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Don’t underrate usefulness of coconut – Ellembelle DCE
• Mr Kwasi Bonzo addressing the gathering
District Chief Executive of Ellembelle in the Western Region, Mr Kwasi Bonzo, has described coconut as ‘the tree of life’, arguing that, Ghana needs to take the potentials of the crop seriously to address her present economic challenges.
He said: “We should remind ourselves that the future of this country is not with oil and gas. We underrate the usefulness of coconut which currently is called the tree of life or the tree of wealth. Others call it heaven’s supermarket because every part of coconut from the roots to the branch is useful, the most useful tree crop in the world is coconut.”
Mr Bonzo said these at the launch of the 2nd International Coconut Festival at Alabokazo in the Ellembelle District of the Western Region last Friday.
He stressed: “If there is any non- traditional tree crop that has export potentials it is coconut.
“Recently, with the discovery and production of oil and gas, it looks as if all our attention has been diverted towards that sector but let us not forget that oil is a finite product. It won’t last forever, the maximum lifespan for the well is 25 to 30 years.”
Mr Bonzo noted that, coconut and agriculture, generally, had been part of the Western Region, therefore, more attention and investment should be given to a sector capable of earning more foreign exchange, propel the economy and ensure sustainable development.
The DCE told the participants that the present location of the event was previously populated by coconut, however, over the last 50 years, Ghana has lost over 80 per cent of its coconut vegetation through the Cape St. Paul’s Wilts Disease.
Recently, Mr Bonzo disclosed that Ghana Statistical Services (GSS) reported that food price inflation in the Western Region had moved beyond 40 per cent and asked “Why should you be in Western Region with natural vegetation capable of producing every food item and be struggling to buy food?”
“We are currently struggling but the future is agriculture. Basically we are an agrarian economy. If we pay attention to coconut and get a little over 100,000 hectares of coconut under production, we should be able to save a lot of our crises,” he added.
On the usefulness of coconut, he indicated that, the husk and the shelf of the crop, could save mining companies in the Western Region from importing millions of dollars of activated carbon for processing gold and cushion the forex markets.
Mr Bonzo continued “The sector that requires the maximum use of science and technology is agriculture, we need to train producers. Farming should become a profession dedicated to people in a sector that needs a lot of skills . As a nation, we want to ask ourselves, are we getting our priorities right? Why should we be in Ghana and be importing food from other countries?”
From Clement Adzei Boye, Alabokazo
One of the issues we have been grappling with as a nation is corruption, and it has had such a devastating effect on our national development. I have been convinced that until morality becomes the foundation upon which our governance system is built, we can never go forward as a nation.
Our traditional practices, which have shaped our cultural beliefs, have always espoused values that have kept us along the straight and the narrow and have preserved our societies since ancient times.
These are values that frown on negative habits like stealing, cheating, greediness, selfishness, etc. Our grandparents have told us stories of societies where stealing was regarded as so shameful that offenders, when caught, have on a number of instances committed suicide.
In fact, my mother told me of a story where a man who was living in the same village as her mother (my grandmother), after having been caught stealing a neighbour’s cockerel, out of shame committed suicide on a mango tree. Those were the days that shameful acts were an abomination.
Tegare worship, a traditional spiritual worship during which the spirit possesses the Tegare Priest and begins to reveal secrets, was one of the means by which the society upheld African values in the days of my grandmother and the early childhood days of my mother.
Those were the days when the fear of being killed by Tegare prevented people from engaging in anti-social vices. These days, people sleeping with other people’s wives are not uncommon.
These wrongful behaviour was not countenanced at all by Tegare. One was likely going to lose his life on days that Tegare operates, and so unhealthy habits like coveting your neighbour’s wife was a taboo.
Stealing of other people’s farm produce, for instance, could mean certain death or incapacitation of the whole or part of the body in the full glare of everybody. People realised that there were consequences for wrongdoing, and this went a long way to motivate the society to adhere to right values.
Imagine a President being sworn into office and whoever administers the oath says, “Please say this after me: I, Mr. …., do solemnly swear by God, the spirits of my ancestors and the spirits ruling in Ghana, that should I engage in corrupt acts, may I and my family become crippled, may madness become entrenched in my family, may incurable sicknesses and diseases be my portion and that of my family, both immediate and extended.”
Can you imagine a situation where a few weeks afterwards the President goes to engage in corrupt acts and we hear of his sudden demise or incapacitation and confessing that he engaged in corrupt acts before passing or before the incapacitation—and the effect it will have on his successor? I believe we have to critically examine this option to curb corruption.
My grandmother gave me an eyewitness account of one such encounter where a woman died instantly after the Tegare Priest had revealed a wrong attitude she had displayed during the performance on one of the days scheduled for Tegare spirit manifestation.
According to her story, the Priest, after he had been possessed by the spirit, declared that for what the woman had done, he would not forgive her and that he would kill. Instantly, according to my grandmother, the lady fell down suddenly and she died—just like what happened to Ananias and his wife Sapphira in Acts Chapter 5.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
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