Moral Compass

Moral Compass

by E. Ofori Akyea

I am increasingly getting confused about the direction in which the moral compass of our nation is set. In a ship or when one is travelling in unknown parts the compass points to the magnetic north the traveller sets the compass to the direction of the destination intended in relation to the north. So when one is being buffeted during the journey one keeps a steady course with the certainty that one will get to the intended destination.

A country’s destiny is, of course, more complicated than the reading on a compass. We, however, use metaphors to convey our thoughts and so we proceed to examine how we prosecute the journey of destiny. A society could be seen to be moving in different directions given the various interests and tendencies of its people. The realization by a significant number of the inhabitants of the ultimate goal helps to bring about stability articulated and directed by inspired leadership.

Stability is anchored by a morality that underpins the actions of all the inhabitants of that particular society. Morality, according to Webster’s New World Dictionary, is “good or right in conduct or character”. The assumption then is as it is said in a popular song “we will get there…we know we will”. How we get to the goal still has a question mark against it.

The primary instrument for instilling a desirable morality on the emerging population is the family. In our rapidly changing society where the extended family is no more the glue that holds society together, the nuclear family is also not functioning as a worthy replacement. I wish to suggest that parenting is in crisis. The responsibilities that parents have for bringing up their children are not being exercised as they should. I mentioned in an earlier piece that parenting in our country leaves much to be desired.

Our problem in this area is complicated by the differing traditions that our various ethnic groups bring to the entity called Ghana. Different forms of inheritance, for example, create nightmarish situations on the death of the father of a family. To explain further, on the death of the father of an Akan person the inheritance goes to the nephews or the children of the deceased person’s sister or sisters. His own children were cut out of all the inheritance and told to go to their maternal families for sustenance. The widow was simply ignored. She may be an Akan or from another ethnic group and that did not matter.

Under the PNDC regime groundbreaking legislation was passed to regulate the succession problem. In essence the inheritance was divided into three parts and the children took a third while the wife or wives took a third. If the deceased has a house the relatives may move in and get the children out. Although the laws exist some unscrupulous family members try to reap where they have not sowed. However, like all laws that bring about fundamental changes it is taking time to be widely applied.

One problem is that aggrieved people are often unwilling to take such cases to court because of ignorance or the expense involved. There is also concern about the time that it takes for a case to be decided in the courts. Sometimes the police also become a problem in moving the case forward. There is also the tendency for people to seek arbitration from family elders even for serious cases like rape and the like.

A caveat to the above statement needs to be made. In those other ethnic groups that practise paternal inheritance it needs to be said that on the death of the man who is the head of the nuclear family the extended family appoints someone to take charge of the well being of the widow and the children. Here too the widow and her children may get a raw deal from an unscrupulous family head.

In times past the widow would be made to marry the person chosen to take care of the property. While these arrangements are essentially flawed unscrupulous appointees loot the property, seize the house and neglects the well being of the widow and the children. The education of the children suffers in the process.

The society also takes its moral direction from recognized opinion leaders who are supposed to be those to show the way. One thinks immediately of religious leaders as those who have the blueprint of what is good or right conduct and so will lead us into a blissful heaven. These days one is never too sure of the moral probity of some of them. Others we listen to include teachers, chiefs and opinion leaders. Different societies have different groups or individuals to rule on what is right and what is wrong. For example, a wealthy person in our society, regardless of how he or she came by the money, may be regarded as an arbiter of morality.

There are, however, important questions to be answered as to why we should surrender judgements on morality to religious people. In one strand of the Moslem religion the most senior Ayatolla is the one who prescribes all actions that govern one’s life including his pronouncements to regulate what constitutes immoral in the most intimate actions of the believer. In another strand of Christianity the leader prescribes the manner of life of the believers. The way the people live and dress becomes the prerogative of the leader to decide. One has to be careful though. Passing judgement may be premature.

But there are complications. Now, consider this. A man dies. His children in the meantime had found religion. All the women of this new strain of Christianity are supposed to dress like Moslem women in purdah. All seven or eight of the sons practice this form of Christianity. All the children, made it known that according to their religious tenets they could not come to their father’s funeral on Saturday since it was the day of worship.

Other people buried their father on the Saturday. On the Sunday following the burial the children all appeared and tried to take over the funeral. You can very well imagine the consequences that the situation evinced.

Morality gives us a standard by which we judge just about all our actions within the society. Such standards determine how others relate to us.

The known quality becomes the signature by which we are defined. That is why a visionary leadership becomes the key to move the nation forward and transform our lives. The visionary leader alone cannot effect change. The vision needs an implementer or implementers all working towards one goal. The goal is to transform the society for the better through the creation of structures that enhance the objectives of the vision.

An example that comes to mind readily is the kind of symbiosis that occurred between Mao Tse-tung and his Prime Minister Chou en Lai. While Mao articulated the vision Chou gave practical application to the vision. Their work opened the way for Deng Xiaoping to later launch the big modernization programme that is going on now. A similar situation occurred in Singapore between former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and two or three of his close associates.

This brings me back to the question of morality being the basis for improving our lives. When one sets a goal its realization depends on following the logic of getting to the goal. A driver going from point A to B will need to have certain things in place if he or she is to get to the intended destination. The vehicle must have fuel in it. The driver must know how to drive. He is to follow all and not some of the rules that govern the use of the road. Above all he must be sober. When all these rules are adhered to his chances of getting to his destination are very much enhanced.

In the same vein a student who wishes to pass his examination cannot but spend quality time studying. Any other activity like not attending classes or reading and doing the needed assignments will surely lead to failure. That failed student is the type who prays after the examination that the capital of Ghana is Tamale since that is what he wrote in the examination.

Our nation needs development. No one is in any doubt about that. The physical efforts at building our infrastructure must be underpinned by an equally strong moral imperative. Cutting corners will lead us nowhere. In the same way, running down perceived enemies amounts to cutting our noses to spite our faces. The Ewes say that knowledge is a big tree; one needs many linked hands in order to encircle it completely. Also those who deign to be our moral guides must strive to be beyond reproach. Such people must also be imbued with large doses of humility. Without these attributes we shall continually be made to be going in circles.

Well then, as the saying goes, “the dogs bark and the caravan rolls on”!

On Coming Home IV

On Coming Home IV

By E. Ofori Akyea

The other day I heard on a foreign radio station an adaptation of a well known Chinese proverb. It went something like this: If you give a fish to a man he will eat it. If you teach him how to fish he will sit in a boat drinking beer all day!

Well, somehow I have the feeling that many educated Ghanaians who are strategically placed to make a change, are sitting in a boat and not only drinking beer but daydreaming and then in their drunken haze they often come out with useless and negative thoughts. They are the people who live in the past. They are constantly dreaming of a mythical good old days and being oblivious to the fact that whatever happened to them in the so called good old days they are to be prepared to confront a brave new world, with apologies to Aldous Huxley. They wax lyrical about times past and gone. The fact of the matter is that those days are gone and are irretrievable.

These older people go on ad nauseam, for example, about the fact that the youth today are terrible. The youth, they assert, are undisciplined. In the good old days, they point out that the errant youngster would have been given several strokes on the bare buttocks and then they would fall in line and everyone and everything will be in order. Did I hear someone say “Presbyterian Discipline”? I recall an aunt telling her nieces to my hearing the other day that her father told her some thirty years ago that her skirt was not larger than a handkerchief! But listen to the incessant cries of the latter day moral advocates about the imminent demise of our nation together with its culture because our young ladies wear sometimes extremely short skirts.

In those days it was not unusual for the whole school to be assembled and the offender called to come forward to face the entire school. His “charges” would be told to the whole assembly. Without any resort to due process, a number of strong boys would be asked to come forward to hold down the hapless victim whiles the most muscular and violent teacher would proceed to administer a number of strokes to the victim. Usually, strokes are added to the original number if the culprit struggled too much or cried out in pain.

After the administration of the lashes the Head Teacher or Headmaster will deliver an appropriate moral lesson to all present. Failure to stick to the “straight and narrow path” would result in the sort of punishment that everyone had just witnessed. One is reminded of the “fiestas” of public hangings of past centuries in Europe. Over there public hangings were public events that the general public attended as one goes to a theatrical, music or some amusing these days.

I was, therefore, after all these years horrified to find people who waxed lyrical about “the good old days” when teacher Kofi gave you six lashes because you did not stand at attention to greet him when you walked past him in the street last week! Those teachers I found out later were some of the lecherous types who drank, smoked and did the most atrocious things that we the young ones did not know anything about.

I find our youth of today in a confused state. For one thing, they do not have a proper grounding in the culture of their birth. A clear manifestation of this is the fact that they are unable to speak our Ghanaian languages well. In fact, in some homes although the parents come from the same ethnic group they speak English with their children. These same people then turn around and speak Akan, Ewe, Dagbani, Ga or whichever language with the household staff. The parents fail to realize that a major part of the subsequent behavioural and psychological problems that their children face stem from their inability to find a sure anchor in the larger society. In the meantime the Bible Society continues striving to have the Bible translated into as many Ghanaian languages as possible.

Let it be known that years of research point to the fact that if a child is cut off from his or her mother tongue and tradition the child grows up quite a deprived individual. The future citizens are neither Ghanaian while the other cultures of Europe see them as intruders and really never accepted into those societies. We are in the process of manufacturing bats that will populate the world.

Such parents fail to realize that the inability of young people to speak their mother tongue well is the beginning of their disorientation and inability to cope with life later on in life. They lose their roots and are susceptible to any predatory culture that happens to go for them. I heard Harry Belafonte say the other day that in the days of slavery the masters forbade the slaves to talk in their presence until they could speak the master’s language. We shall return to this subject at a future date.

Politicians are the worst offenders in looking backwards rather that setting their eyes on tomorrow. Their stock in trade is in running down their opponents for things that happened yesterday and the day before. They behave as if they are in some time warp. They are unable to let go of the past. They remind me of the whited sepulchre that the Pharisees were in the days of Jesus.

We are never spared of being reminded how lucky we are that it is the speaker who is in charge and not those rogues that preceded him or her and their supporters, colleagues and friends. Trying to deal with today’s issues is premised on how well we are able to insult and run down our predecessor. These political types continually claim that they are our salvation. But for them, they intone, life would be unbearable. In the same breath we are told that but for the unseen nefarious activities of the opposition life would be wonderful.

I get the impression that this looking back has been infused into our educational system. Our educational system does not allow our youngsters to break out, be innovative confidently facing the future. One still finds teachers who believe that the best way to motivate children is to constantly wield the cane. Questions are interpreted as challenges by teachers and so school children are forever silent. Parenting is thrown to the dogs by many parents. Many of them do not follow up on their children’s progress in school. In fact, the children as eggs that might break.

The one area that I find the vast majority of our youth being strong is in their religious fervour. They know their Bible inside out. Their life situation has its equivalent in the Bible. Enormous amounts of time are invested into church activities. Pastors of dubious integrity are controlling the lives of our youth and by extension the destiny of our dear nation. These youngsters move and act according to the precepts of their pastors. Their every move is buttressed by copious quotes from the Bible. While I believe that a solid moral grounding is necessary for our country I do not think that individuals depending on a holy book for directions on building a country is what we need now or at any time of our development agenda.

I miss the wonderful traditional institution of chieftaincy in the conduct of our national affairs. When there is a meeting at the chief’s palace everyone who is able is supposed to be present. There are no opposition and government benches. Everyone in the locality has a role in governance. That is one reason why there are gradations and varieties of chiefs. Each person and I emphasize the phrase “each person” is made to feel that he or she belongs. All shades of opinion are listened to. That is why our elders say that a child that knows how to wash his hands is allowed to eat with his elders.

I still have hope that our people see our chiefs as the anchor of their societies. I am pleasantly surprised to observe that seeing the demise of chieftaincy the institution generates passions that are quite interesting. Highly educated individuals who have done well in their chosen fields often see their being enstooled as chiefs as the apogee of their life achievement. It is not for nothing that we see a proliferation

In my frequent rounds in the rural areas, and I live in a rural area, I am gratified to see that people see the traditional authorities as the anchor of their societies. There is general respect for the linguist staff that is sent to summon someone to the chief’s house. Although the chief may not have the physical authority to summon someone to a traditional arbitration the moral authority of his office is strong enough to get people to submit to traditional authority.

I am aware that given society as it now organized it is impossible for everyone to be a chief how ever well he or she may know how well to wash their hands. What bothers me is the sentiment that I increasingly keep hearing being expressed and even more shrilly of those that belong and those that are outside. Those inside give all the indications of being cosy and contented while those outside seem to be wallowing in misery and having to make do with the “crumbs”. Are these echoes of the sore infested Lazarus at the gate of the rich man?

It is in this situation that I find our youth today. I worked with the students of one of our Senior Secondary Schools in Accra. When I left the United States and Europe I thought I had bid goodbye to punks with holes in their noses and lips as well as other unmentionable body parts with rings and going about with baggy trousers over oversized jackets or whatever top. Well, was I wrong! In this school where I found the students generally well behaved and respectful of each other and their teachers I was shocked to see those vying with each other on whose pair of shorts was farthest down away from their waistline. Nevertheless, they ingeniously managed to keep their shirts tucked in.

I was, however, disappointed to find out that the cultural display that the students put up later were variations of American hip songs and dances. There were groups with names like The Californians, Manhattan Six and so on. Their gymnastic abilities are highly commendable. The songs were sung in “American Slang” and the response wild. There was no Kete, Adevu, Borborbo, or anything home grown.

I just sat there stunned. I thought of a decade hence when these young people would have finished their tertiary studies and proceed to take charge of the destiny of our Ghana. Need I go on?

Parenting

Parenting

By E. Ofori Akyea

Parenting as I find it in Ghana now makes my head go in a whirl. The need to make money is pushing our need to bring up our children into the background. I did not realize that the situation was that bad until we went to see my mother-in-law who was being treated in a private clinic in Accra. In the same clinic was a desperate sick old man on the next bed.

What we noticed was that every morning about 7 am a man would come in looking harassed and anxious to leave. He did not even ask of the health of the old man and after talking to the young girl staying with the old man he left. He did not ask of the old man’s health or what the doctor said. He was in a hurry to go to open his store so that he would not lose any clients. The old man was an irritant that was upsetting his rhythm of life.

The poor old man was unable to take care of himself. The son had engaged an illiterate girl of about 12 years old to take care of his father. The young girl there was not trained to look after people of certain age. She was bewildered in the clinic and she did not have the aptitude to do the kind of job that she had been put up to do. She could not deal with the situation. The son, a businessman, saw his father standing in his way of making more money.

The sister in charge of the ward on the next day told my wife, who was with her mother most of the time, that she did not seem to live in Ghana as she was almost always in the clinic attending to the needs of her mother. She added that people were becoming more and more self centred that the needs of siblings and parents are taking a back seat. The driving force has become the need to make as much money as possible in the shortest time.

Young people do not hesitate to seek the easiest way out of their perceived predicament. Anything but honest hard work will do. Thus entrusting one’s life to a human trafficker to get you to Europe is better than plodding in some work that will give you peace and a comfortable retirement. The experience in a leaky boat that may send you straight to heaven or into the hands of the police or people that do not like the look of your face do not deter them to undertake these dangerous journeys.

I begin to see these days in the papers more and more pictures of young men and women who are wanted by the police for defrauding their employers of large sums of monies entrusted into their care. Also younger and younger girls are bringing babies into the world. For me it is a situation in which children are bringing children into the world and they know next to nothing about mothering and much less about parenting.

The same rootlessness and thought that the other side of the garden is greener is driving a lot of young people into becoming “mules” that carry drugs in and on their bodies to Europe and America. Many young, as well as not so young, Ghanaians are languishing in jails in Asia, and in other parts of the world. Not a few have died in the process. The situation is serious on the human side. In geopolitical terms the reputation of our country has taken some battering. Our country is being labelled as a transit point for drugs on their way to Europe and North America from South America.

All these things are happening when we have a resurgence of people, especially the younger ones, who continually seem to be born again. Powerful prophets and a motley group of religious leaders have specialized in praying for people to get visas. These holy men and women seem to have been given a special power to influence the issuance of visas from whatever embassy. They are able to control the minds of the visa issuing officers to change a rejection into a positive result.

It is these types who rule the hearts and minds of our young people. Parents should have been in charge to direct the lives of their children but they have abandoned their parental role to other agencies. Parents are ready to accept money and other things from their children without questioning the source of those things.

A mother was in the house when her 18 year old arrived in someone’s car. They began unloading bunches of plantain, some cassava, ripe palm nuts and an assortment of meats and fish. The mother without asking the girl of her whereabouts for the past four days helped carry the foodstuffs into the house. The man in whose car she came, and was incidentally the head of a Training Institution in a nearby town, was never introduced.

When the car left the mother proceeded to prepare a sumptuous meal for everyone with some of the produce that had just been brought from God knows where. About six months later the girl was found to be pregnant. When she was asked who was the man responsible for her pregnancy she named four men including the Principal.

The mother and two uncles went into a conclave to determine what to do. They agreed to award the pregnancy to the son of one of the most distinguished families in the area. The youngman, when he was confronted with the fact, denied vehemently. He had gone to bed only once with the girl and it was only for a short time too.

No one from the girl’s family would hear of this excuse. He was given a spoon to scoop up his part of the pregnancy. He was thus pressured to become the “father” of a child that may or may not be his own.

I see the breakdown of the extended family system contributing to the present chaos. It used to be that young people would be sent to stay with aunties and uncles. They had as much authority as the real parents would have over the child. With time the dynamics of society has changed and parents are obliged to take care of their children. Aunties and uncles have their own children to take care of.

There used to be those cultures in our country that inheritance passed through the mother. Thus one inherited the uncle’s property. The man’s own children inherited their uncle’s property on his death. There was, and still is, the situation where the layabout nephews of a man just hung around to pounce on the property of their uncle and driving the children away when the man dies. I have been witness to situations where the nephews and family members have come to drive the wife and the children away and take over the property.

Additional complications come when there is intermarriage with those ethnic groups that inheritance passes to children of the real father. Wives and husbands adopted various strategies to protect the rights of their children. The passage of the PNDC Law on inheritance has also helped to stabilize the situation which is still evolving. One continues to hear of incidents of family members descending on widows and their children to seize property and turn the poor family into becoming destitute.

Those in charge of our country have not and are not tackling the process of social engineering that would transform our country into the desirable place that we all wish it to be. It is, therefore, not surprising that our young people are caught in a Catch 22 situation. The education they receive is deficient. They can neither write nor write English properly. They speak their mother tongue badly that is if they do speak it at all. Those who read the mother tongue are tending to become a rare breed.

Major culprits of the paucity of knowledge of our mother tongue are the new FM stations. When one hears them talk one is not sure if you are listening to your language or Esperanto. Many years ago Dr. L. L. Zamenhof, a Russian Physician in 1887 invented a European based artificial universal language which he called Esperanto Sentences laced with liberal doses of English become their stock in trade. My own view is that in terms of programming and the promotion of the mother tongue the FM stations are turning large parts of Ghana into illiterates without any pride in their language and in its development. In this the Akan stations are the guilty party.

Succession Troubles

Succession Troubles

By E. Ofori Akyea

When a chief is selected to replace a recently deceased one within a space of a year everyone is ecstatic because the process has taken such a short time to be concluded. The rule, as it seems to the uninitiated, seems to be that of an interminable wrangling between different groups as to who the rightful successor to the stool would be.

The impression is created that the system is so flawed as to create room for confusion. The succession controversy in Dagbon is a case in point. From about 1969 the confusion surrounding the succession to the Dagbon skin has cost more lives than is necessary. In 2002 the overlord of Dagbon together with 40 of his elders were murdered. Despite the best efforts of a high powered government enquiry the facts surrounding the killings and the basis of the insecurity in the Yendi area, the facts are still being disputed.

Let me add to this litany of woes the problems being encountered in Anlo where it is becoming impossible to find a way to elect and enstool a new Awoamefia or the Paramount Chief of Anlo. Then there is the ongoing fight over who the rightful Ga Mantse is.

I just heard that there were the rumblings of trouble in Amanokrom, a little town in Akwapim over who the right successor of the late Nana Wereko Ampem really was. Subsequent reports indicate that a new chief has been outdoored and installed. Indeed, I saw photographs of happy people including the new chief with white talc powdered all over him. So well and good, I hope as the end of the fable goes “everyone lives happily thereafter” we shall hear no more of this event.

In cases as those cited above the litigants often forget is that they are dragging the reputation of the stool into disrepute by their actions. Social cohesion and peace is destroyed and no development takes place.

In this particular case the late chief by sheer force of character, his considerable wealth and influence both nationally and internationally were brought together to raise the status of the stool and its prestige. Consequently, all the citizens of Amanokrom could bask in the glow of pride and that made Amanokrom a fulcrum of development in the area. I am sure that the late Nana Ampem will rest peacefully knowing that his legacy of good governance and progress is intact.

I am certain that there are many more chieftaincy disputes all over the country that I have heard nothing about. Also it is not uncommon to hear of dead chiefs being kept in mortuaries for months and even years because there is a dispute about the succession. The litigation contractors will find any reason or none at all to cause trouble.

It is amazing that the institution that has been vilified and its demise predicted many times over can evince such powerful emotions and passion. People will literally kill to be chiefs and in our communities chiefs are not only respected highly, they are held in high esteem. Politicians, for example, have to go through them to have access to the general populations in an area.

Communities wish to have chiefs who have distinguished themselves in their professions or in life generally. To qualify to be a chief one does not only have to come from the Royal Family of an area, one has to have the means to act as a chief. Remember there is no salary attached to the stool. There seems to be a sign warning all who aspire to stools and skins saying “the poor, those of bad character and illiterates need not apply”.

Until today the impression is given that the people of this country do not have a clear system of succession. The opposite is the case. The confusion, in my view, comes about as a result of colonialism, poverty and politics. Let me tell you of my participation in the choice of a new chief in my capacity as a Kingmaker. My account will, I hope, help to explain the problem of chiefs’ succession in our country.

Let me begin by making the assertion that kingmakers are powerful individuals in the community. Their power derives largely from the fact that they operate an opaque collegial system that leaves a lot of room for corruption from whatever quarter to fester. Instead of the white smoke through the chimney to announce the choice of a new chief they often manage to send rainbow coloured smoke with which to stoke the fires of confusion leading to social disintegration.

Having come to live among the people I was co-opted by the elders to be a member of the council of Kingmakers. The qualification to be a kingmaker is as elastic as far as the elastic can be stretched. My particular credentials seem to be that I had lived abroad and come home to live in my own house and I had car to prove that I was solvent.

The particular town that I live in has a glorious history. The missionary enterprise of the Europeans started there. Their efforts yielded excellent results. From the schools that they set up the colonial administration recruited a long line of clerks. Several pupils, both boys and girls, were selected to continue their education elsewhere in the then Gold Coast. It was an emotional reunion a few weeks ago between the Vice President and his Form Two teacher who prepared him for his Common Entrance Examination some forty six years ago! The old man, a native of the town, had also taught for a short time in the school that was celebrating its Golden Jubilee.

I would say that more than 60 per cent of the inhabitants can read and write. I would say that the majority of the inhabitants are either over 60 or less than 20 years old. Since nothing is available for young people in the town they have joined the army of migrants to Accra and beyond. Almost every girl over 12 years is a mother and the young men roam incessantly around town. It used to be the norm for parents to send their children “home” to school. Rural schools were reputed to be good and the children spent their time studying while learning to be good citizens steeped in the traditions of home to create a total person. Not anymore.

We asked an unemployed girl of 18 and a mother of a four year old son to help us in the house for pay. She told us that she could not stay with us since her friends would laugh at her for working as a servant. If we were white she would have “killed” for the job. This time our skin colour was against us even though we were going to pay her a salary much higher than the average with the promise of helping her to further her education. But I fear I am digressing. Let us get back to our point of the moment.

When the Kingmakers met there were two candidates presented. Everyone in the town knew the first candidate to be mentioned very well to be a troublesome youngman. He did various utility jobs for people. In almost each case that he had done some work for someone there was controversy of some kind. Speaker after speaker confirmed the unsuitability of the youngman to be chief.

Then came the turn of the two members who had remained silent until then, to speak up to the issue and give their views on the candidates. The other candidate, they said, did not live in the town. They did not want an absentee chief anymore. They also began raising some questions about the parentage of the other candidate. Everyone present was taken aback. They not only tried to defend the indefensible but proceeded to accuse the rest of us to be as unreasonable as we were biased.

After a period of acrimonious exchanges they left the meeting in a huff. We later learnt that that first candidate had “nicodemously” visited the two individuals and done the “right thing” then. Well, the other kingmakers had no difficulty giving the nod to the second candidate as our next chief.

It is clear that many of the succession disputes arise out of corrupting the people who should guard the institution. The economic situations in which many of them live make them susceptible to corruption. Sometimes the amounts involved are so desultory as to render the whole episode laughable

The other problem is that of people who have come into some money and think that they need to be titled. Add to this those who are nowhere near the succession of the stool or skin but because of overweening ambition seek to become chiefs. They are the really dangerous individuals who pose the greatest threat to our revered institution of chieftancy.

Corruption, the Bane of our Society

Corruption, the Bane of our Society

By E. Ofori Akyea

My father is 93 years old. He is upset that I have not written anything about corruption in our society. I have always told him that each day that I open the paper there is something or the other about corruption. Citizens who are as concerned about the moral fibre of our society as people like him are continually writing and using other possible means to get the message across that the practise should stop.

The newspapers, radio and other media are constantly reporting that someone took a bribe and was caught, a public officer took money before doing his or her duty, and the police continue to be accused of being corrupt and so on. My father spends a lot of time listening to the radio. He has been particularly appalled by what he heard during the Public Accounts Committee hearings. Was all that our money that was being wasted like that, he keeps asking? I had nothing to add, I answered.

He thought there are people employed to make sure that such terrible things do not happen in our dear country. I reminded him that when the rich man went to hell when he died he asked God to send him back to life on earth to preach the good life to his fellow men. God told him that there were numerous preachers constantly telling their listeners on how to reform their lives. He cannot go back. He was to remain in his present state forever.

The man of God, of the Methodist persuasion, that my old man is, countered that I should add my voice vigorously to those who condemned the practise of corruption in our society. If I kept quiet what happened to Jonah when he refused to go to Nineveh and ended up in the belly of the whale could happen to me too. I had a duty as a “prophet” to speak up, he insisted.

I thought about the charge I have been given for a while and recalled the Jewish saying about the pogroms. They came for my neighbour and I kept quiet. Then they came for my friend and I kept quiet. Then they came for my brother and I kept quiet. Later on they came for me. That was how the millions of Jews perished in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and other torture camps. I also remembered what our elders say that when your neighbour’s beard is on fire better get a bucket of water ready to douse yours.

Now that I have the status of a prophet, now listen to me, people.

We play political games with corruption. Yesterday we were number ten on the Transperancy International list. Today we are number eight. In fact, when our opponents were in power we were number twenty and so on. Let us then congratulate ourselves. We are doing all right. Of course, we are not doing all right. We go on and on in justifying our corrupt behaviour. We point fingers at our detractors and assume a holier than thou attitude. People extort money from you and when it is safely lodged in the palm of their hands they intone without any tinge of irony “May God bless you”.

We are consumed by avarice and greed to the extent that we have no fellow feeling left. There is an Akan proverb that sums it up very well. It goes like this, “etua woyonko ho a na etua dua”. Loosely translated it says, when a foreign object is lodged on your neighbour’s body you see it like an irritating cutlass that is left in a tree trunk and not a dangerous thing that may kill a fellow human being. We do not care or see our neighbour’s suffering as our own and so mobilize to do something about it.

We are here reminded of John Dunne’s poem, “For Whom the Bell Tools” in which he tells us that when we hear the bell tolling we should not think that it is for someone else. The bells could be tolling for anyone including one’s self. One may say that he or she is not corrupt because either he has not yet been caught or exposed. We behave like the Pharisees who built their whole life’s outlook on hypocrisy. The beams in their eyes were so big they were incapable of being humble and charitable about the specks in the eyes of other people.

The thing about corruption is that once it is mentioned finger pointing takes over. It is the police, the courts, the politicians and a shadowy group known as the leadership. We are the victims and we are at the mercy of the rich and powerful who are able to splash money about. We conveniently forget the little “dash” given to the security man maintaining order at that facility that catapults us to the head of the queue. We forget the little something that we gave to the nurse at the Health Centre to make us see the doctor before those who got there before us. We forget the large donation we gave the church that earned us the front seat, encomiums with special prayers from the priest, pastor, prophet and what other title that men of God are known. We forget the gift we gave to the head of that school that ensured that our child secured admission.

The problem with corruption is that it destroys the psyche of us all. Tolerance of wrong doing is as wrong as the perpetrator. One hears of harrowing stories of bureaucratic corruption. People who have retired from service to our country have to wait for upwards of two years before their papers are processed for the payment of their meagre monthly allowances. Such terrible behaviour is being perpetrated by officers who could be the sons or daughters of the poor pensioner. Many of these old and often infirm people come from up country to Accra despite the decentralisation of government services to “chase” their papers. Since they do not know anyone in Accra they end up sleeping rough until their documents are processed.

It is said that contractors have to pledge a good percentage of their contract payments to a whole army of officials before they even start work. There is, therefore, nothing to be surprised about when the results of the contract is shoddily executed or abandoned. In the middle of the year 2007, I saw work being done to repair the road from Asikuma by way of Kpeve to Have or so I thought. This is the section of the road that leads to Kpandu and also to Hohoe and to Dambai. A lot of the yams that come down south from the north go by this route. It was gratifying to see the professional looking workers with work clothes and hard hats to match working to make driving a bit more pleasurable. One by one the gaping pot holes disappeared. The school children and the youths in villages along the road lost their jobs filling the potholes with sand and soliciting handouts from motorists. Well they are back with a vengeance. They now erect road blocks to make motorists pay!

As soon as the workers got past Todome the contractor packed his machines and left leaving behind an old broken down articulator truck that is still sitting by the roadside. No one has explained to the road users what the problem is. In less than a month after they left new and bigger potholes began appearing in the sections of the road that had been previously repaired. Drivers have taken to slaloming and zigzagging along the road. It was one such manoeuvre that nearly cost the life of the just crowned Best District Farmer. While he escaped with his life he lost all the prizes that he won. It is painful to drive this short distance. The same destruction is happening on the mountain road from Kpeve to Akrofu on the way to Sokode and to Ho. Just imagine having to manoeuvre around cavernous holes on a steep mountain road when one side of the road is a gaping chasm. Try driving like that on the Akwapim range or on the Kwahu mountains and you will begin to see what I mean.

Corruption permeates all facets of our lives. Churches that are founded and run on fraudulent foundations, all to the glory of the founder are one such example. Clothed in sumptuous ecclesiastical vestments these characters invoke the name of God and credit a spurious spirituality for their actions. They corrupt the institution that is the universal church and lead their people astray. The majority of the people they tend to control and manipulate are women. Unfortunately, many of these women are illiterate and struggling to make something out of their lives.

Men dupe them, have children with them and then shirk their responsibility of helping to look after the children. The men then move in with another woman, who is desperate for companionship and begins another cycle of irresponsible life. Such behaviour tends to corrupt the social fabric that holds society together. The idea of being responsible one to another gets thrown out of the window. Children grow up in an insecure and destabilising environment. Invariably they do not go to school and the social net is non existent to hold them. We are perpetrating poverty and poverty breeds corruption. In a situation such as this the idea that hard work will be rewarded becomes irrelevant and so short cuts are resorted to in order to get at what one can get for him or her.

It is in such a situation that our police come in. If everything can be arranged at any level why not at the law enforcement level. Arranging things is something that is convenient. The results of the arrangement may not stand up to societal scrutiny but when the arrangement is indulged in by a substantial number it acquires a status of its own. When a driver is stopped by a police patrol and the policeman or woman stands behind the vehicle the driver knows immediately what he drill is. Without any prompting he joins the police officer at the back and hardly a word is spoken by either party. The driver then returns to his seat, the policeman turns his attention to the next oncoming vehicle and no one is any more the wiser or foolish.

I do not believe that improving police salaries alone will wipe away the reputation that the service has of being corrupt. The total culture of policing within the context of our societies has to a total transformation. A visit to any police barrack and the police station will reveal a serious social situation that needs radical surgery to excise the problem. Living conditions are not only bad. They are primitive and filthy. We short change our police officers as we do our prison officers. I have a suspicion that when the police officer comes out of the barrack in the morning and sees all the people riding in their flashy cars and well dressed people looking down on the officer there is a seething anger that informs all his or her actions. If we are unable to provide decent accommodation for the officers let them seek accommodation within the community. It may improve police community relations. After all the same situation where the police live in the community occurs in many other countries.

Rumours abound about how much bank officials take in percentages in order to approve loans. Of course, no one will give one any details

Similar radical action is needed if we are to make our public services also respond in a responsible way to serving the needs of our society. Apart from infusing into our public officers the great marketing skills that commercial organizations impart to their employees in order to see higher positive figures in their bottom lines they need to be radically educated to feel that they are a critical part of Ghana Inc. Appeals to nationalism will get us nowhere especially if the person making the appeal is not respected by the officials.

We need to go deep into our traditions to extract those values and norms that informed the pre-colonial societies. Two or three indicators of our societies are religion, language and the arts. At school we were forbidden to perform local dances or music. We were taught American square dance. Some of us went on to learn ballroom dancing and sang Scottish airs. When Kwame Nkrumah set up the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana in Legon the Institute was derisively called Dondology or the place that one learnt to master the hour glass drum. Thankfully the latest list of courses for Cape Coast University Arts Faculty includes courses in African Dance, Theatre, Music, Literature, Art and Fine Art. We need to go out and add African Philosophy and Bases of Morality. These studies would help us on the road to self discovery and improvement.

Things have changed today but we have a long way to go to go yet. We are only scratching the surface. The journey of a thousand miles start…

Junk Foods through the Generations

Junk Foods through the Generations

by E. Ofori Akyea

I have no reason to doubt the news that I just heard from a respectable radio station well known for its impartiality and balance. In fact, the station is my main source of news and general information. The station reports that a professor in one of the respectable Universities of the country has come up with an astonishing discovery. He and his team of highly qualified researchers after a lot of hard work have discovered that pregnant mothers whose diets consist mainly of junk foods are likely to give birth to babies that would grow up to make junk foods their staple.

Colloquially, junk means a useless or worthless stuff, trash, rubbish. In the drug world it is used when one refers to heroin.

Before proceeding let me make a confession. I am not a nutritionist. In fact, I am no medical person. All I know about the medical world I have peripatetically picked up as the years have rolled by. One of my teachers was and still is my roommate who was a medical student then and is now referred to by the appellation “Professor” before his name. He has done well and I am immensely proud of him.

Now to the junk problem we have been talking about. What really is junk food? The term came into being as a derisive one in the wake of the rise of the phenomenon of Fast Foods. Someone made a lot of money when he created the kind of restaurant where you did not have to wait for your food. Everything sold in the restaurant would be handed to you literally by the time you finished placing the order.

The junk description was given by nutritionists in the United States. In terms of what you get regarding food value it has been shown time and time again in studies that regular eaters of the products of the fast Foods set up were ingesting nothing but junk or rubbish from a nutritional perspective. A few years back a Youngman who had become obese sued one of the companies producing fast foods for being responsible for his obesity and its attendant medical problems with which he was bedevilled. He was placing the blame for his condition squarely at the feet of the food company.

Fast foods came about as part of the American quest for efficiency in all that they do. Many people could not afford to wait for their food to be prepared. They wanted to drive up to the food joint, get whatever it is they wanted pay for it and collect it as you drive away. The concept has been replicated all over the world. One of the companies even has a University to train their personnel. It certainly is impressive to drive up to the window of a fast food establishment and order your meal while sitting in your car. You are told the price. You drop your money into a bin and drive around to the pick up point. Your food will be waiting for you all neatly wrapped.

The concept of fast food has spread to cover a whole range of foods not only in America but throughout the world. I was astonished to find in Southern Africa that Fast Food places are so pervasive throughout the region. The march of fast foods got to Moscow and Beijing long before there was any let up in the political systems in those locations among others.

The original fast food was a bun with minced meat encrusted with cheese and aside dish of French Fries or potato chips. The whole thing was usually drenched in ketchup and or mustard and mayonnaise. The interesting thing about the particular sandwich was the fact that the whole thing was standardized. It looked the same, tasted the same and weighed the same worldwide.

Now for almost any kind of food there is the fast variety. The fried chicken of KFC is being put out as the product of the secret formula of the Colonel from Kentucky dripping fat and all. Pizza, as it rolls out, is full of cheese and the toppings which kill the hunger pangs of ever hungry students, the youth and indulgent adults for a good price.

Almost all airports have an array of fast food places with the traditional restaurant almost gone. In fact the regular restaurant seems to be endangered species since the microwave oven made its appearance. All that the waiters and cooks do these days is to pop half cooked stuff into the oven and in no time, presto, you have your food, or something near to what you wanted.

I notice that there is a proliferation of eateries in our towns and villages. All one needs is a portable ice chest. Cook some fried rice, fry some chicken and fish. Display these in a wooden box and cover them with a sieve; let the dust that is being raised around beat them a bit. Set these up by a gutter and in insalubrious surrounding then sit and wait for the clients to come by. I understand that these eateries are called “check check”. One is not sure how old the fried chicken and fish are. One is not also sure that the kitchen from where the food originated is the kind that one would want to eat from.

The one thing I still need to come to terms with is the situation where people carry about bread, the local doughnut popularly called “toogbee”, “sweet bad”, and other cooked and or fried foods without covering them. It looks like we have a pact with disease to be infected as much as possible.

I hesitate to report that I went to have my vehicle taken care of by a mechanic. His workshop faced a public place of convenience. While waiting for the work to be completed I watched many people in the neighbourhood go in to attend to nature’s call. The attendant gave them pieces of newspaper cut into particular sizes after they had paid their entrance fee. Some of the people who went in there were sellers of all manner of fruits and foods as well as other items. They would set their wares on the ground in front of the toilet, go in and after a while come out and pick up their wares and walk nonchalantly away. There was no facility for hand washing. I have never gotten over the experience.

This is where I go back to the junk food experiment. The good professor need not worry about genes and DNAs passed on to unborn children that will determine the love of junk food or not later in life. There are other lines of research that I wish to suggest to the professor. Working on these problems will help us be a part of the global village.

In our country some people have to eat fufu everyday or their marriages will face many difficulties. Fufu is cooked plantain or cassava or cocoyam or yam that is pounded in a mortar to pulp. The consistency of the final product depends on the taste of the eater. The pounding is done by the young people in the house. Sometimes the women also pound the fufu for their husbands. When the couple returns from the farm the woman gets water wish which the husband takes his bath. After his bath he goes out to sit and chat with his friends.

In the meantime the woman sets about to prepare the soup, cook the food and in the absence of the young ones pounds the fufu herself. Usually the soup is what is called light soup or soup made with vegetables. She then sends one of the children to call the father to eat. He eats alone or with other men. The children eat with mother.

On occasion the soup is made with palm nuts or with groundnuts. There is so much oil floating on the surface that it can drown a ship. The oil also carries the elements of cholesterol that provoke heart disease and stroke.

In our country some of our people have determined that pregnant women should not eat eggs or their offspring will grow up to become thieves. They also say that it is a bad omen for a pregnant woman to eat the choice parts of meat. These are for men only. In one country it is forbidden for pregnant women to eat monkey meat. It is believed that their offspring’s face will look very much like a monkey’s face. Enough of these prohibitions for now.

In our country junk food is the kind of food that we usually grab on the street and eat on the run. My list of such food includes fried rice, koliko, roasted corn, roasted plantain, agbeli klaklo and the like. We need to be careful of what we eat and where we eat them. That way we are assured of having a nutritionally balanced meal.

MY CV

E. Ofori Akyea

P.O. Box DS 2249, Dansoman, Accra. Ghana Tel.21 31 21 80

or

P.O. Box PK 79, Peki. Volta Region Tel. 024/291 0345

EXPERIENCE

ROTARY INTERNATIONAL POLIOPLUS PROGRAMME IN AFRICA Jan.1997 – Dec. 2004

Africa Consultant Accra, Ghana

Coordinated on a continent-wide level the national PolioPlus Rotary committees to galvanize and organize them to participate in polio eradication programmes. Conducted mid-term and final assessment of PolioPlus Programmes in Nigeria with USAID. Conducted a comprehensive review of the vaccination programme of Cameroon. Facilitated collaboration and maintained open channels of communication between various governments and the partnerships of the World Health Organization (WHO), Rotary International, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and several overseas development agencies of donor nations. Directed individual national movements to develop community based educational materials

UNIVERSITY OF IOWA DEVELOPMENT LINKAGE PROGRAMME Oct.1995 – March 1996

Project Administrator Iowa City, Iowa

Major contributor and writer of successful $1.5 million grant project linking the University of Iowa, Iowa State University, the University of Northern Iowa, the Des Moines Area Community College with the Obafemi Awolowo University, the Nigerian Institute of Economic and Social research and the Ibadan Polytechnic. Coordinated the contribution of computer hardware and software to the Nigerian Institutions. Co-developed teaching materials using US resources. Structured programmes to develop IT capabilities of Nigerian institutions. Facilitated communication on educational and pedagogical issues

UNIVERSITY OF IOWA, CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE STUDIES

April 1990 – Spring 1993

Visiting Research Fellow/Instructor Iowa City, Iowa

Researched issues surrounding problems in development affecting health in African countries. Studied and explored means by which verbal art forms formed a basis for solving problems in development. Taught African Studies course in problems of development

UNITED NATIONS CHILDREN’S FUND (UNICEF)

Country Representative, Kigali, Rwanda Jan.1989 – March 1990

Represented UNICEF to the government of Rwanda. Liaised with other international multilateral and bilateral agency representatives in the country. Managed and administered country office with 50 international and national staff and an annual £2.1 million budget. Planned National Health Education and Health Promotion Campaigns, Conferences and Seminars. Investigated, gathered materials and prepared bi-annual reports on the Situation of Women and Children in the country. Participated in Regional UNICEF Management group meetings to formulate organizational policies surrounding public health and educational campaigns.

Country Representative, Monrovia, Liberia June 1984 – Dec. 1989

Represented UNICEF to government of Liberia. Liaised with other international multilateral and bilateral agency representatives in the country. Managed and administered country office with 16 international and national staff from a staff of two and an annual budget of $500,000. Investigated, gathered materials and prepared bi-annual reports on the Situation of Women and Children in the country. Produced bilingual French and English Health Education Radio Broadcasts for Rural Women. Examined and evaluated programmes to determine if they complied with the Primary Health Care Initiative in Africa under the Bamako Initiative.

UNIVERSITY OF LIBERIA, GRDUATE PROGRAMME IN REGIONAL PLANNING

Sept. 1985 – Dec.1989

Research Associate Monrovia, Liberia

Taught seminars on problems of Regional Planning with emphasis on Health Education and Rural Development.

UNITED NATIONS CHILDREN’S FUND (UNICEF) July 1980 – Nov. 1984

Programme Officer Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire

Represented UNICEF to governments of Liberia and Benin. Worked with various bilateral organizations to comply with Primary Health Care delivery standards and quotas. Publicised relevant Primary Health Care campaigns, including immunization and well baby programmes to rural communities.

INSTITUTE FOR DEVELOPMENT STUDIES 1976 – 1978

Research Associate Geneva, Switzerland

Supervised and advised PhD students theses on African Literature and Development

WORLD ALLIANCE OF YMCAs 1971 – 1980

Director for Development Geneva, Switzerland

Established YMCA Development office and programme in Geneva serving 89 countries with sub – offices in Hong Kong, Manila, Montevideo, Aruba and Nairobi. Executive Secretary to the World Alliance Development Commission. Fundraised approximately $32 million in 9 years for YMCA Development Programmes around the world. Initiated several world – wide development programmes. Liaised with the North American and European YMCA movements and with ecumenical, multilateral, United Nations, NGOs and others engaged in development work. Chaired for three years the NGOs group in consultative status with the UN in Geneva and New York. Executive member of International Council of Voluntary Organizations (ICVA).

EDUCATION

University of Iowa Iowa City, Iowa

Doctoral Candidate in Interdisciplinary Programme in Art History, Anthropology and Literature, August 1991

Major Area: Aesthetics, Symbolism of Power and Social Relations in an Ewe Art Form: Kete

woven cloth

Minor Area: Art as Communication within and across Cultural Borders

University of Ghana, Institute of African Studies Legon, Ghana

Master of Arts in African Studies, June 1967

Emphasis: African Plastic Art, African Literature, Linguistics and Social Systems of Africa

Activities: Editor of “New Era” Youth Magazine 1968 – 1971.

Co-Editor of “Talent for Tomorrow” for new writers.

University of Ghana Legon, Ghana

Bachelor of Arts with Honours, English Language and Literature June 1965

LANGUAGES

Fluent in French, Ewe, Twi, Fante, Ga and Guan. Passable German

PUBLICATIONS AND PRESENTATIONS

-Ewe by Akyea, E. Ofori New York: Rosen Publishing Co 1996

-Development Education in the Canadian Development Agency publication Development Perspectives

1974

-Traditionalism in African Literature in Perspectives on African Literature New York 1968

-Lecture series on Development Issues to the Iowa Foreign Relations Council

-Weekly column in Daily Graphic.