Tweaa Mahama: Where is Turkey-Bound Gold?

*By Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema

**Dedicated to the thousands of impoverished and exploited “Northerner” street kids in Kumasi, Sekondi-Takoradi, Accra, Koforidua, etc., who have become socio-economic orphans in the corrosive quicksand of SADA Akonfem Economics.

Tweaa Mahama

Where is the Turkey-bound gold?

The vultures in our midst

The educated elites

The pen-armed robbers

The mosquitoes

Blood vampires

Educated vultures in flight

Soaring over carcasses of gold

Of cocoa

Of oil

Of timber

Of diamond

Of bauxite

We have them all

We pour them in wreckages

In deep-sewage political pockets

As usual Ghanaians made a lot of noise about the 1.5 tons of gold from Ghana that was strangely bound for Turkey, but was seized when it arrived at the Dubai airport. Ghanaians should remember that Mahama quietly rushed to Turkey stating that he was there for business when he had not formed his team D cabinet. No leader in this world would rush to Turkey to micromanage trade arrangement when s/he had no cabinet in place. In fact, this was something that the Ghanaian embassy in Turkey could have handled on behalf of the government. Mahama returned to Ghana and his spokespeople denied the story about the 1.5 tons of gold. The BNI denied it. The Civil Aviation and the Kotoka International Airport officials stated that they had no records of the plane leaving Ghana. The Minerals Commission also denied it. In his bid to confuse the public, Mahama set up a Commission of Enquiry to investigate the gold in flight like a SADA akomfem. As public pressure mounted, the government came up with a surrogate culprit who is in now jail and who has being paid, according to my reliable sources, to take the blame for Mahama. Considering Mahama’s avalanche of dubious financial dealings, no wonder that his arrival in the Middle East led to the release of the plane carrying the gold. Now that someone has taken the golden bullet for Mahama, the question still remains this: “Tweaa Mahama, where is the Turkey-bound gold?

Ghanafo, I repeat

Where is our gold

Tweaa Mahama

Where is Ghana’s gold

The strange gold bound for Dubai, Turkey

Where is our gold strangled in the Mid-East

In your huge batakari pockets of deceit

Ghanafo, I repeat

Our silence is our undoing

Our “fama Nyame” is our undoing

Our “make you no mind am” is our undoing

Ghanafo

How did a plane-load of gold leave Ghana

Who were involved in the process

Where is the gold

Who has the gold

How is the gold

Gold torn from Ghana’s navel

Ghanafo

Our perennial problem

Our short memories

We talk, talk, talk

We forget it all in two weeks

Missing in flight like SADA akonfem

So the pen-armed robbers rob us

So they kill us

So they dehumanize us

So they impoverish us

Oh! This our short memory

This national deficit

This democratization of corruption

Oh! The killers of the dream

Killers who prey on our short memories

Our watersheds of corruption, mediocrity and all

The vultures in our midst

Preening their bloody feathers

Soaring with grace

Gallant in flight

Unclench their wings

In silent winds of depredation

Ah! They soar over unearned carcass

Of a postcolony killed by greed

Killed by poverty

Killed by illiteracy

Killed by “Fama Nyame” syndrome

The vultures are soaring

Their bloody beaks

Their bloody talons

Bloody thieves and killers of the dream

The fact of the matter is that we heard nothing from the NDC government regarding the 1.5 tons of gold. None of the pen-armed-robber politicians and stomach-driven journalists asked questions about the gold. Our useless MPs who have mansions, but have been given $50, 000 for housing, while millions of street kids live on urban streets, did not ask any question. The toothless grinning members of the Council of State who have been given car loans of $50, 000 each said nothing. The rotting chiefs who are waiting for Schnapps and ginseng beer from Chinese galamsey miners in exchange for unrestricted land rights remained silent. The neocolonized prophets, pastors, priests, and diviners who think that God and Jesus are white men, and who look forward to tithes from their unwary followers never sang a hymn about the gold. The disempowered and benighted masses could not pause beyond their mantra of the usual unworkable “enye hwee,” “fama Nyame,” “make you no mind them,” even as they suffer as foot-soldiers soldiering for poverty.

Fellow Ghanaians, we have lost courage to speak truth to power. And where is Rawlings who has terrorized us with his probity and accountability. Then again Rawlings has perfected the art of selective memory. We need to ask questions as citizens who love our nation. The fact of the matter is irrespective of whether one belongs to the NDC, NPP, or DDT, and whether one is Akan, Ewe, Northerner, etc., everyone has to sit up and make our government and leaders accountable and transparent.

The vultures in our midst

Soaring with grace

Gallant in flight

Unclench their wings

Of silent violence

Ah! They feed on unearned carcasses

Of a postcolony killed by greed

Killed by poverty, illiteracy

The vultures

They are worse than the colonialists

They are worse than the predatory slave traders

We have lost the ability to dream

Reality in our midst is nostalgic lunacy

Fellow Ghanaians, our recklessness, passivity, thievery, and democratization of corruption have become our everyday toxic oxygen that we freely enjoy. In Ghana today, there is a cargo-cult mentality nourished by neocolonialism and disempowerment, illiteracy and benightedness, dependency and elitist entitlements, and an incipient democratic tradition that surrogates power for ethnic groups. We must always speak truth to power! For my part, I owe allegiance to Ghana, to the voiceless, to the marginalized, to the benighted, and the thousands of street children in Ghana.

POSTSCRIPT:

Tweaa Mahama

Where is the Turkey-bound gold?

Our silence is our undoing

Where is the gold

What became of the gold

Who has the gold

**AKADU Ntiriwa Mensema, Ph. D., is a nationalist Denkyira beauty. She is a trained oral historian cum sociologist and Professor in the USA. She lives in Pennsylvania with her great mentor and teaches Africa-area studies at a college in Maryland. In her pastime, she writes what critics have called “populist hyperbolic, satirical” poetry. She can be reached at akadumensema@yahoo.com. Her poems and essays on Ghanaweb and elsewhere must not be reproduced in full or in part for any academic or scholarly work without her written permission.