People holding the flag of Ghana
Painfully, I was whisked and shoved away—shocked, shredded, and crestfallen. I was eccentrically sacked from a public university library—the City Campus of the University of Ghana library complex. The reason was simply hard to believe: "The library is only meant for students—only students." Really? How can a taxpayer for a ‘better Ghana’ be handed a ‘bitter Ghana’ by being denied access to a facility their taxes construct?
Who knows, some books might have been stolen by some odd enthusiasts. Maybe some non-students might have misused the facility or broken some furniture. Then ‘bam!’ Everyone’s banned—a “sack all” policy option that blacklisted non-students from using the library.
I don’t know how to explain this, but I think it’s best defined as a ‘lazy leadership style,’ a popular approach and star leadership choice mostly common in Africa, particularly Ghana. Such leaders solve problems in crudely superficial ways without paying attention to details as to why and how problems occurred and how to fish out wrongdoers and deal with them.
Instead, they use shortcuts and broad brushes to exert coercion, power, and authority. They could be likened to a static idol that forever faces one direction and knows only one option—unbalanced force use. Such a leadership approach thinks less about the needs of the greater number of the poor populace and the diseased effects their actions and choices will have in the long run. As stated above, the actions of a few miscreants imaginably caused the library to be shut to the general public.
Behind the curtain of this ‘firedrake policy’ is a corrupt “big manism” tactic that creates flexibility for a few who are well connected politically, religiously, socially, monetarily, and corruptly. I believe, rather tearfully, that if I knew some big man somewhere, who could lawyer me into talking to the chief librarian, I would have been allowed. Possibly, like the cupbearer in the narrative of Genesis 40:23, who forgot Joseph for two full years after he prophesied his freedom, I may also forget others in my ‘poor category’ persistently banging hard on the library doors for access.
There was a time the state acted as a happy arsonist, dramatizing horrible scenes of blazing infernos of set-ablaze excavators involved in illegal mining. The act, which was not only state-endorsed illegality but a poor approach to solving a difficult problem, received waves of criticism.
Perhaps, to avoid illicit scenes of seized excavators disappearing faster than the Savanna Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) Guinea Fowls scaling the border walls into Burkina Faso, these expensive machines and other equipment were burnt, including other mining equipment, with some of the victims legitimately securing their mining concessions.
The “fire-happy” “arsonist regiment,” the military detachment responsible for the burnings, had no time or meticulousness to fish out the real offenders. Ghanaians, I believe, cannot hand them a guilty verdict because they carried orders from our “elected bests” who would always put their premiership on the line rather than get along with the masses to save the state from destruction.
Some years down the line, when the “burn the excavator policy” by Ghana’s “policy maniacs” is scrutinized, about 60% of water bodies in Ghana remain polluted. The business as usual—galamsey—is going full blast even in forbidden forests. The tune then turned to “we wouldn’t burn the excavators again” as a solemn vote-grabbing promise.
Borders, especially nonphysical borders in Ghana, are ubiquitous and as many as the population of Ghana, tall-walled and hard to penetrate. These borders are built with idiosyncratic integrity to disable mobility and “encroachers” to the emotional territory of those who erect them. These walls are securitized with aggressive behavior and irrational attitudes that bar openness and harmonious integration.
The root of this is distrust, which starts from self. If you trust yourself less, how could you trust others? This suspicious tendency of everyone puts all at war with all, which mostly starts from our compounds and homes, creeps into the church, and plunges like Victoria Falls into our political leadership. A behavior that the spiritual, physical, and social revolution of Jesus, the Christ, with all his practical wisdom and lesson-laden proverbs, could not change in most Christians.
My worst experience, once upon a day, was when my stomach thundered on a hot afternoon after relishing some appealing fast food that woefully pounded my stomach, dragging me to the “white house” for a quick therapeutic fix. It was an unexpected nature’s call, like the coercive knocks of death at the gates of a lapsing heart which no one has ever refused. I crouched-walked, speedily-stagnant to the nearest office and crashed into the door handle of a washroom. Oh my God! It was firmly locked.
I banged the door of the adjacent office with the strength of a sadist, then a sadist voice creaked out—“Who’s that?!” A middle-aged man came out with a straight face and a stern question—“Are you mad? Why bang my door with such stark foolishness?” “I’m sorry, sir,” I said, “I wanted to use the washroom but realized it was locked.” “This washroom is not for public use,” he growled. “Sir, have mercy on me; the missile is just too close to explode,” I lamented. “Leave here quickly before the tempest of my temper erupts.” “I allow people in your kind of emergency to use the facility, but they mostly end up messing up the place, and I have to clean it myself,” he said unsympathetically.
At this point, my pants were getting wet with the stenchy fluids leaking through as the braking mechanism was fast-failing. I quickly stepped out and met a young man passing. “Can I find a public toilet around?” He looked into my face, smiled, and said, “I don’t know.” I rushed towards the main road with hopes of meeting a Samaritan. I met her—a young woman. I tapped her, she looked into my face, and realized all was not well.
Then she pointed at a building some hundred meters away after I made my crucial request. I believe it could be one of the 41,000-plus toilets built by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government, more than any other government in Ghana (Modern Ghana August 12, 2020), which purified Ghana to “open defecation free” (ODF) status. That was how the tense situation softened.
When will Ghana’s broken economy, leading us into poverty and shame-filled social status, meet a Samaritan, a Messiah? This was the question that flashed across first and inflexibly fixed onto my consciousness.
In 2016, when “slogan enthusiasts” were at the peak of what they best knew, Ghanaians were elated-lots as “frees” and “ones” filled the barns of their thoughts. Free SHS, “one village one dam,” “one district one factory,” “one constituency one million dollars,” “agenda 111,” and many others.
These policies appeared virtuous on paper and amorous when presented on PowerPoint with oratorical dexterity. Wow—Ghana on the threshold of staging an industrial miracle, with well-molded, well-turned builder boulders that would shock the western world that even Emmanuel Macron, the Paris man, whose presence we conjured another dreamy one—“Ghana beyond aid,” to give a miraged summary to our tonnes of mottos.
In research, the best proposals are not those sweetened with loads of praiseworthy ideas. Mostly, grant-winning propositions are focused and directed at a specific problem. They demarcate clear paths, workable methods, and appropriate time frames for solving the problem.
The political promises of the NPP were very bright, heart-warming, giving a visioned vista of a golden Ghana galloping with spiritual hooves, catching up and outpacing many, even industrialized states. However, these policies were sadly besmeared, interspersed, and mingled with poor implementation, corruption, nepotism, greed, and sadist-heartiness that inflict hardship and extreme suffering on many Ghanaians.
I am so privileged that one of the agenda 111 hospitals—the Anloga District Hospital—is sited at Agortoe, just yards from my village Hadota, in the Volta Region. However, “kwashiorkor” disease infected the project, which by the parlance of NPP might be about 45 percent complete after several months of a “lifeless site.”
Perhaps, if the $400 million National Cathedral (Al Jazeera, April 18, 2023, by Kent Mensah), a blissful project symbolizing “our outward religiosity and inward paganism,” could be sited on the hills of Aburi, I believe there would only be vegetation to clear to erect the sacred God’s shrine. However, very expensive and historic properties like the Scholarship Secretariat, The Passport Office, The Judicial Institute, Waterstone Realty Apartment Complex, the Residence of the Malian Ambassador, Offices of the African Centre for Economic Transformation, and Economic Research Institute (Ghanaweb.com, Friday, January 20, 2023) were all pulled down. If this road were not taken, which cost the state GH₵339,003,064.86, yet the project is still at the “hole level,” there could be some funds left to be injected into agenda 111, and the demolished La General Hospital could grow past the “bare-land level.”
How beautiful would it be if Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology had been involved where the design for the National Cathedral could be a competition for students, and the best design used, rather than pressing on the lap of Sir David Adjaye a total of GH₵113 million (Citi Newsroom, January 2, 2023) just for architecture design.
Life is all about solving problems; however, our problem-solving efforts mostly target praise rather than sustainability, because of which we scratch the surface as we bulldoze our way with power to attract our praise-leaders. This is our result—haphazard economic haircuts as criminals given identification hair-dos and led into economic prison with hard labor.
