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Lotto Palaver
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My former classmate, Kwame Korkorti, told me recently that the symptoms of modern day diseases like unemployment and redeployment can effectively be stopped using herbal treatment. He also confided in me that if herbal treatment does not prove effective, then one needs to go the lotto way, to avoid weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Korkorti indeed has eleven and a half years practical experience in how to make ends meet. Although he was famous in the 70s as the best kpanlogo dancer of the decade, he was redeployed as a civil servant not too far back.
Faced with the dilemma of where to invest his redeployment benefits, he took the biggest risk in life. He used half the amount on lotto for four consecutive weeks and lost. He then approached a man called the ‘Lotto-Crocodile’ who gave him three sure tips, which were arrived at by the dictates of a ‘timing’ plan.
The calculations could not be doubted and the ‘crocodile’ was indeed revered, even feared, for his lotto prowess. Should Korkorti invest the other half of his benefits into the “3-sure” and damn the consequences?
If he lost, it would be a disaster for him. His wife would leave him, and the landlord would serve him with a ‘quit’ notice, and he would become a ‘Son of Man.’ Moreover, his friends would call him the biggest fool in contemporary times.
Investment
To be on the safer side, he told his wife about his investment plans. She flared up and called him an idiot and a fat-head John-Bull. Korkorti, therefore, recoiled into his shell but decided to stake just ¢1,000.
On Saturday, the three numbers were there in black and white. He promptly divorced his wife for having deprived him of millions of cedis.
Ever since this episode, Korkorti has become a lotto addict, a forecaster, a lotto magician, editor-in-chief of a lotto paper and the chairman of the Sikaman Lotto Winners Association (SLWA).
I heard there is also an association called the Sikaman Lotto Losers Association (SLLA).
Although it is the unemployed who are susceptible to the lotto syndrome, the business is also the pre-occupation of people from all walks of life-business executives, secretaries of state, assemblymen, fetish priests, pastors and evangelists, beggars and koose sellers.
In fact, lotto transcends all occupations and professions in such a way that both the rich and the poor are perpetually engaged in making money out of mechanised lotto, VAG-West or Lucky Scratch whose scarcity in the metropolis does not merit the numerous adverts on television.
Some people are born lucky and can win lotto 20 times in a year. Others like myself have been born to lose.
The last time I came close to winning was in 1983 when hunger in Sikaman was quite normal to the natives. It was the era of famine when man, wife and children had only one hard coconut for supper and got ready to develop jaundice. It was at that time that I got a “2-sure” tip from a very reliable but clandestine source. The mathematical solution of the problem was arrived at by permutation and combinations, backed by calculus and lotto matrices. The two numbers were unfailing.
I told two close friends about it and they staked heavily like I did. After I had kept the tickets safely in a notebook which l locked away in a fortified drawer, I quickly began figuring out a budget based upon the amount l’d win at the week-end.
I planned to purchase one maxi bag of rice, I’ll order yams from Kasoa, beans from Kordiabe and palm-nuts from Larteh. I’ll purchase a table top fridge (since l enjoy iced water so much), a portable sound system and a diplomatic shoe. I apportioned the amounts I’ll remit to my mother, my old-man, brothers, sisters and two friends.
I became so obsessed with this lotto palaver that I could hardly sleep at night. As the week-end approached, the excitement grew so much that I began feeling quite uncomfortable.
Come 5.05 p.m. on Saturday. My heart started beating violently when the Club Beer advert came clear on the air. It was only seconds away and I would be richest man in a time of scarcity and acute hunger. I dashed for my pen and paper.
The numbers were being mentioned by a deep-throated announcer: “And now, the numbers… “My heart beat like that of a marathon runner as I wrote them down, my fingers trembling. The first three numbers did not include my “2-sure” tips. But I was reassured when the fourth was one of mine.
I was ready to leap into air when the last number called was nowhere near my other number. I had lost, and immediately started thinking about where my supper would come from.
That was the day I vowed not to stake lotto again in my life. Lotto can be a good servant and also a bad master. It has been the fertile ground for some people and the downfall of luckless others. It has made some rich and also impoverished others. It has solved problems in families and caused problems in families.
Anyhow, it is the surest way of getting rich without getting into trouble with revolutionary laws. This is because with lotto, you can become an instant millionaire without dipping long fingers into public funds.
Some people say lotto is a vice. Well I do not consider it as such, but of course, it depends on the angle from which one views the game. Although I no longer stake lotto, I’ll be the last to advise anybody against it. It may be somebody’s saviour, who knows. Moreover, it is a way of taxing people for national revenue without, realising they being taxed.
In fact they pay the tax without force, and some gain therefrom. It has also been a source of employment for many, like lotto receivers and agents.
The only problem with lotto is that it is a time-wasting venture to which most workers concentrate all their attention instead of attending to official duties.
Productivity falls, because from the Managing Director to the cleaner, everybody is either busy calculating a certain mathematical progression or discussing the potency of a ‘machine’ number.
True to it, in an eight-hour working period per day, a typical lotto addict uses two hours to think about family problems, one hour for financial worries, and three hours to forecast winning numbers. The remaining two hours are shared between working on the job and relaxing. No country progresses with such work schedule.
Perhaps, it would be better if workers rely more on dream-numbers, car numbers and
house numbers instead of machine numbers, shadows, counterparts, addition 90, turning numbers and timing plans. We should not sacrifice productivity for personal gain. We are free to work lotto after closing hours, week-ends and public holidays. All the best in your lotto palaver.
This article was first published on Saturday, October 27, 1990.
There is a scripture that is found in Matthew 6:22 which says that the lamp of the body is the eye and therefore the eye must see well to enable the body to get to its destination.
What most people do not know is that behind the scenes, there is a strong interaction between the eyes and the brain before a picture becomes clear. The state of mind therefore is crucial to the eye seeing clearly to enable the body to process accurately the information the eyes are feeding it for proper identification of what the eyes see.
This is similar to how a person behaves i.e. what informs the decisions that forms in the mind that results in the actions that a person performs. The actions of a person does not therefore just happen but is as a result of things that went on in the mind, which in most cases resulted from information passed on to it by the eyes either consciously or unconsciously.
There are so many issues that affect our society which makes one wonder, whether the people who displayed such acts were created by someone or something other than God.
How can a person see a beach created by God with beautiful beaches and fresh air blowing all around, decides to defecate at such places, and therefore desecrate the environment? lt is simply mind boggling?
When other people in other countries who dwell on the coast are using their beaches for tourist attraction purposes as a means of livelihood and also to promote environmental health, some people living around our beaches, have turned them into rubbish dumping sites and toilets.
It is a very sad situation and the earlier we did something about it the better. It is a national emergency that must engage the attention, first of the government and then the citizenry, where religious bodies and NGOs must play a critical role.
The things we focus on in this country, needs to be addressed. Our minds which processes the info the eyes send to the brain, must be disciplined. There are certain behaviours that a disciplined mind can ignore even when the eye has provided info to the brain. One of the things a disciplined mind does, is the avoidance of a second look, which is critical for every person who wants to avoid adultery or fornication.
Once a person is not blind, he will see things. The boobs, the ‘shankus’, the coca cola shapes, the light complexioned, the dark complexioned etc. the eyes will definitely see and report same to the brain. What the brain or the mind decides to do or instructs the eye to do is the issue.
It can decide to instruct the eye to take a second look and let the mind drool over it or say ignore it and that will be the end.
If the mind becomes trained to focus on environmental issues like clean environment, the eyes will automatically be reporting on insanitary conditions to the brain as and when it sees them. The mind will pay attention to such data and begin to process them and to identify solutions to deal with the reported insanitary conditions.
There is the need to encourage citizens to train the mind to focus on the right thing so that in tandem with the eyes, focus will be maintained. When the mind is so trained, it communicates with the eye to also focus on hood things that helps in both are spiritual life and our secular lives, for indeed the eyes are the lamp of the body. God bless.
THE relationship between New Times Corporation (NTC) and African Concrete Productions (ACP) is based entirely on matters of the stomach. Each depends on the other in a dietary symbiosis, reinforced by the close proximity of each other
At lunchtime, you’d see a particular set of Times workers marching regimentally to ACP to face the wall. You’d think they are soldiers. It has long been declared that the company manufactures the best kokonte in the Greater Accra Region. ACP is, therefore, a culinary haven for those NTC kokonte fans, both male and female.
As the NTC kokonte warriors cross the border to ACP, you’d see some ACP banku fanatics dancing joyously to NTC. They are lucky folks because they do not have to obtain visa to enter into ‘Times’ to attack the balls of banku with precision and accuracy. They also claim that the lightsoup at ‘Times’ is arguably the best in West Africa.
So the relationship between the two entities was quite cordial and based practically on stomach palaver, until ACP workers staged an industrial revolution, whereupon the managing director, accountant and estate manager were allegedly stripped naked and locked up in a room. An insurgency had began in earnest.
An ACP worker came to ‘Times’, this time not to eat banku and okro. He had come to inform newsmen that juicy stuff awaited them at ACP. It could make a front page lead story.
A camerawoman and a female reporter were accordingly dispatched to go and bring back news, juicy news as juicy as kokonte and groundnut soup.
I was driving to work when I espied the familiar camerawoman clicking away outside the ACP premises. I didn’t see any ‘Times’ reporter but angry workers who were on the verge of getting violent. I slowed down and the driver behind blew his horn at me like a lunatic. I drove on.
Later, I heard the reporter and camerawoman were harassed and brutalised. The report came,. “The camerawoman, Mrs Salome Adonu-Agbottah and reporter Mrs Doreen Allotey, in an attempt to retrieve the camera which the workers had seized from them were severely beaten. They were manhandled and almost pushed into a big gutter opposite the company’s premises.
BRUISES
“….The camerawoman had bruises on her body, her hand bag was destroyed and the money in it stolen. Mrs Allotey’s watch was also snatched and her feet stamped on.”
Luckily, it was not her nose that was trampled upon. She has a beautiful nose.
The bad news was received with extreme sorrow. If the victims had been men, it would not have seemed too bad. But to brutalise women is just unacceptable. The New Times Corporation has not stopped mourning the incident which has been condemned in many circles.
Some people keep asking me why Times sent females to cover a potentially violent demonstration. I tell them they might as well ask why CNN’s amazon, Christina Amanpour, is assigned to cover the carnage in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda. She is always on the frontline in jeans and jacket.
Journalism is a potentially hazardous profession, and once you accept to study and practise the trade, you might as well bone up to face any assignment as long as your superiors feel you are capable of handling it or you have demonstrated the capacity to handle it. Both males and females can be assigned anywhere, anytime just like policemen and women are assigned.
The only difference between cops and pressmen is that the latter are armed only with a pen and the former with a gun. The question is should newsmen also arm themselves so that in any event of an assault they would not be found wanting in self-defence? They can’t adequately defend themselves with a pen and a jotter. A pen cannot even disfigure an opponent’s upper lip.
Photo-journalists have particularly suffered violence. Spectator ace-cameraman Vincent Dzatse was severely assaulted by AMA men when he attempted to take pictures of their indiscretions.
Sports cameraman, P. K. Arthur has been beaten more than once at the sports stadium when riots errupted and he wanted to capture it on his lenses.
Some sports journalists have been banned from entering the Accra Sports Stadium by supporters because in their comments, they didn’t write “sense”. Some supporters once nearly lynched Christian Abbew, Spectator Sports Editor, near a courtroom. He was stoned like the biblical Stephen. He had gone to defend a contempt charge.
I think it is time journalists met and discussed how best to defend themselves in any event of an attack by individuals or mobs. In the pursuance of their duty, they must be free from harassment and assault.
Some journalists go to work and return home with a black-eye or a double fore-head. It is just not right. Something has to be done about it. I think journalists should be armed. But first we must be trained in the use of firearms so that our warning shot do not hit below the belt. What about training in Kung Fu?
This article was first published on Saturday, October 17, 1998.
