Features
Is Africa at the crossroads?
Almost a fortnight ago, the Presidential Guard took over power in the Sahel country of Niger deposing Muhammad Bazoum. This sparked a wave of anger worldwide, except the masses of that country. Our Africa Union and sub-regional body, Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), have issued threats of reprisal.
The Western powers have also threatened sanctions if the deposed President was not reinstated. ECOWAS went further to give the military junta one week to restore democratic rule or face military action. Their ultimatum expired last Sunday.
But one question no one seems to ask is how come very recent military coups in the West Africa sub-region are happening in Francophone countries? How many of us have averted our minds to this, and made any attempt to find out why?
Before I delve into that, let me address the ECOWAS posturing first. I am amazed at the people leading this Group. An ECOWAS that for over three decades of its establishment has done very little to take our nations out of poverty, political ineptitude, corruption and integration cannot be taken seriously.
How does a serious group of people even consider to elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who just won a supposedly flawed election and was yet to name his cabinet, Chairman of ECOWAS? Are we bereft of serious thinking? An ECOWAS that turns the other way while despots in their midst flout their constitutions to perpetually remain in power is a threat to West Africa and the African continent.
They only find their voices when soldiers remove one of their colleagues as in the case of Niger. Most importantly, their voices are loud because they each fear it could next be their turn. They only fight to protect their power. What they do not know is that nobody takes ECOWAS seriously anymore. Let them do a count and prove this assertion wrong.
I am not one to advocate for usurpation of the democratic process, though I support military in power anytime. But ECOWAS sending soldiers to Niger is laughable. How do they hope to execute this? If the masses of any country support their leaders, not even the might of the superpowers can defeat a determined people. If ECOWAS want to be foolhardy, let them try it. Whose interest are they seeking in this circumstance, anyway?
Already, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Mali have served notice that any foreign attack in Niger will be considered an attack on their countries as well. Is ECOWAS pandering to Western interests? Maybe.
Now, I have no sympathy for the French, though I abhor the assault on their embassy building in Niamey. France has always deluded itself into thinking that they could subjugate their former colonies for eternity, plundering their natural resources under the guise of armistice.
No former colonies can trade among themselves without the consent of Paris. Not only that; every former colony is bound by French law to keep their foreign reserves in France’s Central Bank. They borrow from their own reserves and pay the interest to France. Call it French hegemony if you may.
Niger has Gold, Coal, Oil, Iron Ore and Uranium. Indeed, Niger is the fourth world leader in Uranium extraction. Over a third of France’s energy comes from Nigerien Uranium, yet the ordinary Nigerien lives below the poverty line. To protect their economic interest the French have military bases in their former colonies. But for their former colonies, France would be the poorest country in Europe after Portugal.
At a point, every head of state of Francophone Africa was an automatic member of the French Parliament. But our African compatriots cannot be fooled anymore. They are no more the half-educated stooges with no intellectual capacity for discernment. These are intelligent people with solid education and now understand what their colonial Master has done to them.
Guinea, Burkina Faso, Mali and, now, Niger have “woken” up. Let no one think these young military officers are mere adventurists seeking attention. They want to take control of their own natural resources for their people.
It is about time these Western powers and those still with a colonial mentally realised that Africa is no more the patch they met in Berlin and used a pencil to carve to themselves. Africa is no one’s backyard. We have been run roughshod over for long and we cannot take it anymore. And this is the message from the Sahel.
There are still Western stooges in power across the continent of Africa. They know themselves and they have been put on notice. We have them who betray their own ECOWAS and the Africa Union. They have been put on notice.
Our people have been enslaved, our resources pillaged, our women raped and killed in the name of colonisation. Even today, Africans suffer racial abuse all over the globe, yet our resources hold attraction to them. Sadly, there are myopic and self-seeking leaders who still pander to the whims of the imperial West. This is Africa’s dilemma.
What interest have America and the West got in the Sahel other than to steal the wealth of the people under the guise of curbing activities of jihadist movements? Let them tell us how the jihadists come about in the first place. There is a suspected deposit of materials used in the production of californium. Californium is a nuclear material that costs $27million a gramme. Imagine how much a kilogramme will cost.
This explains Wagner mercenaries’ interest and Western opprobrium to the coup in Niger because only the United States and Russia produce californium. That is why the US and France did not coerce ECOWAS for military action in Guinea, Burkina Faso and Mali because they hold not economic attraction to them.
Who are the West to determine standards of governance for the rest of the world? Even after almost 250 years of independence, the mighty United States of America is in a political turmoil, divided right through the middle on Republican and Democratic lines. These are the people who preach democracy to us who are barely 70 years into nationhood.
An Ewe proverb loosely translates says a bird destined for life never lacks feathers. Left alone, Africa has the capacity to chart a way for economic and political development and progress. No one should stampede us to run their races; we have our own pace.
The so-called advanced countries that cannot protect their cyberspace are the ones setting standards for the rest of the world to live up to. It makes no sense. Haiti is burning in their own hemisphere but they are blind to that country, simply because Haiti does not have resources worth pillaging. Their attention is on Africa just because all natural resources imaginable are on the continent.
No country can claim to love Africa more than Africans themselves. If they so claim, the best they could do is leave Africa to chart its own path. They must respect us for who we are just as they want to be respected for who they are. Who is better equipped to run our lives but ourselves?
But as Africa begins to ask to be left alone, the continent must not let any other foreign elements take their place. That Burkina Faso, Mali and the Central African Republic have opened their doors to the Wagner mercenaries spells doom for those countries. Just like France and its allies, the Wagner Group must also be driven out of the continent. We cannot get one devil out and embrace a more devious one.
Let us do business with America and the West, Russia, China and all other nations, but none should be allowed to plunder our resources.
Back home, it is unnerving that Ghana has allowed a US military base on our soil. It is equally dangerous that the US military has an unfettered access to Terminal One of our Kotoka International Airport, which by all intents and purposes is a security zone. Only God knows what these Yankees do in and out of our space. Would America allow this on their soil?
Personally, I don’t hate America and its people, even if Americans are the most ignorant and ill-informed people per capita worldwide. Anyone who has lived in the US knows this for a fact. It is their Rambo-style foreign policy that is a worldwide irritant.
Let Africa rise up against foreign military bases on the continent immediately. We have the capacity to be at peace with ourselves.
Writer’s email address:
akofa45@yahoo.com
Your Weekend Companion
www.spectator.com.gh
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
