GHANAIAN GENIUS AND A MATCH

There is a limitless opportunity for Ghanaian expansion in all fields of human endeavour

                                                                           - Dr. J.B. Danquah(1997:62)

No nation in history won a war against the common foe without a united front…..we need to harness what few talents we possess, not to dissipate them.

                                                                                                 -Joe Appiah(1996:349)

Inspired Delivery!!!!

There are certainly no walkovers anymore in African football. The African Nations Cup(AFCON) currently underway in Equatorial Guinea and Gabon conveys this point tellingly. Nations that hitherto could be routed easily and cheekily by established African football superpowers like Ghana are taking their football seriously. I will put this down to the international career, fame and often time nauseatingly fabulous wealth (how long this sport can continue to dole ou t such dough we wait to see) prospects that this game offers  African youth, the coaching(regardless of nationality) talent for hire global regime and the cheap political points that Africa’s political elites tend to garner from national victories won on that green rectangular patch of grass. It is this potent brew that Ghana’s Black Stars (ironically a beneficiary too) confronted in their last two matches at the AFCON.

Against the Malians our national team’s intimidatingly radiant global and continental pedigree in the game seemed to have been reduced to lackluster dross in the first half. The hush that blanketed our beloved capital, Accra, on account of this was eerily foreboding yet overwhelming expectant. And then that historic moment in the second half struck. Asamoah Gyan elected himself to take the free-kick most of which we had fluffed(Muntari was the prime architect here) too many painful times in the encounter. Gyan seemed to have almost transformed his foot into a magic wand which in split nanoseconds belted some esoteric command to the ball to rise, curve, pirouette and enter an angle most airborne projectiles would shy away from. The Malian net shook and danced ever so briefly as if it had suffered an unexpected seizure. In an almost unbroken spell Dede Ayew followed with his own brand of football calisthenics: the ball found the same side of the Malian net. Ghanaian genius had buried the Malians. Mali’s over confident  French coach Alain Giresse who in a moment of self delusuion had predicted beating the Black Stars has been taught a very public humiliating lesson: I will advise him to find solace in some rejuvenating blanc ou rouge vin and frommage.

In this match that enigmatic, exquisite and very rare Ghanaian genius oozed forth once again. Time and time again through our compatriots it has shown its presence and career in many areas of our national life. Harnessing this genius to allow us COLLECTIVELY respond in a robust, sustained, focused, unyielding and inspired manner to our Republic’s challenges remains to my mind the GREATEST CHALLENGE of Ghana in this century. That is what the 2012 Elections is about: the necessary emergence of a president who will INSPIRE a nation which has slipped into self doubt when GREATNESS beckons.

Black Stars shine

Blacks Stars twinkle

Black Stars dazzle

Black Stars teach us about ourselves         

      

         

NITROUS OXIDE II: PRELATES, MATTER AND GOD

                     Take care of the people, and God almighty will take care of himself.

                                                       - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. in The Sirens of Titan (1959)

He was your boy next door. He started out as Brother James. The church started out in a classroom. The headmaster of the public school had allowed him to use the school premises smitten it would seem by his glistening white even teeth, boyish smiles and the Christ like humility with which he put his case. The church grows and not after yearly bouts of raucous prayer sessions accompanied by over amplified sounds from musical instruments that leave the neighbourhood keeping wake; and not that they cared one hoot. It is God’s business after all and if that meant keeping one week babes, the convalescent and senior citizens awake so be it!!!Having barely completed junior high school Brother James displays a sophisticated understanding of his times; essentially because he knows the patina and smell of pain and want with its unyielding brutality on body and mind. He knows too many people are poor in Ghana and desperately seek an escape; a quick fix. In fact he himself is mapping out an escape route embodied in the growth and fortunes of the church ably and duly named THE REDEEMED CO-OPERATIVE WONDERFUL FEAST OF POWERFUL MIRACLES INTERNATIONAL CHURCH. The “ international” in the sobriquet shows that Brother James has plans of world domination( thanks Reggie Rockstone for this line) to be executed through a national siege wherein his church will spring up in every space that can be hired. 

His sermons and major sacerdotal routines are about saving bodies from the hell fire of want and penury not any heavenly kingdom as such; heaven is right here at Trassacco, in an American visa, Benzos, bespoke clothing, shiny gaudy jewellery and the like. God has become the master dispenser of material bounties the quantum of which you possess determines your very visible and public godliness; you have found God’s favour; Halleluia Amen!!!!Our Brother James unleashes this doctrine day in and day out onto his church folk aided in no small measure by his oratorical skills and larger than life theatrics. If you want a visa there is a price; if you wanted a job there is a price. The offertory and prayer request receptacles brim with dough and soon the church building project has began. 

The church building is completed and opened with glitz and pomp reserved for the Oscars or the Asantehene’s enstoolment. A phalanx of politicos are invited to the sod cutting ceremony. Our politicos grin from ear to elbow salivating to be around  Brother James who is now a Rev. Dr. Bishop. The last thing our politicians think about is how all this money was raised tax free to build this edifice while the rest of us labour under crushing taxes some of which are used to provide street lights for the Kwame Nkrumah Motorway without a useful pesewa being thrown at the actual road itself. Politics and religion have clearly entered an incestuous bond united in our Republic by a phantom dictum: promise what you will NEVER deliver!!!Call it grand con artistry delivered with blinding finesse and allowed to seduce the populace via media outlets which are willing accomplices so long as the dough flows. 

Our Brother James’s face and that of his wife now beam down on us with capacious smiles from gargantuan (thank former A-G Amidu for popularizing this word in our Republic!!) bill boards. Signs of God’s favour which now include a fleet of cars, abodes in the plushest neighbourhoods, kids education at the most expensive schools yada yada yada. HALLELUIA!!! AMEN!!! God is GOOD OOOOO……Attracted by all this bling bling and even more forceful promises of these goodies in sermons that are light on Christian virtues and values our compatriots flock in droves to Brother James’s church. Day and night they troop in full of earnest hope and it does not matter that they live in shacks, take the most rickety tro-tros(including the tattered buses of the church) and shell out their meager earnings to boot. 2012 may yet be the year of their breakthrough!!!!  HALLELUIA!!! AMEN!!!    

LIBYA FESTERING????

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28645

Interesting link. Libya is still boiling. I have an letter in the current issue of BBC Focus on Africa magazine(Jan-March,2012; pg.54-55) on Libya.

NITROUS OXIDE I: THE UPSTARTS

The upstart is the one who tries to climb a tree from the top.

                                                                                    -Yaw Adjei Amoah

I have been pondering recent national events in Ghana in the last few weeks. The Woyome Affair leads the pack. The Daily Graphic the national daily we maintain by the very bloody sweat of our brows reported on the front page of its 14^th January, 2012 edition (N^o. 18741) that “ only GHC17m ” had been paid out to one Mr. Woyome. The Attorney-General is literally singing about some “gargantuan crimes” committed against the Ghanaian Republic by politicos who remain untouchable because of their party affiliation. And then the cacophony of commentaries ring out with a din made all the more unbearable because partisanship seeks to win the argument against the national interest. I get angry but upon reflection I think laughter is the best way out. Our national affairs have become a grand circus writ large for any clear thinking Ghanaian to split his or her sides watching even furtively. Dispensing nitrous oxide en masse to us all would have been very useful to aid this laughing fest. That is surely a far useful way of using the purported savings on the removed subsidy on petroleum which will in all probability ultimately find its way into phantom accounts. If we wait for them for this nitrous gas it will never come even if we die and re-incarnate twenty-three times. I mean these dudes never deliver anything that will make our lives livable let alone comfortable. So here is my bit for the laughs as I caricature those who look in our face and simply lie and go home happy that they made a fool of us all.

You know that upstart. Open the papers. Turn on your TV. He is right there. In the university he joins the student movement breathing brimstone and fire against injustice and exploitation. He becomes a student leader aided by the political party which donates the highest financial resources to his cause. He begins to learn right there the dark art of mass deceit pretending to represent his fellow students when indeed he is an agent for his sponsors. His political sponsors win power. The student movement has given him a useful spring board composed of the bruising backs of his fellow students: he lands a top political job right out of school when he has barely learnt to pay neither rent advance nor wake up at dawn to the bawling cries of an infant he has fathered who needs milk. It is a measure of his pay master’s intelligence too that such a choice is made at all. 

Our upstart is everywhere on radio and on TV where it is clear that his meal ticket rides on insults, invectives, innuendos and sheer con artistry. And what a meal he is enjoying!!! His cheeks now look like an over inflated jabulani ball while his compatriots seem to have just rediscovered their Rawlings’s chains and spot as a consequence  gaunt, lean, very hungry looks as they amble about in a trance. That is fair representation right? Our upstart grows obese in direct proportion to the speed with which the majority of his compatriots lose weight ( and not because of a weight lose program it must be noted!). Now it is time get the Master’s degree while juggling the ministerial post and also to pursue the dream of becoming a member of parliament. One would have thought that in a saner Ghanaian world top appointees would have largely gone through the mill of politics and post-graduate education already. That the scale of our national challenges requires this is a no brainer. It is clearly a topsy-turvy world in which our upstart inhabits though: everything is upturned and distorted and he is making policy for you and I. You know that upstart. Open the papers. Turn on your TV. He is right there. Soon he will be your president!!!!

GHANAIAN LETTERS

I replied to a very useful list of Ghanaian writers put up by a fellow blogger here  http://accrabooksandthings.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/a-personal-list-of-key-ghanaian-authors/#comment-603 

My comment below. Please feel free to add your bit:

An excellent list….what about those writers who have written columns, features, op-eds and the rest of such stuff and SHONE for years with blinding brilliance. Sometimes they impacted the popular consciousness even more than the “book” writers.

Older, some deceased

Paul Ansah’s column in the Ghanaian Chronicle. A masterpiece which took on the powers that be without flinching.

Cameron Dodoo has been active in a variety of media especially magazines like The New African.

Kwesi Yankah’s Woes of Kwatriot column was a regular staple of the Mirror. Satire at its most witty.

Eben Quarcoo’s pieces lit up the pages of Tommy Thompson’s the Free Press newspaper.

Contemporary, active; semi-active
Kwaku Addo Sakyi-Addo his column Back to Kokomlele which appeared regularly in the Ghanaian Chronicle was sublime; his last column which appeared in the Accra Daily Mail was called Rear View. He has written tomes of work for Economist, the Guardian, BBC Focus on Africa magazine, etc.

Alhaji Harruna Atta’s Taking Issues Column which appeared regularly in the Statesman was crafted in the heavens. Irreverent, pulsating and a sheer delight of penmansip he affected the national conscience week after week with his biting pieces which spoke bitter truth to power.

Gabby Otchere-Darko’s Quanawu Column also appeared in the Statesman newspapers. Acrid, blazing and very sweetly crafted pieces. Gabby is still very active in the Daily Guide newspaper.

Audrey Gadzekpo’s pieces appeared in the Chronicle newspaper and the Mirror as well. She tended to deal with weighty policy matters and the mundane, commonsensical stuff that politicos simply missed.

Baffour Ankomah whose trenchant pieces appear in the New African magazine.

Urban Wail III: Youth, Fear, Power and Dreams!!!!

But, soon rather than later, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.                                               - John Maynard Keynes (1935)

This piece is the third of a trilogy (I have written about in these columns) of events that I experienced in Accra’s urban spaces in 2011.Over the last three years I have been speaking regularly (twice a year I think) to different groups of high schoolers from Nigeria who visit Ghana for an educational tour. It is always a joy for me to watch these young people: full of life,  infectious zest and loads of promise. The saddest part is the numbing thought that their compatriots who have led a potentially great country into a pale shadow of its shinning possibilities were just like these youths. Just what went wrong? Could this generation bring the dream of Nigeria to a rapid, pulsating, realization in their life time at the very least? My agenda in these talks has been to provide points of reflection on the future role of these youth in building the Nigeria and indeed the world they would consider worth living in.

Jah Rule(in blue cap) at work as some of the Nigerian youths look on. 

The Q & A session provided some understanding of some of the questions I had asked above. A hand to my left went up. She had this unblinking stare scowling through a mien framed by soft, delicate yet pensive features. Her query shot out with a fiery rapidity untamed by the weight of the logic it bore. It was obvious the question had driven her to a forlorn despair over which she had brooded mutely. Was it intelligent, useful and worthwhile to be patriotic, selfless, concerned about the common weal given the array of forces dead set against such virtues? In Nigeria she intoned, that meant certain death or something close. The sanest thing to do was to go with the flow: survival was the name of the game.  Her peers seemed to echo her sentiments. For teenagers to have such thoughts was both sobering and anguishing. I understood their rationalization but I was insistent that a few hard thinking, courageous, selfless human beings had bucked some of the most damning trends in human history. That was why I was a citizen of Ghana and they Nigerians: others had cut the path that we now tread.

Branding Ghana Bonwire style.

It was clear to me the deep distrust that some very young people had of those wielding power political or otherwise in Africa (a phenomenon expressing itself across the globe lately as well). There was deep dissatisfaction with the status quo but the vexing question was: how will change come? Out of the seminar room I engaged with other youths: my fellow compatriots. Four in all they had been drawn by business to the venue of the Leadership Seminar. They were all from Bonwire, the town in Asante land that had played its part in gifting the world the intricate, colourful, regal and almost imperious Kente. They assured me of their skill with the Kente looms which know-how they were leveraging in other creative directions: creating made to order pendants, bangles, key rings etc in record time. They all spoke good English. They had all left high school just recently. They were dissatisfied with our governments. One who had taken the moniker(his dream was about music stardom) Jah Rule called our governments Al Queeda. They expressed their pain: they felt alone however hard they tried to build their dreams in a country they called home; their motherland. Kwarteng said he will not bother with voting anymore. The politicos were making fools of them. I listened to them. I encouraged them. I ordered some of their work. And then I pondered. Is any one really listening to our young people beyond the hoary sleight of hand shenanigans of policy crafted to win votes rather than affect in a sustainable way the lives of bona fide citizens of this our Republic and more so the young?

Ashesi University teaches Babson College the theory and practise of Azonto!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!