I make no apologies for going to town today. After all, I have restrained myself for so long that I had to get someone to show me the way into town as I had completely lost my way. Am I stupid? Am I dumb? Are you?
Well, I can speak for myself and my manager and the two musketeers. We are neither stupid nor dumb. I know my people are also not stupid. But increasingly, I am asking myself whether those of us left on this continent somehow sold our consciences to someone who’s bolted from the market. We may have regretted the sale but we have not been able to trace to whom we sold out. Are we dumb?
Why cant the African stand up for what he believes in? Why? Is it because unlike the white man, we can’t blush? Have you calculated how much your ‘ball-lessness’ is costing your dear nation? Why is the African only strong and brave in front of his wife and his concubines? African women get battered for the most stupid of reasons just for perceptions of standing in the man’s way. Yet this same man may have just come from the office meeting where he knew that the subject of discussion was going to lead nowhere. Indeed, he was fully aware that the decisions taken could only lead to increased costs and will be ultimately unworkable. Yet, what did he say when he was asked his opinion? Yes, sir!!! This is the best idea!!! Sometimes I wonder what we will do if God did not bring you into this ministry, office, church, Castle or rock, he would add for emphasis!
Am spilling because I cannot hold it inside anymore. It was reported yesterday that the Nigerian Supreme Court had ruled that His Excellency, Atiku Abubakar, the Vice-President of Nigeria, could not be excluded from the ballot in Nigeria’s Presidential elections by the Independent? National Electoral Commission (INEC). This was after so may wasted years of battle with His Excellency, the venerable Olusegun Obasanjo (hereinafter referred to as OBJ) over his eligibility to stand in that elections. Over the past month, especially after the two Superior Courts had given contrasting rulings on the matter, I had listened to high officials from Aso Rock and the INEC defending why Atiku could not be on the ballot box. Indeed, when last Thursday and Friday were declared national holidays by H.E. Obasanjo, it was interpreted as a move to truncate the Supreme Court’s initial plan to rule on the matter during that period. So who’s laughing now?
So I asked myself, didn’t anyone in INEC have the balls to tell Mr. President that the country was not a fiefdom and that the law will prevail? Why would reasonable men, educated in high places, holding responsible positions, be so petrified by one man that they just couldn’t help but try to discern where the old man was leaning so that they could do his bidding? I am not aware whether Anago has the same law on causing financial loss like we do here. If this stupidity was denominated in cedis, there would have been howls of derision for the old man and his accomplices to be prosecuted for causing financial loss. The cost to Nigeria of printing new ballot papers to ensure compliance with the Supreme Court decision is incalculable. Incalculable because the stupidity is not only denominated in naira. Lives will be lost as a result. People will be dislocated as a result. Just because we have some spineless people in high places who have no balls between their legs and will do everything the President tells them including killing their own mamas! How many big people in Nigeria were brave enough to look OBJ in the eye and tell him that he was wrong? Am still trawling for names of Bishops, Cardinals, Sheiks, and Chiefs etc who spoke out then when it wasn’t fashionable. Not at this time that the Supreme Court has exposed the stupidity of the whole exercise. One of the matters that continue to elude my grasp is how we have nations which call themselves democracies in Africa and yet we still have one man calling all the shots. A colleague explained to me that when the INEC insisted on adding the word “Independent” to their name, he knew that it was a façade. His argument is that throughout the world, history has shown that nations and organizations would always add something to their names just to remind people that they had that tendency when the reverse, to discerning people, was the case. Witness the Democratic Republic of Korea, the Peoples Daily Graphic!!!
At this juncture, I will doff my hat to the judiciary in Nigeria. You are men, with balls! Even if you have some women, they are also men, with balls, hidden, of course!!! I WISH, I WISH, I WISH!!! In our quest for development, one of the constants will be the law. Even that one changes but not at the same rapidity. The law is the constant; The big men will always change. If we continue to look at the big man for instructions without regard to the law, it will have to take men with balls of steel, like Atiku Abubakar and the Learned Justices of the Nigeria Supreme Court, to throw light unto maximum bunkum and declare it as such. If the President’s wish is lawful, so be it. But if it has no basis in law, why the hell are we paying people who ought to know better to just gape at the old man and tell him what he wants to hear? The Policeman arrests not because he deems a crime has been committed but some big man has made an express directive that someone ought to be picked up. That fine youngman is fired by the Human Resources Manager fully aware that the Managing Director has no legal basis to demand his removal and also fully aware that he is superb material for the benefit of the company. The Board approves of expenditure because some octogenarian Director is hanging at the second-tier of that procurement process to pick up his opipipipii. I am begging you to calculate the cost of this phenomenon which I term as “conscientious stupidity”! Denominate it in naira or cedis and make your own deductions. We are the losers, if we continue to be this docile. Let me give you an example of how docile we can get as a people. It’s only in Africa that a President can go into a factory or other business enterprise which is wholly private-owned and dismiss the owner of the business. Guess what happens next? The owner of the business is kneeling and all wails. His workers and all, wives and concubines and all, pleading for mercy from the President.
May God forbid the stupidity in Anago from engulfing us in 2008. May we as a nation realize that power rests with the people and the best service we can render to our nation is to speak conscientiously, truthfully, respectfully, our opinions on issues. May Chineke God remove all the sycophants around our President before 2008. May they never graduate to the Palace!!! Otherwise, we will be faced with the same situation in Nigeria when the old man also attempts to ordain the future. If you think that my people can contemplate a loss to Kwashivi’s people, think again. Imagine the count going on and my people losing…. Something will give because something will have to give! It’s high time we all realize that we have a duty to ourselves and to the nation to contribute our quota to the development of our dear nation. Contribution can mean that you, an osofo, who has preached ad nauseam that when one dies he will go to heaven, will have the guts to speak frankly about national issues …and go to heaven! My government is a beautiful government that has not and will not put anyone in the cooler for speaking their mind. Yet for some unspoken, dark, (historical?) reasons, everyone is petrified in speaking the truth and standing up for the truth in this land. By so doing, the people messing themselves up are the winners when that should not be so. Yet the power rests with us the people. If we do not learn to believe in our collective ability to stand up for what’s just and true, the motto on our Coat of Arms will mean nothing to us in our lifetime. Freedom and Justice. God Bless Our Home land Ghana. Yen ara ye asaase nii.
Like Kwame Sefa-Kayi says most mornings, when you say a prayer, say one for Nigeria. Then say another one for Ghana. Then say another one for Yewura Kuffuor. Then say another one for yourself. Then Chineke will put some fire in your balls, not to torment the fairer sex but to act strong, believing in the constitution which guarantees your rights, because God did not make you stupid. Your conscientious stupidity is too costly for mother Ghana. Wake Up and Live …… or forever remain stupid!!!
"Let no one be discouraged by the belief that there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills -- against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence... Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation...
It is from the numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man (or a woman) stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he (or she) sends a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
- Robert Francis Kennedy, speech at Day of Affirmation, University of Capetown, South Africa
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