Features
Et tu, GJA?
• Membership of the Ghana Journalists Association must be clearly defined
If you read Shakespeare’s *Julius Caesar* then the import of my title will not be lost on you.
My bottom line here is that, but for the food and drinks, many journalists or members of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) would have stayed away from the end-of-year dinner graced by the president of the Republic, Nana Akufo-Addo last month.
I make no apology for the above assertion because I have personally been involved in organising media events that saw many journalists falling over for small chops and drinks. And everyone knows this for a fact. But this is not the gravamen of my postulation today.
Some members of the GJA have not been happy with the recent election of the presidency of the Association, with allegations of vote buying, influence peddling and political patronage.
Long before the election, it was rumoured all over the media space that one of the contestants, Albert Kwabena Dwumfour, was a sympathiser of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the other two, Gayheart Edem Mensah and Dave Etse Agbenu, who eventually lost, had NDC sympathies.
It thus seemed that the GJA was split into two political camps, an unhealthy phenomenon creeping into a professional body; a body touted as the Fourth Estate of the Realm with a mandate to keep our political leaders on their toes and accountable to the people.
Indeed, the eventual winner is an employee of the Tobinco Group whose Chairman was seen in a viral video canvassing for votes for his employee with monetary inducement. He was actually heard saying if his employee was elected, it would enhance the fortunes of his business.
Dave Agbenu is the Editor of the State-owned Ghanaian Times and Gayheart Mensah is a staff of the Parliamentary Service in the office of the Rt. Hon Speaker. Nowhere was it rumoured that the Parliamentary Service or the NDC campaigned respectively for Gayheart and Dave.
As a businessman, Mr. Tobin is wont to shift allegiance to whichever way the political pendulum swings. It was, however, an immature act by Mr. Tobin to openly involve himself the way he did. Either he is not business savvy or rather naive in matters of mixing business with electoral processes.
Our political parties would be quick to want to influence the choice of leadership of the GJA. They have the right to want to get the media on their side. I have spoken to a few colleagues who confirmed the support the eventual winner received from operatives of the NPP, but they could not say if the NDC did the same for the other two. Some were quick to add that they knew the winner was pro-NDC but might have turned the coat.
If, indeed, he is a turncoat, the signal this sends is the probability to use his position and a launchpad for a future political career. If he harbours such ambition, it will be in his own interest to abort the thought before it consumes him.
One unfortunate perception the NDC, as a political party, has is that the Ghanaian media is in bed with the NPP and so might not be minded to support any candidate even if he is proven to be one of their own. I confess that Dave and Gayheart are my personal friends, thus it was difficult for me to make a choice between them. They both know that I never temper my principles with friendship.
I cannot say I know where Dave stands politically, but one might think Gayheart leans towards the NDC, simply because he supported his big brother’s bid to be the NDC flagbearer in the past. I do not yet know if this is enough proof that he had the support of the NDC. With hindsight of what the party perceives, the NDC would leave Dave and Gayheart to their own devices If, indeed, they were party men. Better still, if they were, the party would have sent a delegation to ask one to step down for the other.
Methinks if our politicians infiltrate our ranks, it is because we have allowed them to. Mention any known journalist and we are quick to tell you what party he belongs to.
Even some senior journalists are party activists, thus bringing objective professional conduct under suspicion. We cannot blame the politicians if they try to influence our elections. Every politician takes advantage of what inures to their benefit, not so?
I have two worries though. First is the monetization of the GJA electoral process. If we have a duty to write and say how dangerous monetization of our national elections have become, whether at congress or general election, and we turn around to do the same within our own processes, what moral right do we have to take our politicians to task for the same thing?
Second is the direction to which the GJA is drifting. The issue of defining who journalist is will not go away yet. The current president of the GJA is not a journalist, though he worked at a media setting. Ghanaians will recall the hoopla that followed the declaration of the late Komla Dumor as Journalist of the Year a couple of decades ago.
Komla, may he continue to rest in peace, was not formally/professionally trained as one, which was the basis for the objections his elevation elicited. I remember in one radio interview, I stated that until we delineated how the GJA was composed, there was nothing wrong with Komla Dumor winning the award. Today, the BBC has immortalised him with a Komla Dumor breakout journalist award across Africa.
By its name, the GJA must be an association of journalists by the descriptive nuances of who a journalist is. If we want to broaden the scope, then the current appellation is nebulous. It should rather be the Ghana Media Association.
This will naturally encompass all those working in the media space; administration, camera persons, sound engineers, producers, lighting persons etc.
Take the Ghana Education Service, for example. It encompasses all manner of employees, but teacher awards are limited only to teachers. There are pupil teachers, graduate teachers in both professional and non-professional categories.
Therefore, there are no qualms about who becomes the winner of the Best Teacher awards.
Therefore, who a journalist is and who qualifies for membership of the professional association must be clearly defined and spelt out. Until this is done, the issue of who is a journalist will come up every once in a while.
Personally, I do not care who heads the Ghana Journalists Association so long as that leader respects and steers the Association away from the path of political patronage. He must ensure that the group is insulated from outside influence and manipulation.
In a number of his books, Tuesday Lopsang Rampa always described journalists as the most evil force on earth. The GJA could fit this description unless it is steered away from licking political boots.
We cannot do our work at the behest of political paymasters. We need to protect our integrity, professionalism and dignity at all times.
Writer’s email address:
akofa45@yahoo.com
By Dr. Akofa K. Segbefia
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
Join our WhatsApp Channel now!
https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbBElzjInlqHhl1aTU27
Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
Join our WhatsApp Channel now!
https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbBElzjInlqHhl1aTU27
