Features
The wahala of Sikaman MPs (2)
Some Members of Parliament at a funeral
When the honourable Member of Parliament returns home after the visit to his hometown, he can breathe easily now. He could have died from financial strangulation or from Common Fund disease. He must give thanks on Sunday at the church service for being alive.
As for the next visit, unless the second coming of Jesus Christ. Meanwhile, he must reflect and reckon whether the visit to the constituency was a successful one, after all. It will then hit him hard that what he had wanted to do during the visit was quite forgotten immediately he landed.
The natives completely distracted him. For example, there was this man who said he had contributed to his castration, sorry circumcision. The man later added that he was his uncle called Koli Badu, although he has no such uncle.
IMPRESSION
He was also forced to chair a funeral gathering where he had donated heavily to impress the folks and to glorify the size of his briefcase. He had given money to others to pay school fees, communal labour default penalties, free palmwine and tobacco snuff, court fines, whatever.
What he had gone to do, however, was not to cure poverty or alleviate it. He was not a doctor and therefore could not vaccinate the folks against the poverty disease, Africa’s most widespread epidemic.
He had gone there to meet the constituents to tell them about how the government was faring, what had been discussed in Parliament and his personal contributions to the debates; government’s infrastructural programmes and how they relate to his constituency and allied matters.
However, when he got that the natives would not be in the mood for official briefs. It was not their immediate concern if government’s infrastructural ideas were growing or ‘slimming.
That was a secondary matter and could not be entertained now, May be, it could be looked at during the next visit.
What was exigent was the palaver of the stomach and the issue bordering on the back- pocket economy of the men and the financial health of the white handkerchiefs of the women.
That, was certainly more important than parliamentary news and the state of the Yamoransa or Aflao road or the Keta Sea Defence project.
The folks needed new funeral cloths, second-hand church clothes, new tobacco snuff containers and Charlie Wote, The MP must be able to address such pertinent issues first. If he couldn’t, then what was the use of the MPs Common Fund, they would reason?
So the petrol he had wasted brought no benefit in terms of his work as a parliamentarian.
EDUCATION
The people of Sikaman would have to be educated on the need for them to stop seeing MPs as their financial messiahs. MPs are legislators and are supposed to be making laws and debating them. They are not operators of charity homes and neither are they philanthropists.
The laws they make are not only for their constituencies but also for the entire territory of Sikaman. Their salaries are really not enough to finance school fees and frothing palmwine.
Because of the pressures on them, they cannot do their jobs the proper way.
They cannot even stay overnight in the hometowns. The Common Fund is not for palmwine and tobacco. It is to enable them to initiate constituency projects and fund them. They are not meant for poverty alleviation. The Poverty Alleviation Fund is got through the assemblies.
HARASSMENT
Ghanaians must also stop the habit of travelling from their hometowns to Accra to base at the homes of their MPs to look for jobs. It is worse than harassment. It is almost criminal.
Sometimes MPs host about six people at a time. They have to feed them three times a day, and they must eat what the MP eats lest they go back home and say the MP discriminates in terms of stomach matters. That could cost him votes at the next elections.
You can find that where the MP’s accommodation isn’t big, his hosts sleep in the living room, some with their heads under a coffee table, one leg in the kitchen, the other in the bathroom,
What is worse is that they can snore heavily and the MP can hardly have a sound sleep. Sometimes the building vibrates due to the combined forces of the snorers. The house dog is compelled to bark because it is not used to such resonance. It might cause an earthquake.
The wahala of MPs is not cheap. People think it is all glory being an MP. It can also mean sweat, discomfort and even the temptation to resign and be in a less stress-free vacation.
But at the next election, you’ll see all of them standing to be elected again. Such is politics.
This article was first published on Saturday, July 13, 2001
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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