Features
Saved by COVID-19
A look at the title of this peace would set minds wondering as to how a deadly pandemic could be a saviour of some sort. In this country handshakes between certain individuals have been of immense interest on account of certain perceived friction between the people involved.
Many years ago Sarfo Gyamfi, then a player of Kumasi Asante Kotoko, refused to shake hands with the Head of State, Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings, who was shaking hands with players shortly before a football match.
It became a big issue and was the topic for discussion in the media space. I think the player as well as his team later apologised for the embarrassment caused the head of state.
It is an open secret that there is no love lost between the former First Lady, Nana Konadu Agyemang-Rawlings, and Mr Asiedu Nketia, the General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress.
People were, therefore, looking forward to an encounter between Mr Asiedu Nketia and Mrs Agyemang-Rawlings. The expected handshake was as a result of the sad passing of the former President and husband of Nana Konadu Agyemang, Jerry John Rawlings.
The custom of the land demands that people go to greet the bereaved when a spouse passes on and since the former President was the founder of the NDC, it was expected that the leadership of the NDC will go to express their condolences to the spouse of their founder.
The conflicts that have led to the rifts between those people that have become issues of public concern or interest are generally political in nature.
The handshake that people were really looking forward to but may not likely happen was the one between Asiedu Nketia and Mrs Agyemang-Rawlings due to the peculiar personal and political nature. A bit of background story would put things in perspective.
It was the former President who brought Asiedu Nketia into the lime light after the formation of the NDC Party. He favoured him and Asiedu Nketia became close to the former President and his family. It is an open secret that the former President respected a lot the advice of his wife and if you were in the good books of the former First Lady, you were automatically in the good books of the former President.
Asiedu Nketia benefitted immensely in the political arena within the NDC resulting in his becoming the General Secretary of the NDC. All was well between General Mosquito, as the General Secretary is affectionately called in the political arena and Mrs Agyemang-Rawlings until the primaries for the selection of a flag bearer for the NDC was announced and late President Mills decided to seek the mandate of the delegates to lead the party to contest the 2012 elections.
Some members of the party felt the late President Mills, then the incumbent President must be allowed to go unopposed since if contested, it would be a message to the electorate that, indeed, the late President was underperforming as claimed by the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP).
They feared it would lead to a loss of the election to the NPP in the 2012 elections. Asiedu Nketia then the General Secretary, was with that school of thought. Unfortunately, Mrs Agyemang-Rawlings felt it was time for her to realise her political ambitions and, therefore, decided to contest the incumbent at the primaries.
The majority of the party, led by Asiedu Nketia, fearing the loss of the 2012 elections, tried to persuade the former First Lady but to no avail. That was the beginning of serious problems between Asiedu Nketia and Mrs Agyemang-Rawlings.
Then came the primaries at the Sunyani Stadium for delegates to select who was to become the flag bearer going into the 2012 elections and all hell broke loose. As the former First Lady and her husband, late former President Rawlings, entered the arena where the voting was to take place, the delegates not on their side started hooting at them and they were subjected to an embarrassing moments at the place.
Needless to say, the former First Lady was defeated at the elections and late President Mills became the NDC flag bearer. This embarrassment led to the former First Lady parting ways with the NDC and forming her own party, the National Democratic Party (NDP). Some members of the NDC also left to join her in the NDP.
The last straw to break the camel’s back was when after the elections, Asiedu Nketia commented that the barking dog had been tamed in obvious reference to the former President. The animosity then reached its peak and from then on there was no love lost between Asiedu Nketia and the Rawlingses.
There have been handshake encounters between the former First Lady and former President Mahama which had been speculated by observers to be tension packed and not been the usual cordial greetings with smiles.
People are looking forward to see what would happen when Asiedu Nketia who had “betrayed” the trust of the Rawlingses and even referred to her husband in derogatory terms, encounters Mrs Agyemang-Rawlings; but we may never know due to the no handshake regime currently prevailing as part of the COVID-19 prevention protocol. Asiedu Nketia must surely be thanking and saying to himself “Thank you COVID-19.”
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
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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