Features
A dilemma called Ghana (Part 1)
Just after midnight on March 6, 1957, a nation was inspired to take its destiny into its own hands. A nation was given hope of becoming great by managing its own affairs. Today, that nation is not only in a dilemma; that nation is a dilemma.
Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah set out to lead six million or so Ghanaians at the time to a future of self-sufficiency and wealth. He embarked on providing infrastructure for education, manufacturing, health, transport, agriculture and many more.
Many secondary schools were built, roads constructed, industries set up and an agricultural brigade put in place. State farms were established, and Tema and Takoradi ports were built to facilitate trade. A national shipping line was set up and named the Black Star Line.
To give impetus to the industrial revolution, Nkrumah built the hydropower station known as the Volta Dam at Akosombo to provide cheap electricity for the industries. Tema was billed to spearhead this industrial revolution. Many factories sprang up in Tema, providing jobs for thousands of people.
The Volta Aluminium Company (VALCO) was the leader in this endeavour, followed by textile mills, the State Fishing Company, steel works and many others. Tema itself was zoned and built as a modern city with all the amenities befitting its status. The 19-mile Accra-Tema Motorway was constructed as a fast traffic route between Tema and the capital.
A national airline, known as Ghana Airways, was also established to participate in the global aviation industry. Flying the national flag, Ghana Airways was very popular with travelers in the West African subregion and beyond. Indeed, Nkrumah’s dream for this country knew no bounds.
He strengthened the Civil Service bequeathed to his government by the colonialists and made it more efficient and professional. To engender national cohesion devoid of class and tribalism, the government policy was for more boarding secondary schools to accommodate students from all over the country studying together. I recollect when I entered Zion College (Zico) in 1967, I met students from Nigeria, Togo, Cameroon, Liberia and from almost all regions of Ghana.
It was for Ghana’s technological advancement that the University of Science and Technology (now KNUST) was established in Kumasi and the University College of Cape Coast (now University of Cape Coast) to train professional graduate teachers for the secondary schools. Teacher training colleges were opened in almost all the regions.
With a vision for future scientific advancement, Nkrumah decided to build an atomic plant which could serve the nation’s energy needs and also spearhead research activities.
Ghana produced tyres from the Bonsa Tyre Factory, matches at Kade, transistor radios, called Akasanoma, in Tema, jute bags in Kumasi, and glass at Aboso. Juapong produced gray baft for the textile mills in Tema, especially the Ghana Textile Printing Company (GTP). Oil palm plantations sprang up in Benso, Kwamoso and other places. A brand of vehicles called Boafo was assembled in this country.
This country became so attractive globally that many Africans in the Diaspora claimed to be Ghanaians. And many African countries started clamouring for independence. The torch of independence, lit by Nkrumah, was burning across sub Saharan Africa. “Ablode gbarzaa” was the refrain in Keta, where I was a five-year-old, precosious and notoriously inquisitive boy in kindergarten at the time.
Ghana was on a roll until attempts were made to take Nkrumah out by both internal and external forces. Assassination attempts were made on him, bombs were thrown at him. The imperialist forces branded him a Communist, a vermin to Western interests that must be eliminated at all costs. Western interests began strangling Ghana’s economy, thus creating disaffection to the government.
Nkrumah was in a bind, trying to figure out how to get the country out of economic strangulation. Prices of commodities began rising and life was becoming difficult for the citizens. And the political opposition was making capital out of it all.
Then, on Thursday, February 24, 1966, the military and police announced the overthrow of the government. Nkrumah himself was out of the country on a peace mission to Hanoi. The reason given for the coup d’etat was that the Osagyefo had lost control of the economy and things were difficult for Ghanaians. A National Liberation Council comprising high-ranking soldiers and police was formed to run the country.
Like almost all politicians, Nkrumah ignored advice not to travel. An astrologer, psychic and herbalist, Mr. E.S. Fia Demanya, told Nkrumah that if he traveled, he would not set foot on Ghanaian soil again. Nkrumah did not believe this. The rest is history, as the saying goes. I do not yet know why politicians believe only in themselves and brush aside sound advice.
Meanwhile, Ghanaians, not used to hardship, poured into the streets to jubilate at the overthrow of Nkrumah. He was called names as if he was the devil incarnate. The junta that took power paraded some Nkrumah appointees through the streets locked up in a cage like zoo animals.
It has been said that the American CIA was behind Nkrumah’s overthrow. If this were indeed true, what did the men in uniform benefit from it? Cash inducement to sell one’s country to the West? I think they were the very people trained to protect and defend the territorial integrity of the land. As soldiers, they could be pardoned for not being politicians, but as senior officers who took courses to earn their promotions, they should have some intellectual capacity to discern what the Americans were asking them to do. The big picture was lost on them.
Today, almost six decades later, the only thing Ghanaians say with any semblance of pride is that we were the first country south of the Sahara to gain independence. Nothing else. Nkrumah said we preferred self-government in danger to servitude in tranquility. As I write, I am told our central bank is under the supervision of someone from Kenya on the orders of the IMF/World Bank. Even in servitude, there is no tranquility.
Almost six decades on , is Ghana better than it was before the Osagyefo was overthrown? Where are the industries, the state farms, and the boarding schools? Where is Ghana Airways? Do we still have the Black Star Line? The machines to kickstart Ghana’s atomic project were taken away by the Americans. The Accra-Tena Motorway is an apology. Tema has lost its shine.
Nkrumah himself was declared persona non grata and it was illegal to display any portrait of him. His political party, the Convention People’s Party, was proscribed and declared an illegal organization.
I am told there is an American military detachment based in this country today. Word has it that our own Commander-in-Chief is barred from visiting the site. Is that how much we have debased our sovereignty as a nation? I need answers.
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
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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’
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