*By Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, Ph. D.
“Kofi Safo, a 26- year- old ex-convict, was on Friday sentenced to 10 years
imprisonment for stealing [25] cassava [plants] from a farm at Kwahu Bepong by an Mpraeso Circuit Court. Safo, who had just returned from prison after serving a five-year sentence for stealing, pleaded guilty to the charge and was sentenced on his own plea” (Ghanaweb June 2, 2012).
Ten years in jail
For stealing cassava
Public celebration & freedom
For stealing 51 million from the state
They get state burial
For predatoring 51 million cedis
For predatoring Hotel Kufour
For predatoring CASHPRO
For predatoring Nsawam Cannery
There is no NDC
To shield you
When you are a cassava thief
There is NDC
To shield you
When you are Woyome
There are no Segbefias
To defend you from the Castle
When you are a cassava thief
There are Segbefias
To defend you from the Castle
When you are Woyome
There are no protestors
To come to your aid
When you are a cassava thief
There are protestors
To come to your aid
When you are Woyome
There are no chiefs to call you “our son”
They won’t abandon their regional poverty
Ah! To support you
When you are a cassava thief
There are chiefs to call you “our son”
They forget their regional poverty
Hmm! To support you
When you are Woyome
Pen-armed robbers are free
Administering justice
Justice in flight
Soaring like vultures
Over prey
With savage glee
Lacerating justice
Ah! Ghanaian justice has it
Like the vulture
It has its prey
Has its prey
The poor
The marginalized
The unconnected
The benighted
The illiterate
The ones in the backwater
They get 1000 seasons in jail
For taking one tuber of cassava
For taking one finger of plantain
The pen-armed robbers
The killers of the dream
The vultures among us
They get full pension
They get honor
They walk free
Pen-armed robbers
Who rob us
Who lacerate our hearts
Ah! Their tyranny of orthodoxy
*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
**My poems and essays on Ghanaweb and elsewhere must not be reproduced in full or in
part for any academic or scholarly work without my written permission.
