Captain Smart
To start with, I should admit that I don't watch or listen to the Captain Smart show on Onua TV and also broadcast by some FM stations.
Nonetheless, there have been workplaces I've entered to transact business, and Captain Smart does have fans there praising him as a 'brave patriot.'
One such encounter, if I should say 'unfortunate encounter', was when late last year, his television station organised a public forum in Kumasi. People filled the hall to air their views.
Apparently, Captain Smart's intention was to make the current administration, the NPP government led by Nana Akufo-Addo, unpopular in his party's stronghold.
He assembled people from all walks of life, including market women, artisans, and head potters, otherwise known as Kayayes. They were there to recite vivid, choreographed propaganda that would cause disaffection for the party in power that he so hates for an unknown reason.
The auditorium was unruly. Captain Smart couldn't control the less than a thousand people gathered there. It was a noisy, chaotic place.
Today, March 7, 2023, as I kept on tuning my radio to get the morning updates on the Independence Day held yesterday at Adaklu, Ho, in the Volta Region, I 'mistakenly' tuned to a radio station that was airing the Captain Smart show.
He was ranting as always. And this time, he had the Church on his radar. His aim is obvious. The opposition to the National Cathedral needs not to be elaborated here to consume the little space we have to write this piece that will awaken the self-acclaimed 'vigilante journalist'.
He said: "I have a friend residing in Canada who asked if Ghanaians died of COVID-19, even with all the churches and trees they have around them. Or their pastors do not let them pray hard to avert the disease?" (Thus used).
He went on, albeit shouting at the top of his voice and seemingly drooling saliva from the edges of his mouth, that "when I was a child, we went to a Church of Pentecost Convention, and upon all the prayers, some of the attendees were involved in an accident, and there were casualties" (sic).
His problem with those praying for a safe journey to their destination was that his friend abroad, who is a doctor, seemed to suggest to him Captain Smart that the way Ghanaians go to Church and pray, there shouldn't be accidents registered here. What a funny, silly guy.
In jest, maybe answering to the disapproval countenance of those he was with in the studio, he added that: the car the congregants were in had faulty tyres.
Smart people, in this instance, will not be stopped from taking on the driver and those mandated to ply our roads with roadworthy vehicles. They will not blame the Church in any way just because they prayed for a safe journey.
I wonder if that supposed 'smart' captain on the radio knows that doctors meet every day to look for cures for diseases, yet people die every day of such diseases with available cures?
Should we then encourage people to stop seeking medical care?
As in every institution, the Church will have its flaws, but one cannot, based on hatred born of ignorance, give the Church a bad name for him and the public to hang it.
Names are supposed to have a positive impact on their bearer; therefore those called 'smart' should indeed be smarter than the Captain Smart I know.
