Features
Odartey’s marital saga: Is it the case of ‘fear women’?
Many Ghanaians are still expressing ‘hot’ anger over the contents of Gloria Appiah’s writs attempting to claim substantial part of her former husband’s cash and properties.
‘Unfortunately’ , some Ghanaians including some women, also describe the conduct of Gloria Appiah, per her writs, in unprintable phrases while others simply say, she exhibits traces of ‘stupidity’ and ‘shamelessness’.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines ‘shamelessness’ as, insensible to disgrace and having no shame.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary calls a shameless person, audacious, bold, brash, brazen, unprincipled, outrageous and immodest.
Wikipedia also defines ‘stupidity’ as, a behaviour that shows a lack of good sense or judgement. Synonyms for stupidity include, absurdity, silliness, idiocy, foolishness and asininity.
Readers, who is Gloria Appiah? She is the former wife of Ghana’s football icon, Nii Odartey Lamptey.
Reportedly, the Supreme Court on 2nd March, 2022, upheld an earlier Appeal Court decision ordering Gloria Appiah to vacate Odartey Lamptey’s seven-bedroom house located at East Legon in Accra.
Odartey says:” I have been in a rented accommodation in Accra for so many years now since the first court ruling, while my ex-wife is still living in my seven-bedroom house , in addition to the four-bedroom house she has been given by the court.”
Odartey adds:”Sometimes , I shed tears in pain when I’m alone in my room.”
Records indicate that in September 2013, Gloria Appiah filed a writ at an Accra High Court asking the court to dissolve the marriage between her and Odartey Lamptey.
In the writ, Gloria Appiah stated that her marriage with Odartey had irreparably broken down due to the violent behaviour of her husband.
She accused Odartey of subjecting her and her children to grave emotional and psychological abuse, besides having extra-marital affairs.
Gloria Appiah told the court that she could no longer live with her husband because of his constant false accusations of adultery against her.
Consequently, she asked the court to order Odartey to pay her a lump sum of GH¢ 500,000.
She again urged the court to equitably divide or distribute a number of landed properties and cash in various bank accounts of Odartey.
In response to Gloria Appiah’s writ, Odartey accepted the fact that the marriage had broken down beyond reconciliation.
He, however, laid the blame on the infidelity of Gloria Appiah and supported his claim with a DNA report on paternity test , which confirmed that he was not the father of all the three children of the 25-year-old marriage.
In its ruling on 14th June, 2017, the High Court established the fact that the marriage had, indeed, broken down beyond reconciliation.
The court established that the three children of the marriage were not the biological children of Odartey.
The court then ordered Odartey to pay GH¢ 200,000 to Gloria Appiah as financial settlement, besides giving her a- four-bedroom house at Dome in Accra and two vehicles.
For Odartey himself, the court gave him back his seven-bedroom house.
According to court records, Gloria Appiah disagreed to the decision of the High Court and moved upstairs to the Court of Appeal.
She urged the Court of Appeal to rule that she did not engage in adultery, regarding the conception of the three children of the marriage, insisting that Odartey was very much aware that “the children were not his biological child
urged the Appeal Court to re-examine the distribution of the properties as per the High Court ruling.
The Court of Appeal stated that the alleged adultery of Gloria Appiah was not a factor in determining the equities of the case.
Nonetheless, the Court of Appeal said, due regard must be given to the fact that Odartey was not the biological father of the three children and had expended huge sums of money on them over the 21 years of marriage; providing food, shelter and education, besides being with him as he worked and travelled to Holland, Belgium, Italy and the United Kingdom, attending private schools.
On whether Gloria Appiah committed adultery, the Court of Appeal stated that “the Petitioner (Gloria Appiah) during cross examination insists that the children were conceived by a process other than sexual intercourse” with Odartey Lamptey.
However, she flatly refused to answer any further questions on how she conceived her children and told the court that she did not want to talk about the paternity of the children, claiming the issue was a very delicate one.
So, in effect, the fact that Gloria Appiah’s three children were conceived through adultery was not contradicted by her per any court record on evidence.
Gloria Appiah disregarded the ruling of the High Court and the Court of Appeal and refused to vacate Odartey’s seven-bedroom house after many years of the dissolution of the marriage by the court.
Public reaction on social media to the latest court ruling still in favour of Odartey Lamptey, has been spontaneous and acerbic.
Readers, let’s read a few of them: (1) “The fear of women is the beginning of knowledge; God is not a woman”. (2) “When Odartey’s wife meets Jezebel, what notes will they compare?” (3) “It’s not easy to win a fight with a woman, not any woman, but a Delilah kind of a woman.”(4) “With Odartey’s painful experience, ‘fear women’ must be a wake-up call for some Ghanaian men.”
Indeed, dear readers, with Odartey’s painful experience ; can it be said that unknowingly, many married men in Ghana are living with and looking after ‘sons and daughters’ who are sincerely not their biological children?
Readers, kindly examine the aforementioned ‘simple’ question and attempt to answer it.
My dear readers; I wish you happy, happy, happy EASTER celebration.
Contact email/ WhatsApp of the author:
asmahfrankg@gmail.com (0505556179)
By G. Frank Asmah
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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