Features
KIA: An aberration of the highest order (Part 1)
When a man fathers a child, he names it after himself. In African culture, even when the father or grandfather dies, their progeny are named after them to preserve their revered ancestry. Their descendants are not named after strangers. There could be an exception to the rule if a stranger were acclaimed by members of the naming family as having benefited the family in a way deemed worthy of immortalising.
Then, the stranger’s name could be adopted into that family’s heritage. Otherwise, it is an aberration to name somebody’s baby after another person who is not the father, more so if that stranger had some character defects. It is an abominable paradox. It is a misnomer.
Talking of naming reminds me of another scenario in Ghana, where it is common practice to name foreigners as “Nkosuorhene,” that is, “Development chief” because of their contribution to the upliftment of a particular community. These “strangers” are invited from their countries of origin and enstooled with regalia, traditional name, and all, and paraded through the streets to outdoor them.
Sometimes, in the euphoria of celebrating these foreign helpers, tradition is even broken. For instance, these “chiefs” may be carried in a palanquin which is meant for only the overlord of the beneficiary community. But who cares? They deserve all the encomiums.
Not so with the case of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the man who led the struggle for Ghana’s independence and helped the country to shake off the heavy yoke of colonialism. The Akans have a proverb that says: “W’annyi me ay3 a, enns3e me din,” which loosely translates to: “If you would not praise me,(for all I have done), do not malign me.”For all Nkrumah did for Ghana in record time, they gave him a bad name and hanged him. The Western world with whom he dared to compete in terms of industrialisation, branded him a communist and encouraged his own countrymen like Lt. General Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka to depose him from office.
What was his crime? Apart from being charged with practising communism, Nkrumah’s stature was growing at breakneck speed among freedom fighters all over the world who saw him as their go-to person as they looked for inspiration to break free from the yoke of colonialist subordination.
Besides, his “dangerous” rhetoric about the selfish ambitions of the Western powers, his continuous bashing of them, his name-calling such as exploiters, imperialists, and neo-colonialists, did not sit well with them. Furthermore, his concrete efforts to unite all of Africa to enable the continent to present a united front against the intention of the Western powers to call the shots and keep Africa in perpetual subjugation, were too threatening to ignore.
Amidst the tension, Nkrumah published a book: Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, shunned economic policies prescribed by the IMF in May 1965, and proceeded with his own mission to develop Ghana the way he thought best for the country. That means he refused to collaborate with the West in his development plan because he did not see them as helpers but exploiters. His stout stance caused diplomatic relations with the West to deteriorate further.
To the Western powers led by the US, Nkrumah was becoming too much of a pain in the neck. Consequently, they planned to eliminate him and found ready accomplices in Kotoka, who was a Lt. Colonel at the time and his gang. Other co-conspirators were Major Akwasi Amankwaa Afrifa, Lt. General Ankrah from the army, and from the police, Mr. J.W.K. Harlley, the Inpector General of Police and Mr. A.K. Deku, his deputy.
Irrefutable evidence abounds implicating Kotoka and his henchmen in cahoots with clandestine saboteurs like America’s CIA and M16, their British equivalent, to undermine Ghana’s rapid move towards industrial growth and prosperity. And what were they promised? Listen to what Robert W. Komer, one of the operatives on the ground told President Lyndon B. Johnson after the coup succeeded:
“Nkrumah was doing more to undermine our interests than any other black African. In reaction to his strongly pro-Communist leanings, the new military regime is almost pathetically pro-Western. The point of this memo is that we ought to follow through skillfully and consolidate such successes. A few thousand tons of surplus wheat or rice, given now when the new regimes are quite uncertain as to their future relations with us, could have a psychological significance out of all proportion to the cost of the gesture. I am not arguing for lavish gifts to these regimes—indeed, giving them a little only whets their appetites, and enables us to use the prospect of more as leverage.”What a shame!
In collaboration with those clandestine organisations, they staged the first military coup d’etat that led to a domino effect precipitating ripples across Africa. For one thing, as a trailblazer, when Ghana sneezes, the rest of Africa catches cold. Even though Togo organised the first coup in sub-Saharan Africa in 1962, followed by Nigeria in 1966, Ghana’s participation made it more “attractive” for others to join the bandwagon.
Between 1962 and 1967, there were 15 coups in Africa. Even now, see what is happening in Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Chad. The military in these countries have all overthrown democratically elected governments, some twice or more.
That brings me back to what I was saying earlier about the proper way to name babies. The current name of Ghana’s premier airport: Kotoka International Airport, (KIA) is strange, misplaced, and improper. The simple reason is that the airport is one of the maiden projects of Dr. Nkrumah following the attainment of independence and, therefore, it is his baby. For that matter, its current name is unacceptable, inappropriate, and utterly amiss.
Remember what I said from the outset, that babies are not named after people with character defects, and Kotoka’s record is there for all to see. His name is that of a traitor who conspired with foreign powers to halt Ghana’s quick march towards greatness. Why then should Ghana’s premier airport be named after Kotoka for all his sabotage? If you did not understand what it meant to add insult to injury, this is a typical example.
Originally, the airport was a military landing strip used by the British Royal Air Force during the Second World War. After the war, the facility was handed over to the British civilian authorities. On March 21, 1952, Dr. Nkrumah became Prime Minister of the Gold Coast before the country’s name was changed to Ghana. He hit the road running because he realised that the British were only interested in exploiting Ghana’s rich mineral resources with no commitment to the prosperity of the country. Even the airport was left just as it was – a military base.
To ensure a rapid transformation of the country, President Nkrumah drew a master plan spearheaded by massive infrastructural development. Among his plan was a redevelopment project to restructure the military base into an international airport with a commensurate terminal building. He launched the project in 1956 and got it completed in 1958. The airport which initially had a capacity of 500,000 passengers per year, was originally named Accra International Airport.
With incredible ingenuity and leadership, Nkrumah proceeded with other aspects of his enormous development agenda, embarking on projects whose magnitude, variety and pace were unmatched elsewhere in Africa. Within a short time, he completed projects such as the Tema township and industrial area, Tema Harbour, Tema Oil Refinery, Tema Motorway to link the port city with Accra, the Akosombo Hydro-Electric Dam, and the expansion of the old Takoradi harbour for the exportation of Ghana’s raw materials such as cocoa, timber, coffee, and rubber among others. What about the Ghana Atomic Energy Programme at Kwabenya, Accra? All these were geared towards the rapid industrialisation and transformation of the country.
But alas! That was not to be. The trajectory of progress took a downward spiral. Ghana, Africa’s rising star, was shot from the sky and made to tumble down to earth. On February 24, 1966, while Dr. Nkrumah was away to Hanoi, the capital of North Vietnam on a peace mission to seek an end to Vietnam’s war with the US, Kotoka and his cohorts staged Ghana’s first coup, a bloody one for that matter, and ousted the President from office.
For Kotoka and his gang to sell their conscience to an organisation working against Ghana’s progress is pure treason. Apart from the treasonable nature of the offence, Kotoka’s putsch dragged Ghana towards a downward spiral from which we have never recovered.
Yet, his name is imprinted boldly on an edifice as important as Ghana’s main international airport, the gateway to the land people from the diaspora are trooping in to see, partly because of the name and fame Kwame Nkrumah gave to Ghana. This is adding insult to injury. It is an abomination. It is a shame!
Next week, we shall discuss how the airport’s name was changed. We shall talk about the legacy of Kotoka also.
Contact:teepeejubilee@yahoo.co.uk
By Tony Prempeh
THE journalist is a hunter. He goes after human rats and grasscutters personified, matters about whom he can salt and spice and present as news. The fatter and juicier the catch, the better, because sensation is essentially our cup of tea.
Our job is to sell news and sell it in grand style.
Because the journalist is a hunter and is created with a special kind of nose for sniffing out news, he is usually not welcome in many places. He is seen as someone who has been born to make people uncomfortable.
The problem is that some people don’t want things written about them even if it is promotional and favourable. When it entails publishing their pictures alongside the story, they are doubly scared.
“Please, don’t use my picture. People will think I’ve got money and come for loan,” someone told me.
Anyhow, journalists are seen as intruders, undesirables, born with plenty of okro in the mouth; maybe some also in the nose. Some of my friends are no longer too close because they fear I’d give them full coverage in the Sikaman Palava column. Ha ha ha! What a funny world!
Well, people like my Uncle, Sir Kofi Jogolo, my former classmate and born-mathematician, Kwame Korkorti, and ex-football star cum human-salamander Kofi Kokotako don’t mind featuring in the hilarious inches of this column. Kofi Owuo alias Death By Poverty is one personality who has to be mentioned in this palaver.
These are people who are going to live long, primarily because they see the world as one big ball of fun. When Kwame Korkorti was told that his dear mother was dead at home, he smiled and asked the bearer of the message whether his mother had cooked the afternoon meal before claiming she was dead. Until her death, Korkorti ate his lunch at his mother’s end.
When my Uncle Kofi Jogolo was picked and lost 1,500 dollars and a good amount of Sikaman currency, he didn’t lament the loss. Instead he was amused. In fact, he was almost glad about it, because he grinned from ear to ear, stroked his delicate moustache and congratulated the thief, adding that “He is smarter than I am.” Yeah, Jogolo is the man who employs a Swedish barber to trim his moustache.
And when Kofi Kokotako was unemployed and was nearly hit by an articulated truck, he called the driver a fool. “The idiot should have killed me,” he said to me. “Didn’t he know I was unemployed and suffering?”
Today, Kokotako is employed as a Reverend and is not doing badly at all. Thanks to the regular silver collection.
And what about Kofi Owuo, the celebrated poor man. His wife left him not because he was poor, but because he swore in front of her that he would never prosper.
The following dawn the wife packed bag and baggage and went back to her parents and told them all about her husband’s alliance with poverty. Her parents were bewildered and called the alliance unholy. They had no option than to send back Owuo’s drinks to end the marriage.
Kofi Owuo alias Death By Poverty did not contest the issue. He was more engrossed thinking about how to become poorer than to contest what he called a frivolous matter. The wife could go to hell, he said. These are people longevity smiles upon. Nothing worries them.
Getting back to talking about journalists. I’d say that anywhere there is journalism, the issue of press freedom is not too far away. Is the press free? That’s one question foreigners want answer to when they are on visit.
Well, journalists celebrate a yearly WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY to drum home the idea of press freedom as a very important thing in the practice of journalism.
This year’s was celebrated almost a fortnight ago but people didn’t see much of us because we are normally not good celebrants. We should have mounted a float to roam the entire capital, dancing asaboni to brass band music just like PTC did recently.
Although journalists are known to be very good dancers because they walk very much, on that day, they were all busy writing. It was the Minister of Information, Mr Kofi Totobi Quakyi who saved the day by addressing a forum organised to mark the day.
He is a man I’ve always admired since his radical university days. He spoke much on press freedom, cautioning the press not to abuse the freedom granted by the Fourth Republican constitution, but to use it for the progress of society.
Well, press freedom has been defined by many journalists as the freedom to ‘write nonsense’. This definition is not quite accurate. I asked one staff reporter to define press freedom. It took him fifteen minutes to put up something.
“Press freedom is the freedom that is enjoyed by the press that enables journalists to publish or broadcast any kind of material so long as it is absolutely true, is not libelous and slanderous, and is not against the national interest.”
I gave him eight out of 10, a straight A. I guess every journalist is old enough to know that certain things he or she writes is for or against the national interest. We certainly must guard against writing against the national interest; that is very important.
There is also the question of criticising government. The government can be criticized, so long as the criticisms are genuine and the President and his ministers are not insulted and called names. Let us criticize, but let us do it decently so that the journalistic profession can be revered, and its nobility acknowledged. We are not war mongers, are we?
One area in which journalists are not spoken well of is the complaint that they misquote people. Journalists sometimes misquote people, but in four out of five complaints it turns out that nobody is misquoted after all.
When we interview people they say things unreservedly and we publish unreservedly. When the publication is out and their friends or superiors read it and accuse them of having said too much to the press, then they start claiming they were misquoted.
We have encountered these ‘misquotation palaver’ every now and then and reporters are usually accused of this transgression. However, when they bring out their note-books or recorders, it is realised that they wrote nothing out of the way. “Book no lie”.
My advice to people who deal with the press is that if they do not want anything written, they shouldn’t say it. What they want to say is OFF-RECORD, then of course, there is no reason to say it. When you say it, you’re taking a risk. In that instance, you can’t also claim to have been misquoted or words put into your mouth.
And it isn’t every journalist who would be circumspect in matters that are supposed to be off-record, because journalists often want to be as sensational as possible to make their stories saleable. So say just what you want to see published and you won’t later regret it and claim you were misquoted.
Well, I’m not holding brief for journalists, because a few of us are notorious for colouring our reports sometimes sand-papering the words so much that they look very bright in front of readers.
As I once said, when the police tells one such notorious pressman that the thief stole a brown goat, the pressman would want to know whether the goat was bearded. Of course, the police would say ‘Yes’.
However, in the press report, it appears, “A gang of notorious goat-thieves were apprehended in the early hours of yesterday. In the car in which they were riding was a brownish-red goat having a long beard. Upon further examination, it was realised that the goat also had a greyish moustache.”
When the story appears, the police are naturally disturbed. A single thief turns out to be a gang of thieves. The goat also becomes a chameleon and changes colour to brownish-red. And a moustacheless goat overnight wears a greyish moustache whether you like it or not. Luckily the journalist does not add that the moustache was trimmed by a Swedish barber.
Yes, we have a few of such mischief-creating, chronically notorious journalists. But they are one in a hundred. In any case, we make the world. And we shall always do our best to make it a happy place to live in.
This article was first publish on Saturday, May, 20, 1995
When I hear of people who are of the opinion that they cannot make it in life unless they travel abroad, l become sad.
Whenever I see on TV, news of people, that is migrants who have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea, while attempting to cross to Europe, l become filled with sadness and then anger.
The underlying factor is desperation born out of loss of hope, in life. When an individual tends to believe that his only hope of making it in life is to travel abroad, the risk of dying at sea, does not deter him or her.
The role of some pastors on shaping the mindset of people, especially the youth, leaves much to be desired. You hear them declaring on various media platforms how they can pray for you to get a visa to travel abroad, instead of encouraging them to find something to do to improve their lives as the Bible teaches that God will bless the work of their hands.
The GREATER WORKS CONFERENCE is geared towards renewing the minds of people with a specific focus on people of African descent to rid themselves of the negative perception of lack of capacity to excel in life.
Pastor Mensa Otabil believes that every human being, no matter the skin colour, was created in the exact image of God and therefore has the capacity to do exploits.
The whiteman was not created in the image of God while the Blackman was created in the image of something other than God. The Black person therefore can achieve whatever the whiteman can achieve.
The development in terms of industrialisation that is lacking which has generated unemployment for the youth, is due to lack of effective leadership. The lack of moral integrity in society, is what is causing the lack of job opportunities, which is as a result of corrupt acts which drive away private investment.
A culture of inferiority complex exists which needs to be dealt with, so the African can develop the self worth necessary for personal development which can then result in capacity deployment to avhieve personal goals.
Success in life begins with the individual’s recognition that he or she is capable of achieving the dreams he or she has conceived in his or her mind. The Bible teaches that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the holy is understanding according to Proverbs 9:10.
Christianity was the driving force behind the development of Europe because no society can sustain development without high moral values. GREATER WORKS therefore is a deliberate project to shape the minds of people, especially the youth, who will become the leaders of our future, to prioritise morality in their daily lives.
This is the only way to see a massive transformation in every aspect of our lives as Ghanaians and Africans in Ghana and the rest of the continent.
Since the inception of the GREATOR WORKS CONFERENCE, it has made a lot of impact in the lives of many people from the youth up to the senior citizens level. I recall the testimony of a church member who was motivated and pursued higher education and became one of the youngest Chartered Accountants in this country. Year after year, the impact of the conference has been enormous and lives in Ghana and across the continent, are being transformed.
Black people have started regaining their self confidence and the youth have started getting into areas that previously were considered out of bounds. At a personal level, certain ideas that some years ago, l would have not dreamt about suddenly has become realistic dreams.
The Christian lifestyle has impacted on my children and those close to me. Mindset change starts with one individual, then another and then gradually it spreads like a viral infection until a critical mass is attained and them a massive impact. There is hope for the future.
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
