Features
Criminals and gullible natives

A criminal is a criminal whether or he has thick lips. As such, I strongly disagree with the French psychologist, Lombroso, whose idea of a criminal is a person with hard features and thick lips. If Lombroso had conducted his research in Africa, he probably might have condemned Africans to be a criminal race, since broad noses and thick lips, among others, comprise the African’s visage.
In Sikaman for instance, we have dangerous criminals whose physiognomy has nothing to do with their criminality. We have criminal die-hards and recidivists who are handsome gentlemen and comely ladies. Women who dupe for instance are the most attractive, albeit with dark minds.
And one thing I have come to realise of late is that there has been a return to the use of wits and magic in place of violence by criminals, especially by thieves and burglars. Perhaps, the idea of firing squads does not particularly appeal to them.
Using wits and magıc has a long history in Sikaman. In 1974, certain crooks, allegedly from a neighbouring country, invaded Sikaman to make money. They greeted you, you responded and your genitals got lost if you were a man. If a woman, your breasts vanished in a twinkle of an eye.
In desperation and bewilderment, weeping and gnashing of teeth, you quickly had to agree to pay quite a sum of money to another man (an accomplice) who approached you offering help, and you got back your sexual accessories.
It was widely disseminated that the antidote to the magic was pepper or charcoal. You simply had to put one of these into your pockets wherever you were going and then you were safe. Those days you could see Sikaman natives laden with pepper in all pockets and some with loads of charcoal in their back pockets. Pepper and charcoal became essential commodities.
This criminal practice died down in Tema for instance, not because people were using pepper and charcoal, but because one of the so-called magicians met a rather tragic end. He was identified by his victim and promptly lynched through mob violence.
Sometime last year, the ‘Spectator’ carried a front page exclusive of a man with a tribal mark who does not cherish using violence to earn a living. The man, it was alleged, made lucrative business by dressing like a woman, with slit and kaba, and high-heeled stiletto shoes, complete with make-up and earrings. I wonder what really was attractive about this muscular gentleman, no matter the finesse with which he executed the make-up and the power with which he wriggled his buttocks when walking. Anyhow, he made a tidy sum duping unsuspecting men before being told enough was enough.
In a bid to burgle a business executive in a quiet residential area, a man uses a ladder to enable him get access to the top chamber at about 2a.m, unfortunately for the thief, the executive boss does not sleep with both ears. One ear is, therefore, alive like a 24-hour radio frequency. He hears the sound as the thief works his way upstairs via the ladder.
The man wakes up and descries a tall, bulky barrel chested human being, who could have passed for a gorilla, ascending a wooden ladder pitched against his window. He had never seen such a formidable figure.
However, as the thief nearly gets to the top, and with all his might pushes the man takes courage and with all his might pushes the ladder off his window. The criminal lands on his back with the ladder atop him, and barks like a dog although he is a perfect human being.
But he is also a professional. He quickly wakes up from the tragedy, wipes the sand off his face and hair, carries the ladder on his broad shoulders and trots dizzily away home to plan another strategy. After an alarm had been sounded for his arrest, he was nowhere to be found.
A boy of about 13 enters into a house and meets the children of a prosperous man whose wife is a businesswoman. The boy tells the children that he has been sent by their mother to carry the video set to a repairer. The children become sceptical, because the video set is in excellent condition.
Anyhow, the teenager convinces them that the repairer had to put something right somewhere. The children are too willing and allowed the smiling adolescent to carry away their beautiful set to improve the picture quality.
Their mother returns at dusk and denies ever sending a boy to the house. Up till this day neither the video set nor the boy has been found.
The latest episode was reported in the Ghanaian Times by Francis Gasu, some three weeks back.
A woman meets two girls at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle, Accra, on their way to buy exercise books at the premises of New Times Corporation. She advises the elder of the two to remove whatever money they were having in their ladies’ bag, to keep it safe by wrapping it in some pieces of paper. She asks them to put the money into a nylon sack -they were holding, and to hurry since according to her, thieves were following them.
The girls indeed hurry. But when they got to New Times and decided to take out the GH¢36,000 wrapped in the papers, the money is absent, the papers intact. So magically dangerous! They came weeping and became confounded at this magical gimmickry perpetuated by a seemingly innocent and helpful woman.
There are thieves and criminals of different grades making money by relying on the gullibility of the native. When a thief enters a court room, he is the most dangerous of his calibre. And when a thief wields a ladder, it is an indication that he knows his job.
A man in brown overall with a ladder firmly held onto his shoulder, begs his way through the capacity crowd present to witness a long-awaited trial. He is allowed into the courtroom and he bows to the judge who solemnly acknowledges the reverence.
He unloads his tall ladder and puts it against the wall as court proceedings were underway. He climbs the ladder and screws out the large beautiful wall clock that had stopped working some two weeks back. The man must be a repairer and his forehead looks like that of a very efficient watch repairer.
He descends the ladder with the clock, puts the ladder on his shoulder, bows again to the judge and is given way to pass. That has been the end of the beautiful clock and the efficient repairer who incidentally does not have thick lips.
These are all true stories which have occurred at one time or the other. They are the perfect substitutes for armed robbery. The thieves come in many forms and guises. They use brains and magic when the going becomes tough.
Be on your guard and save your property!
This article was first published on Saturday October 13, 1990.
Features
Press freedom & the bearded goat

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
Features
Mindset change: The Greater Works factor- Part 2
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




