Gradually, the National Democratic Congress is shifting from its Neanderthal stance in party politicking and ultra-leftist tendencies, and adopting friendlier tactics. All of a sudden, somehow, by the grace of God, the ethnicity propaganda that held the North and the Volta as well as the indigenous communities of Ga, with Kofi Awoonor and buddy, Dr Josiah Nii Armah Ayeh, is fizzling.
Maybe, a day might come when another generation of hardliners will hit the ground mouthing such excretions. But, as the tables stand today, courtesy the invasion of Dr Alhaji Mahamudu Bawumia, the noise about who comes from where has drastically shifted to which of the Norther-ners is competent, capable and commit himself to Ghana without the SADA and NDA nuisances that haunt both political parties.
I recall NDC kingpins like distant cousin Enoch Teye Mensah, VR in-law Prof Kofi Awoonor and Jerry Rawlings being several times caught in it. As I do this piece, there is a strong grassroots Dangme activist chasing Abena for something no NDC person can do for him. But that is life…As the sages have said, a sheep will always lay the whitest part of its wool where [part of ground] it loves most.
But I similarly recall noises – indeed, ugly noises – made by some top party gurus in the NDC adding to the ethnicity jibes; and to think that these are educated persons irritate me. We can understand it, if those persons were just ordinary political persons seeking to live perpetually on politics money. But some of these were from academia and other professional bodies.
I am glad Harry Sawyer never did that nor did Obed Yao Asamoah and Kwabena Adjei. But I am sad that pal Josiah Aryeh got embroiled in that. Sad that, in the end, he exited this life like the poor Reverend Father Osofo Komfo Damuah did. Not an NDC fly was at his funeral officially. Worse, he died with NDC girls attempting to loot his property – though they had nothing to show that they were married to him. That’s how bad we can degrade education. Fare thee well, Nii Armah. Even exiled in academia, the NDC made sure he struggled to attain his professorial. I should have said he almost because he had made too many enemies even in academia where his boss was…That’s how they packed academia with their favourites and how I further recall that a couple of VR lecturers sought to portray that Ewes number 63 per cent of Ghana’s population.
Well, now, it is Baba versus Baba vying for the prized position of the president – the Zongos in Accra through the mosques in the Central Region to the millet granaries and livestock kraals in the Savannah. That is a huge population about to be split into two, but also Andanis and Abudus; Mamprusis and Gonjas and Kusasis and Kooominis… dividing the NDC presidential votes. Ay3 huhuuhu
Keta Sea Defence Project
The evil about ethnicity politics, in my opinion, is manifested in how indigenes in the Volta Region bastardised, degraded and disdained the invaluable project. It was meat for the good of ordinary citizens and protection of ordinary communities.
Well, since JAK, little has been added to it. Little wonder, we would be seeing the effects of our collective folly in flooding that could have been avoided had we considered that this was government resources intended to arrest a dire situation. I recall hearing at some Church of Pentecost convention at Tesshie when I was a kid at the military barracks. The lay preacher, a female, made quite some jolly good noise about Old Noah calling his community to penitence, and warning of a flood.
“They ignored Noah, just like you may be ignoring me today…They even defecated in the boat…But the more they defecated into it, the more the boat became cleaner because, at some point, they slipped and fell into the mess, resulting in their traditional long garbs absorbing the human faeces.”
While that may be a comical illustration, it tells a story about how we joke with very critical matters till we are caught naked in misery – like the criminal who joked with a passport gratis to Paradise. He had told Jesus to save himself and them [two criminals] if “He were truly the Son of God.” Stupid to have missed an opportunity, with his whole being already in Hell.
So, the rains came in the Volta Region several times. But the sae also got angry because boys and girls squatted opposite looking back to back and doing into the sea what they should have done in the traditional atonko cabin or pit latrine. Gradually that attack on nature began affecting catch in the Volta and in the sea. That’s the fruit of ethnicity politics. Worse was when the floods and, not even the rains, began attacking shrines and the dead in graves.
But there is also this phenomenon their male and female kids in Accra and Kumasi are getting into. Male Ewe graduates marrying Ashanti girls is becoming fashionable. The other day I asked an agro scientist I did a project with why she went to the VR.
“That means nothing; we are both from the same Church…” she said.
When I asked how his folks would react back home, he said the guys parents have been lost in Accra for decades. And, I said to myself: “That’s probably why”. But I added a joke that she didn’t understand.
“Take care they don’t foist another wife from home for him”, to which she replied “Over my dead body.”
As my NDC friends would appreciate, these are the socialisation angles we should be humorously discussing” instead of the Kofi Awoonor and Josiah Aryeh or Jerry Rawlings and ET Mensah uppercuts bequeathed to the Fiifi Kweteys of yesteryears. .
NDC’s Volta Region woes
The NDC’s woes may also open up in the Volta Region like a festering sore; already, by the records, the tightening of the processes and desperation is eating away chunks – even if bits and pieces – of the VR NDC votes. They can no longer steal and push kids to go vote, but also vote multiple, nor can they beat up Jake’s and DI boys on assignment to monitor polls, particularly in the Volta South and Aflao constituencies.
So, Fiifi Fiave Kwetey is agitated and has to change strategy to the “issues.” That the way to go. The issues is what politics is all about, but also which party and government can be trusted to deliver food security, health and education, besides jobs and social protection.
Galamsey, forbidden issue
As for galamsey, we have all lost the war. So lost it that none of the flagbearers and political parties have said and committed his party or government to a sanitisation of the sector to deliver food security, enhanced cocoa output, job creation, timber production and cleaner waterbodies and greener and enlarged vegetative cover.
That means collective complicity that God will whip us all for, beginning with the former Presidents and flagbearers. As for the little imps still assaulting our collective heritage it is good they are dropping dead in pits in helping fertilise the ground till the days we would wise up and consider food security the basic occupation since Adam. We get that right and everything falls into place. We get that wrong and everything falls apart.
Indeed, we opt for galamsey and with it comes deficits in food security targets or boom in Anloga Junction activity and we lose our timber reserves to illegal lumber operators. Again, what we may also have is danger to the tourism sector and threat to aquaculture and shellfish down to Samuel Ablakwa Okudzeto’s and original Sam Okudzeto’s Tongu constituencies…
Fiifi Kwetey’s ‘Zero Election Petition’ Epistle
So, with NDC General Secretary Fiifi F Kweteys epistle in mind, I think am in good company. That means we are all in good company as NDC and NPP.
It also means we are back to the issues. l have always held that if the NPP administration jails the NDC and the NDC returns to power and begins jailing bad boys in the NPP, corruption will be minimised. Welcome Fiifi to the party.
That how we should be growing our democracy till all the animals get behind bars, like wolves and hyenas in a zoo, so that society eventually is rid of the dog breeds.
By Abena Baawuah