me to extend greetings to our common friend (my office colleague) that I realised that we hadn’t even exchanged names. Rather than tell me his name what this gentleman said was: “oh, you just tell him ‘Lawyer’ and he’ll know who”. It was not until I had insisted on knowing his name for my own sake that he stooped so low to tell me his name. And just as I had expected, when I gave the message to my colleague his instant reaction was “Which Lawyer”? In the end we had a hearty laugh over how someone he had never personally addressed as “Lawyer” should expect that he would recognise him by that title. So just in case you don’t quite get it, this gentleman didn’t want to miss the opportunity to let me know he was a Lawyer. Good for him, perhaps he thought I was in the bus looking for a Lawyer.

Just in case you aren’t so sure how much titles mean to us you only need to remember that one of the punishments meted out to our former Head of State, General I.K. Acheampong, after his overthrow in a palace coup, was not only to compulsorily retire him from the military but also, and more importantly, to deprive him of the military rank of General altogether and reduce him to a mere Mister! In other words, if he were to be alive today he would be ignominiously addressed as Mr. Acheampong as compared to His Excellency Flight-Lieut. (rtd.) J.J. Rawlings. By all indications, therefore, it would appear that the equivalent of addressing a retired soldier as a ‘Mr.’ or ‘Madam’ rather than his military rank is like a prison term with hard labour in civil society.

When Did You Hear of Prof. Rice?

On the other side of the globe, however, whereas Alexander Haig and Colin Powell were both highly decorated Four-Star Army Generals with distinguished military careers before becoming U.S. Secretary of State (Foreign Minister), they were usually addressed and referred to simply as Mr. Haig or Mr. Powell the moment they left the military and took up their purely civilian duties. Whether on radio, television or in the newspapers the usual reference to the current U.S. Secretary of State is simply Condoleezza Rice, but I wonder how many of us know that not only is she a Ph.D holder, she was also a one-time full University Professor as far back as 1993. In Ghana, whether in the news, at a People’s Assembly or at a friend’s birthday party she would only be referred to as Honourable Professor Condoleezza Rice. In a telephone interview it would be “Hello Prof.”. With all apologies to Chinua Achebe, I think our society is too full of the likes of Chief the Honourable Alhaji Dr. Nana M.A. Nanga, M.P., all being ‘Men of the People’.

In Ghana today, almost every political appointee down to the District Chief Executive (DCE) is referred to as Honourable. Meanwhile in international news you are more likely to hear of President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair rather than His Excellency Lieutenant (ret.) George Walker Bush and His Excellency the Right Honourable Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, M.P. Just in case you may be getting confused, please note that the current U.S. President was once a pilot for the U.S. Air National Guard.

Religious Leaders and Their Churches

Before we got to where we are now our religious leaders were mostly Catechists, Priests and a few Bishops. The trend now is that out of nowhere and within a matter of weeks someone who only a short while ago would at best have been a ‘Lay Preacher’ would be transformed into a Prophet or Apostle. It doesn’t matter whether their church has a membership of less than 100. Meanwhile, even the Roman Catholic Church, the oldest and most universal Christian church with perhaps the largest membership, boasting of numerous schools and Universities, has only one Pope and some Cardinals. In fact even those of us not so versed in Bible Knowledge do know that Jesus himself had only 12 apostles. When he returns to earth on his second coming I’m sure He himself would be surprised how many apostles there are in Ghana alone.

Sports and Market complexes

Anyone who may only have heard of Kaneshie Market Complex but has never been there might be wondering how different it is from the older markets like, Kumasi Central, Makola or Asafo. In actual fact, however, ‘the value is the same’ as the Bank of Ghana would want us to understand. If anything at all, it’s only that since Kaneshie Market was constructed more recently than the others there may be one or two facilities that were not incorporated in the original designs of the older markets. But please tell me, dear reader, does the addition of toilet and nursery facilities in a market make it a market complex?

Does it surprise the reader that we have a ‘Sports Complex’ in Accra yet when we needed training facilities for our athletes after the demolition of the national stadium we had to send them to Lome? So tell me, what’s a ‘Sports Complex’ if it can’t even serve as one of the required training grounds for the up-coming CAN 2008? In any other country the almost abandoned facility we have at Kaneshie would be nothing other than Kaneshie Sports Grounds. And even then, as a national facility, it wouldn’t be so difficult putting it to use as training grounds for CAN 2008.

Let’s get it right; if you put up a hut and call it a castle it’s still a hut.