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KalashniBlog

Of a National Cathedral and Jephthah’s Foolish Promise

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June 23, 2022

- Category : KalashniBlog

- Tags : 5G, Adventure, Chieftaincy, Coronavirus

The President of this apampamu-store franchise lost his bid to ascend the presidency twice, in 2008 and in 2012. He won at the end of 2016 after an animated year of campaigning and describing the party in power at the time of gross incompetence. Electric power failure, economic incompetence and a series of misguided verbiage involving the death of a mammal of the family bovidae – of the subfamily caprinae, to be precise – led to that party’s stupefying defeat in the 2016 presidential and parliamentary polls.

Then we woke up one morning in 2018 to be told that the President had promised Our Father in Heaven that he would build Him a cathedral if He enabled him to become President. Apparently, someone committed and close to the candidate, after the defeat in the 2012 polls, had asked a self-styled man of God what he thought it would take for the candidate to be president, and the tongues-spewing, bahbah-blazing oracle had replied, “he has to do something to touch the heart of God; he needs to do something to move God’s arm.”

Thus was the promise of a national cathedral conceived, and the candidate saw that it was good, and that it might please the Lord, and if it did, he’d win the elections, and convincingly so. It might mean evicting, and relocating nine Appeals Court judges, as well as demolishing some adjourning buildings of ill-repute such as the Scholarship Secretariat, but what price were a few buildings to a national cathedral promised towards the winning of a presidential election?

Let me just come out now and say where I stand before you see my article in an NPP or NDC lens. I am a firm believer in keeping vows and promises, especially if those vows were made to God. “When you make a vow to the Lord your God, you shall not delay to pay it; for the Lord your God will surely require it of you, and it would be sin to you,” says Deuteronomy 23:21. Verse 23 insists, “That which has gone from your lips you shall keep and perform, for you voluntarily vowed to the Lord your God what you have promised with your mouth”.

But I am an even firmer believer in not making vows and promises in the first place (and no, I am not a Joe Witti) because verse 22 of the same Chapter 23 of Deuteronomy adds, “But if you abstain from vowing, it shall not be sin to you”. The wisest man who ever lived admonished in Ecclesiastes 5:2-5: “Do not be rash with your mouth, And let not your heart utter anything hastily before God. For God is in heaven, and you on earth; Therefore let your words be few. For a dream comes through much activity, And a fool’s voice is known by his many words. When you make a vow to God, do not delay to pay it; For He has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you have vowed— Better not to vow than to vow and not pay.”

I see what the President’s dilemma is. He may not have intended to use anything more than his facilitating powers and influence as President to see to the building of a National Cathedral, but seeing as how the expected donations are not flowing in to the Cathedral coffers, and the tsooboi to rise and build hasn’t been like in Nehemiah’s days, he must decide whether his promise was a foolish one, in which case he’d have to do a lot of atonement in prayers and fasting (and maybe less in-flight shower hours), or bulldoze the funds and resources of a secular state towards the achievement of his personal religious entrapment. Already, the National Cathedral is shaping up on the foundation of deception, and the current economic situation makes the project seem contemptible. None of these is a condition under which a House of Prayer should be built. But if he doesn’t, he goes down in history – and the opposition won’t let him hear the end of it – that he failed to keep his promise to the Almighty. Of course, a man and his party that cannot keep their promises to God will have little regard for the promises they make to Ghanaians. They will be viewed as Oath breakers of the despicable variety.

The more concerning issue for neutrals and spectators like me is what happens when the President leaves power on 7th January, 2025. What a messy inheritance that will be for the new president, unless President Mahama too makes a vow to God to continue building the cathedral if He helped him win this time round. The bigger question really, of course, is why We the People are the ones bearing the cost for a leader’s personal vow or pledge to the Almighty.

 Which is why I couldn’t help but dive into my Bible and find the instances of such vows and promises and what exactly to make scripturally of the President’s dedication to a National Cathedral.

There is a judge named Jephthah in the Bible. Now, I know most of you are hopelessly lost, non-Bible people who still hold on to the devil-inspired belief that the wine Jesus turned the water into was alcoholic, so I will take the liberty of telling you the story in contemporary language. So this judge Jephthah was a mighty battle warrior with quite the shameful circumstance of birth: he was the son of a prostitute. Imagine defeating hordes and hordes of Israel’s enemies by blood and sweat, only to return home to children screaming excitedly in sing-song:

“The mighty warrior’s mother was a whore, and a whore the mighty warrior’s mother was.”

Not cool koraaa.

His half-brothers, as a result of his unfortunate parentage, drove him out of his father’s inheritance, and he was forced to cavort with the scum of society, a group of misfits who in today’s parlance probably thought of themselves as Gladiators, in a land known in those days as Tob. And he would have remained an outcast but for the Ammonites who made war with Israel. Now that Israel was about to get some serious Ammon arse-whooping, guess who they called to lead them into battle?

But Jephthah was no fool. Before he agreed to bleed for Israel, he said in Judges 11: 9, “… If you bring me home again to fight against the Ammonites, and the Lord gives them over to me, I will be your head.” ESV

Of course, Israel agreed and made him President and Commander-in-Chief, etc. over all of them. Now, on his way to the war with the Ammonites, Jephthah made a solemn vow to God. “If You will indeed deliver the people of Ammon into my hands, then it will be that whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the people of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord’s, and I will offer it up as a burnt offering.” Judges 11:30, 31.

This promise was a foolish vow one on many theological fronts, not the least is what I have already mentioned above from Ecclesiastes. What Jephthah should have said was, “… whatever that comes out of the doors of my house, if it be acceptable, that will I offer as a burnt offering”. We know this because if Jephthah’s dog had come out first, he couldn’t have sacrificed it because dogs are not an acceptable offering to God. Placing a dog on the sacred altar would most likely have ended in Jephthah’s death. The Son of God cannot be represented in atonement by an unclean animal. Same thing if it had been a cat. Cats are unfit for sacrifice in the eyes of God. Or pigs.

And while we are on the subject, having made a foolish promise, Jephthah did not go beyond that initial sin to actually sacrifice his daughter by cutting her throat and setting her body on fire on the alter. No. Human sacrifice is abhorrent to God (Deut, 18:9-12; Leviticus 20:1-5; Jeremiah 7:31; 19:5; and 32:35). Even during the test of Abraham’s faith, God did not let Isaac be sacrificed.  God in His power could have let Isaac be sacrificed, and then brought him back to life, but because human sacrifice is unacceptable to Him, He provided a Substitute before the knife touched Isaac’s throat.  

So Jephthah went out and defeated the Ammonites “with a great blow” and those upstarts were subdued before Israel. Unfortunately, his songs of victory turned to sorrow when his daughter was the first thing out of his house to greet him coming in from the war. And she was his only daughter. Death to her means the obliteration of the genealogy after him.

Once she found out about his vow, she asked for two months to mourn. Notice that she didn’t mourn because she was afraid to die, for she knew that she could not be sacrificed literally. “So she said to him, ‘My father, if you have given your word to the Lord, do to me according to what has gone out of your mouth, because the Lord has avenged you of your enemies, the people of Ammon.’ Then she said to her father, ‘Let this thing be done for me: let me alone for two months, that I may go and wander on the mountains and bewail my virginity, my friends and I.” Judges 11:36-37.

It’s kind of weird to mourn only for one’s virginity when it’s your neck on the sacrificial line, don’t y’all think? Verse 39 answers it also: “And it was so at the end of two months that she returned to her father, and he carried out his vow with her which he had vowed. She knew no man.”

The last sentence sums it up. Once he had made a foolish promise, Jephthah was forced to keep the promise solely within the bounds of what God could permit. Since his daughter’s life was no longer hers due to his rash promise, she could never marry, and was most likely presented for Temple services throughout her life, never to marry, never to do anything else except the services associated with the Tabernacle till she passed. His lineage paid the price for his foolishness. No one claims Jephthah as a grandfather. What he should have done was to have repented and pled for forgiveness, and he might have been forgiven for his rash vow.

We are confronted with a similar situation. Ogyam makes a vow that has nothing to do with us but has everything to do with his personal ambitions. Even if the economic situation had inured to our benefit we would not have complained, but Charlie times are hard.  The economy fares presently no better than it did under the government President Akufo-Addo made his vow to replace. Rather than pray for forgiveness for his rash vow and suffer the consequences alone, he and his lineage, the President is proposing to drag our entire economy into the equation by doling out wads and wads of our Cedis towards the construction of a monument that makes no theological sense. To his credit, Jephthah did not drag all the daughters of Israel into his equation. He could have as President and Commander-in-Chief, but he didn’t. In fact, the war he fought was to the benefit of all Israel. He freed his country from potential tyranny and yet, refused to rope the nation into what was really a foolish vow.

If Ogyam has walked down the hall of shame in Jephthah’s wake, why does he want all of us to suffer some? Let’s end this National Cathedral shame before it gets worse. I don’t understand why it makes sense to take from the poor – and we are $54bn in debt right now – in order to build a cathedral no one needs. Ghana is a democracy, not the theocracy Israel then was. We really must not suffer as a consequence of what clearly was a foolish promise. Next, a presidential candidate will vow to make Ghana a fully Christian nation, an Israel annex.

Then where will we be?

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KalashniBlog

Adwoa Yankey: A Song for Akufo-Addo

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May 17, 2022

- Category : KalashniBlog

- Tags : 5G, Adventure, Chieftaincy, Coronavirus

Tucked beautifully away in the forests between Akyem Asafo on the Apedwa-Bunso stretch of the Accra-Kumasi highway and Akyem Kukurantumi on the Koforidua-Nsutam road is the village of Addo-Nkwanta. This village could only correctly be called a Ghanaian village. Unlike other Akyem villages where Akyem Twi was the lingua franca, Addo-Nkwanta has a healthy mix of just about every Ghanaian tribe. When I was young, I started sentences in Akwapim Twi and ended them in Krobo, Ewe or Kyerepon. Everyone was welcome in Addo-Nkwanta, which is probably why, when the predominantly farming village got sizeable enough to deserve its own sub-Chief, or Odikro, the citizens decided, rather than have the Paramountcy in Kyebi or the divisional chief in Asafo nominate an Odikro, to select one from among ourselves.

It had never been done before. No one had elected a chief before. Before the notion was proposed, there were many claimants to the non-existing stool, not one of whom had true nobility or royal blood in their veins. Oh, there was one pretender or another to one forgotten stool or another, and the whole thing seemed messy in the beginning. Since they did not want Asafo and Kukurantumi dictating to them through an Odikro of their choosing, the Addo-Nkwantanians chose the most practical way out – elect an Odikro and leave the bestowing of stool titles and what-nots to him.

As one would expect in a situation such as this, there were over 2-hundred candidates! And ballots after ballots were cast over a period of a decade. The rest of Akyemdom sat back and chortled at all the foolishness of electing an Odikro, but the village was determined, and on the 32nd ballot and with minimal cheating, an Odikro was elected – a cassava farmer called Afrane.

He grew coco-yams too. 

It’s important to never forget the coco-yams.

Anyway, after his election, every village man who thought he was important would make a 12-kilometre journey to Odikro Afrane’s farm to pay homage, since he had no palace yet and lived more on his farmstead than in the village proper. In one instance, a family that wanted to be named KrontiHene went and knelt in one of his vegetable beds, claiming, “Hail Odikro Afrane, the Magnificent.”

“Oh, have a care for your finery,” he declaimed to the prostrate family. “I have just well-manured the bed you’re kneeling in with cow dung,” he finished plaintively.

This was in the late 1970s. Ten years later, Odikro Afrane’s mother passed, and having tasted the sweet essence of power, he demanded of Addo-Nkwantanians a levy to bury his mother in style.

Of course the village refused.

Odikro Afrane was furious. But he failed to see a vital truth. He was elected mainly because we’d rather have been Odikroless than to have had a person claiming some kingship by blood rule over us, especially if that blood was idiotic, like one of the candidates from the division was.

No sir.

And having given a fat middle finger to true nobility, the last thing we were going to do was to kiss the butt of one whom we had ourselves set over us. Funeral levy our village butts!

No one paid the levy.

To make matters worse for Odikro Afrane, the legendary musician C. K. Mann released a song about that same time. Some rather long medley, but one part was about Adwoa Yankey, a woman who had lost her husband and was being asked to look to God for solace. The part that offended the Odikro and thrilled the villagers was this:

Nnyɛ awo nko na wo na ewu o!

Nnyɛ awo nko na wo agya ewu o,

Ɛna ewu, egya ewu, Nnyɛ awo nko na wo na ewu o,

Aware saman kor oh!

To wit: You’re not the only one to have lost a Mother to demand a funeral levy!

Needless to say, the Odikro banned the song from being played in the village. If one was caught even whistling it, the penalty was three ram and 3 bottles of schnapps. He also banned the material dress in vogue of the same name as the song, and refused to let the village have electricity. When he himself died 12 years later, the song Adwoa Yankey was played at his funeral over loud speakers powered by the rural electrification project.

Ever since COVID-19 struck and June 2020 passed kwatakwata with only a few deaths in Ghana, the government of President Akufo-Addo has blamed every one of the country’s economic problems on the pandemic and now, on the Russo-Ukrainian war. These problems have been double-digit inflation, high cost of living, government and civil service corruption, and an increase in taxes. No one is happy except party foot soldiers and the Officer Corps of the Insult Battalion on Facebook.

But what aahn did the Ghanaian government do for We the People during COVID’s lockdowns that it has been drumming the pandemic as the reason for its present incompetence?

Let’s first take a look at what other governments did when Coronavirus shutdowns around the world pushed countries into crisis-mode. It prompted a massive rescue spending in an effort to soften the blow from what was accurately expected to be the worst economic contraction since the 1930s. The IMF reported, as of April 7, 2022, that countries around the world approved more than $4.5 trillion worth of emergency measures.

Example, all Americans earning under $99,000 – an estimated 90% of households – received as much as $1,200 per adult, while South Korea’s central government sent cheques of up to $820 to families in the bottom 70% income bracket. Hong Kong announced a handout of $1,280 per adult; Japan, $931 per person, and Singapore, $422.

Those governments not only directed their COVID relief packages in direct payments to citizens. They guaranteed new loans to businesses hurt by the shutdowns as well. In Ghana however, we only got free water for 3 months, electricity subsidy for a month or so, and some interest rate cuts by the Central Bank. And for those pittances, we got charged 1% health recovery levy in addition to an existing 5% tax on goods and services and an unflinching 12.5% VAT on the amount and taxes thus charged. And when we complained, a 1.5% electronic transaction levy was imposed further. While other countries sent cheques to their beloved citizens, our government sent us taxes and levies to mitigate the effects of the pandemic on itself and itself alone. As if the Ghanaian government and its spending elite were the only ones to have lost economic grounds to the pandemic.

And every time I hear Ogyam speak of COVID as the reason we are so broke right now, that Adwoa Yankey song comes to mind.

Nnyɛ awo nko na wo na ewu!

We might just sing that song at the next polls, or failing that, whatever the campaign song will be in 2024, which right now seems to be imbedded with five leap years.

😎

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KalashniBlog

The Gods Must Be Crazy

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March 27, 2022

- Category : KalashniBlog

- Tags : 5G, Adventure, Chieftaincy, Coronavirus

Before moving to permanently settle at Odumase and Somanya, the ancient Krobos lived in the beautiful outcrops called Klowem, located just near the Akuse junction on the Akosombo Road. Every avid hiker, mountaineer or trekker worth his rank under the professional OAG knows the Klowem outcrops. The moderately challenging 10km diameter wilderness has steep trails, grassy passes, rocky valleys and half-wild cattle to provide the background to wonderful adventures, and the occasional cow chase.

I discovered Klowem while searching for abseilable cliffs in the area. In the first iteration of our search, my team and I were assisted by Kloma Gbi, leaders of Krobo Youth in the traditional area. These youths wanted nothing more than to see all Krobos united for development. And the sacred Klowem was a visible symbol of that sought-after development. My team would move off from that first search to organize over a hundred adventures to the site.

One of the chiefs slapped us with a calico, a couple of rams and the bones of a dead five-year old antelope plus Five Thousand Ghana Cedis in fines when they discovered we had been making money running adventures on the hills behind their backs. They claimed we needed to have performed some rites before venturing to explore the hills. At any point, the gods could have been offended and visited calamity on my clients and I, and potentially on the whole of Krobodom.

I don’t know if they knew then that the Yilo House, the twin paramountcy of the Krobo, had stationed a half-drunk farmer on the other side of the hills, and the dude was extorting 10 Cedis (30 Cedis if one was White) from anyone that would hike the hills.

I refused to visit the palace while the fines hung over our heads but continued to hike the hills, not unaware of the potential conflict that would erupt should we run into any Krobos, but using my knowledge of the hills to outwit any searchers. Eventually, the palace found out from Facebook that we were happily exploring the hills still. The chief himself called to offer a way out. Five Thousand became 500, and I could forget the rams, the calico and the antelope archeology.

I agreed.

On the day after I handed over the cash, I took another hike through the hills. The week before had been the Ngmayem Festival, and every true Krobo had gone to hike Klowem to pay homage to the ancestors. Plastic littered every rock, leaf and shrub. The greenery of Klowem had been violated by the indigenes, and empty water sachets, kasapreko gin tots, and ice cream wrappers desecrated the entire outcrop.

When the chief answered my phone call, my words were, “Your gods must be crazy if they find my adventures to Klowem offensive, but found no offense with the plastic littering and other environmental violations of your people. Your gods must be insane if they could threaten to punish me, who only leave boot prints, but do not punish you who have left these desecrations.”

Sadly, the litter remained from October of that year through the harmattan, where they remained a true eyesore when all the vegetation withered, until the rains of the next year. Running water, mud and new grass covered the shame of the Krobo People. I would not have paid the 500 Cedis if I had seen the mess before agreeing with the chief, and I said as much to him.

It wasn’t any love of the environment, or of the gods, that inspired the demand for money to explore what is really nothing more than an open wilderness. I absolutely do not begrudge any local authority or traditional ruler who tries to monetize natural or environmental resources; especially of the sustainable variety. But I take extreme exception to the extortion that is the stock-in-trade of most traditional authority in Ghana when an idea presents itself. No thought is given to business plans, or environmental impact assessments. Immediately, their default position is to slap fees in the names of gods as devoid of powers as my breath is devoid of the miasma of alcohol. Of course the money and the drinks or rams end up lining their pockets and pockets alone. Not a single indigene benefits from such extortion. As it turned out later, the whole area is Government of Ghana property due to the abundance of the mineral wealth of rocks for quarrying purposes. There are more than 10 active quarries in the area as we speak. And there are no angry gods either; just relics of ancient idolatry that employs the fear of unknown spiritual consequences to keep chieftaincy elites in power.

We had similar experiences in the Akwamu Traditional Area. The Trident shares a wall with the Akwamu Forest, otherwise known as Akwamu Pow. The Okumahene of the area had already sold this same land to my Landlord knowing full well it abutted their sacred grove but as soon as my team and I laid the foundational blocks for the facility, he and his chiefs came screaming themselves hoarse that certain purification rights needed to be done to ensure the safety of our operations around the grove and on the Volta River. The demand was for Twenty-thousand Ghana Cedis, plus two ram, and cartons of foreign and local gin. Never mind that while it wasn’t really needed, we had spent a lot of money building a 450-foot wall to keep their gods away from our side of the demarcation. When I asked why I would, in my right mind part with such an amount, they claimed that the gods could send crocodiles, water vipers and big waves to create unpleasantness for us and for our clients.

The anaemia in this kind of thinking was beyond me. Ghanaian ancestors and gods were not like the ancestors and gods of other lands. They send calamities and plagues. Not good will and prosperity and the brains others use to make planes and submarines. To say I treated the requests with contempt is an understatement. Six months later, the demand came down to 12-Thousand Cedis and I was still pissed off. Eventually, my Board stepped in and provided to their demands.

I returned from an adventure one morning and there they all were, wearing “collars” like we did when we were children in a village that had no electricity – a full-bodied cloth that is worn tied up around the neck. There were chiefs of big influence, and there was a drummer, and they came to the border with the forest to invoke the gods and ask for their blessings and avert their displeasure. They presented with one ram (my Board had provided 2), and they scattered mere fatty parts of the slain ram across the water. As they made off with the rest of the ram (99% of the meat) Derick, one of my Rangers ran after them and divested the sacrifice of one meaty thigh.

That evening, when Derick presented me with a bowl of ram soup, I declined. I don’t eat meat sacrificed to idols, I said. Especially these ones that are devoid of anything resembling progress and advancement.

Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against Ghanaian culture, but I have spent 23 years of my life living in nature and in the wild. There’s nothing here that is maliciously benign about forests, rivers, stones, trees and animals, other than the selfish heart of man. And living out here, I expect there will be more of such conflicts between me and traditional rulers over customs outmoded, and rites that don’t make sense, never mind that the only reason they hold on to these customs is to employ fear as a currency to line their pockets.

And to each new request, my answer remains: the Gods must be crazy!

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KalashniBlog

So Ghana Go Be?

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July 17, 2021

- Category : KalashniBlog

- Tags : 5G, Adventure, Chieftaincy, Coronavirus

In 2007, after the new Landcruiser had rolled out of Toyota’s factories with its 5.7-liter V8 engine and the resultant 381 horsepower and 401 pounds of torque, the company presented less than a dozen of the units to its sales offices in Ghana. Toyota Global was not sure that citizens of our highly indebted poor country could afford the new model’s sound-absorbing and noise-cancelling luxury. The Ghana sales office wrote back to Global that they needed a dozen more, after only a month or so. That same year, they sold over 50 of the luxurious beasts. It wasn’t long before motorists on the Spintex Road begun to complain about V8s trying to run them off the roads. Every class one politician by year 2019 had begun to drive the enormous SUVs with illegal sirens and, as we speak, there are more than 680 Landcruiser V8s registered in Ghana. 90-percent of them belong to Ghana’s political class.

In 2016, President Akufo-Addo campaigned on a strong theme of incorruptibility. His vice-president exuded economic competence. As we speak, the President seems to have expunged the word corruption from all word processors in the Jubilee House pool of computers and the US Dollar is 5.90 to the Cedi. The Vice President’s voice on the correlation between a falling currency and incompetence can no longer be heard, except from excerpts of what he said about that correlation 5 years ago.

The NPP government has found itself at war with its citizens, winning against them in Ejura when Ghana Armed Forces personnel shot, killed and maimed 4 people protesting the earlier murder of a social media anti-government activist, and losing against them when Ghanaians angrily denounced and acerbically decried the payment of illegal cabinet-level salaries to the wives of the president and his deputy. The first and second ladies were forced to return the monies.

But the citizens vs. government conflict hasn’t yet ran its course. With renewed vigour, citizens are attacking the offer of car loans to Members of Ghana’s misbegotten Parliament when no one else in Ghana is able to acquire loans with the requirement to pay back only 40-percent. To add insult to injury, the MPs waived all taxes applicable to the importation of their cars. The total cost to the Ghanaian taxpayer is 31-Million USD. And teachers, when they demanded a 15% rise in salaries only got a 4-percent raise. The President had the steel-clapped cojones to declare that teachers cannot expect to be enriched in the teaching profession. His salary, by the way, is pegged at 40 times more than an average graduate teacher earns.

I remember too vividly January 7, 2017. It was A Saturday and even I, a staunch Sabbath-keeper, could not pay full attention at worship while President Akufo-Addo was being sworn in as President. The expectations of all of us were at an all-time high, and having criticized the Mahama-led NDC government viciously over the course of the NDC’s corrupt and electric power failing governance, the plagiarized call to be citizens and not spectators was welcoming in its patriotic zeal and passion. Just 4 years down the line, the NPP government was attempting to steal ballot boxes just to hold on to the Speakership of the Parliament they had wielded overwhelming control over the previous term.

Taxes are rising, as is the cost of living. The Cedi is falling. Unemployment is so high that the Ghanaian republic has refused to gather data on the statistic. Crime too is rising, with robberies getting bolder and bolder and beginning to target a few MPs themselves. All the promises Akufo-Addo made not to let Ghana down shone brightly through free SHS but dimmed swiftly in non-existing factories and jobs. And as reports get bleaker and bleaker, the government has taken its frustration onto journalists, blaming the inky fraternity for every one of its incompetence and human rights abuses. Ghanaians have become more cynical than they were in 2015 when Woyome was the news, and government finds itself at the receiving end of internet trolls and bad press.

So Ghana go be?

This is the question posed by 4ties, an underground Ghanaian rapper. To this, the politician in power answers, “E dey be k3k3”, while the politician in opposition answers, “E go be”. Only the Ghanaian with no political connection answers, “Never”.

To people like me who are #InDifferent after having our hopes for a better Ghana dashed more times than we can count, we have but one answer.

Tweaaa in excelsis.

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To Marry or Not to Marry?

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March 19, 2021

- Category : KalashniBlog

- Tags : 5G, Adventure, Chieftaincy, Coronavirus

It depends largely on one’s perspective, but a Professor friend of mine, bemoaning the abysmal lack of intellectual acuity in today’s young couples said to me in response to the question, “Anyone that goes C-minus in logical reasoning has no business getting married.”

A few acquaintances disagreed with him. “Who cares about brains?” One asked me when I reported the good Prof’s prognosis. “Can she twerk? If yes, that’s marriage material right there for me!”

In the wake of some businessman allegedly beating his wife to death, the institution of marriage has come under intense scrutiny on Ghanaian Facebook streets. I’m not in the habit of cavorting with feminists but they had a field week on Facebook and its irreverent cousin Twitter, bashing the institution to the Dark Ages. I was sure they’d find a gun and do the alleged wife murderer violence before he had his day in court.

Until a few days ago, I believed in three things concerning the subject:

1. That marriage was a sacred thing, a God-ordained union between a man and a woman; inseparable until the death of a partner, or until one of them got caught in adultery.

2. That a couple would succeed who applied intelligence, wisdom and prayer in the choice of a partner prior to marrying them, and

3. That the power of eternal and temporal life and death, as well as eternal and temporal happiness and miserableness depended largely on who one married.

After all I saw, read and heard all through this week, my belief in the above remains unshaken. This is how my favourite Christian author puts it: “If those who are contemplating marriage would not have miserable, unhappy reflections after marriage, they must make it a subject of serious, earnest reflection now. This step taken unwisely is one of the most effective means of ruining the usefulness of young men and women. Life becomes a burden, a curse. No one can so effectually ruin a woman’s happiness and usefulness, and make life a heart sickening burden, as her own husband; and no one can do one hundredth part as much to chill the hopes and aspirations of a man, to paralyze his energies and ruin his influence and prospects, as his own wife. It is from the marriage hour that many men and women date their success or failure in this life, and their hopes of the future life.” – The Review and Herald, February 2, 1886.

But Betty’s discussion with me this week shook my beliefs to their very foundation. No, I didn’t change my mind on any of the three sacred points above, but I did develop a fourth belief:

4. Not everyone should be married!

I am here not referring to those of you hit and run upstarts traipsing all over any willing skirt on these social media streets, looking for pleasure without responsibility. Point 4 isn’t for you serial intercoursers. But Betty’s story brought to mind a truth Jesus Christ shared on the subject of marriage. He identified in Matthew 19:12 that not everyone should be married; not everyone is fit for the marriage institution, and that being single is not a bad thing. Of course all these fake pastors running around these days do not read that far into the scriptures, but a lot of people are better off not marrying at all.

I have known Betty and her hubby for many years. (Actually I know Betty more, but you get my point). They are smart, wise and prayerful people and have been married longer than I have. In the issues surrounding that poor woman’s unfortunate demise, she reached out to me and shared a profound write-up that succinctly spoke to the issue of selfish husbands who are nothing but devils in human skin. She shared with me so we could discuss the other point that I had failed to see in my many rants on Facebook on the subject.

Betty and Andy (not their real names) had been friends since school and grew up to marry each other. There is nothing in their past that was a precursor to what Andy became. And, like the smart couple they were, everything was perfect until everything wasn’t. When Betty got pregnant, Andy got upset rather badly. Apparently the bloke had no interests whatsoever in babies. So many years of friendship and marriage and the fool had never so much as hinted at his pedophobia.

No, folks. Don’t think of it as a mental disorder before y’all come to his defense. Before long you will be hash-tagging pedophobia as a disorder in the same way you demand attention to mental sickness. While I am all for mental health support, I can tell the difference between the attention-seeking misfits on social media peddling all kinds of mental higgledy-piggledy and those who need real mental health assistance, na mo yare dodo. (Eye-roll right here).

Fortunately, she told me, the pregnancy ended in a miscarriage so that bullet was swerved inlaboratus. But it didn’t end there. For 10 years since the incidence, Andy would go coitus interruptus on her every time until she bailed! She suffered every imaginable kind of marital abuse except the physical kind, and for that I believe I know why. Betty is a beautiful giant of a woman, you see, and my money is on the fact that Andy feared she was more likely to beat the coitus out of him if he’d attempted to get physical on her. Four times she had left her home, and four times the cheating scallywag would beg like a rhino on heat for his mate to return. Betty did nothing wrong to deserve an unhappy marriage. Eventually she’d had it. She decided to live, and not die. So she dumped his duplicitous butt before last Christmas and filed for divorce.

How was I to account, as a God-fearing, jungle-loving Christian for this one where everything was perfect until everything wasn’t?These are tough times for the institution of marriage, and men like Andy bastardize the sacred institution almost irreparably. My feeling, from all that went on this week is that the following people should never be married:

Arseholes (like Andy)

People living inside their parent’s homes (unless said parents are rich and have independent chalets)

People fond of red lipstick

People who can’t cook

People who drink and/or smoke

Clubbers

Anyone with more than three fornicating partners prior to marriage

People who believe Mahama won the last election

People who speak in tongues.

In all seriousness though, the answer to the question, To Marry or Not to Marry, depends on the one asking. Whatever you decide, it is my privilege to inform you that if you are wondering about this at this point in your life, you’re screwed if you marry.

And screwed if you don’t.

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KalashniBlog, TattleBlog

Let’s Examine Ghana’s Worst-Case Pandemic Scenario

By on

March 31, 2020

- Category : KalashniBlog, TattleBlog

- Tags : 5G, Adventure, Chieftaincy, Coronavirus

At the time of ‘going to press’, the entire African continent had 5,261 confirmed cases of the coronavirus pandemic and 174 deaths. 335 victims have recovered. A total 7 countries have no viruses at all. Until an hour ago Sierra Leone was free (it now has its index case and has closed its borders for 30 days for it). Burkina Faso (246) leads the Ivory Coast (168) and Senegal (162) as the top three in West Africa.

Ghana is in a comfortable 4th position with confirmed cases standing at 161 with 5 deaths. Of this number, 44.7 percent of all cases are community spreads (or what the Ghana Health Service refers to as ‘Routine Surveillance’), while 55.3% were detected after the President shut down the country’s borders and ordered the mandatory quarantine of all entrants. It is possible that a full half of community infections could have been avoided if the President had ordered the border shutdowns a week before, and only a tenth of cases would have been recorded if he had shut down the borders after his arrival from Switzerland. Total homecare (recovery) cases are 49. There’s no doubt that the total number of infections would be 1,000 without the mandatory quarantine instituted, but we cannot hope that the numbers stay that way.

For mandatory quarantine, and barring any truth to bribery and extortion rumours that celebrities and politicians are paying their ways out of mandatory quarantine, we can be certain that the rate of confirmed infections will not exceed 30 percent of the quarantined population. All our fears are rightly for community infections, the progression arithmetic that Italy, Spain, the United States, Iran and South Africa (Africa’s COVID 19 League Table Leader at 1,326 confirmed cases) are currently experiencing. When Ghana’s routine surveillance or community infections exceed 50%, we will be in deepshit country because that is exactly when our rates will be aiming to make a dash for peak levels.

This is why this Jungle Boy and a duo of frontliners have teamed up to bring you this special worst-case scenario for examination. Our worse-case pandemic scenario starts with 250 community infections. The GHS and the MOH need to have switched from a centralized to a decentralized management model at that point. This requires the conversion of the various constituencies as Clusters (CCs or Constituency Clusters). Each CC is a first responder center where suspicious cases can be reported. These CCs can run from a container shop or from a mobile kiosk. The cluster must consist of two nurses at the least, a medical doctor, and an ambulance purposely fitted to transport cases. The CC must be heavily protected for bio-hazard reasons, and must have more PPEs than the Korle has plastic, and a mobile telephone with a tracker. The CCs’ role in this fight is to serve as the first contact for probable cases in the constituencies and must be equipped with tools to assess a patient for signs of COVID-19. If we are lucky to have procured ABT.N COVID-19 test kits, then the testing could be done and the results found out in 5 minutes before the cluster transports the patient to Regional Clusters (RCs); a tented pavilion equipped with the necessary quarantine and treatment equipment that can be set up at regional sports stadia to receive patients from the CCs.

We don’t have the manpower and financial muscle to build new hospitals like the Chinese did; and we dare not overwhelm our current hospitals – they barely have the capacity to handle anything beyond what they are already doing in our misbegotten excuse for healthcare delivery in Ghana (don’t get us started on NHIA arrears). We may have to convert the Dome at the AICC into Accra’s RC though (we wanted to suggest Parliament House but we are feeling benevolent).

Ultimately, this proposed approach will eliminate prank calls (CCs require walk-ins), and allow better and meaningful coordination of the coronavirus fight in Ghana. It will lead to rapid responses to peaking cases, reduce the risks of overburdening regional and national hospitals and allow an efficient trace of cases. Food distribution, as well as exit permits from homes, can be managed through the CCs. Mass testing can also be done through these CCs like Germany has been doing. And if Chinese PPEs won’t come, let’s provide Ghanaian tailors with the materials they need to make facial masks for their communities. And this will work after government proceeds from oil and gas, cocoa, VAT, customs duties, remittances, and taxes from foreign consulates have all completely disappeared together with the $100m IMF cash. It might be difficult to pay public sector workers as well if this coronavirus issue persists for more than two months, which is why the President needs to be decisive at these times.

Trust us when we say that allowing peak infections will mess us up beyond our wildest imaginations; why do you think Sierra Leone is on lockdown over just one case? They know they are no Wuhan nor Madrid. Let’s get cranking, Mr. Government; before we all die. And we need to stop government appointees from peddling false hopes. We may have 400 ventilators as the President’s advisor on health posited, but we are of the candid opinion that these ambulance ventilators are incompetent for ICU use. Let’s therefore get the clusters to begin their work and we may prolong our peak deaths until antidotes are found. We need to prepare to have an Italy on our hands, folks while praying as hard as we can.

Happy Lockdown all the same!  

Contributors: Emmanuel Agyeman Joseph Kofi Asante JayJay D. Segbefia
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KalashniBlog

Covid-19 in Ghana: To Lockdown Or Not To?

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March 23, 2020

- Category : KalashniBlog

- Tags : 5G, Adventure, Chieftaincy, Coronavirus

At the time the corona virus hit the European continent, President Akufo-Addo was on a 12-day tour of Europe. This led many social commentators to wonder whether the President needn’t be quarantined for 14 days on his return. A Norwegian diplomat to Ghana who was with the President’s entourage in Norway was the first to test positive for the virus a day after the president’s return. That same day, the president threw a stone that had formed a part of Jerusalem’s temple walls into the foundational pit and cut the sod for the commencement of construction of the ridiculous National Cathedral, a Cathedral we are building because of the president’s personal religious promise, and for which Ghanaian property have been destroyed.

The Cathedral is estimated to cost $100 million; the same amount the president ordered his finance minister to make available towards coronavirus preparedness efforts. Since then, it’s been a helluva roller coaster ride as Ghana confirms more and more cases. One patient has died, and the president has had to speak gravely to Ghanaians severally on national TV to assure the people that his government is on top of the issues, and to also encourage them to embrace publicized hygiene practices. Ghana has 24 confirmed cases to date and the rate of increase will keep growing. This is why the president’s addresses have been important. With absolute clarity, he has outlined the problem and justified his immediate, executive decisions to isolate affected persons and prevent large scale transmissions by closing down schools and universities and banning church and social gatherings beyond 25 persons. By attempting to limit movement of the broader Ghanaian population, and mandatorily quarantining people coming from affected nations, the president has unequivocally announced he is unafraid to do whatever it takes to keep Ghanaians safe.

While the president did not lack verbal clarity in his addresses, the gonads required to strictly enforce his drastic measures have seemed lacking. The National Identification Authority, headed by an academic that has until now been an authority on mob action and mob psychology, lacked the intellectual capacity and the good sense to understand that going ahead with Ghana Card mass registration exercises in the Eastern region flew in the face of the Commander-in-Chief’s direct orders banning mass gatherings. Government stooges immediately began to deploy PR photos of registrants sitting in accordance with W.H.O 2-metre distancing gaps, but social media remained unimpressed and responded with actual photos of the clusters of people in close proximity to each other in NIA sanctioned queues and booths.

It took the superior wisdom of a Court of Law to temporarily nip their senseless braggadocio in the bud, and immediately after, the NIA issued an offensive letter, revealing that the president’s directives were irrelevant where his reelection bid was concerned. By going ahead with eastern regional registrations, opinion leaders contended that the president was attempting to secure his second term in his party’s second stronghold at the expense of Ghanaian lives; one of a series of critical missteps and missed opportunities that might possibly increase the tally of coronavirus cases in the region if an infected person was among registrants.

While I am unhappy with the fragmented chain of command and the inconsistent messages comparing the president’s grasp of the problem and the NIA’s nonsense, I recognize that this president has the misfortune to make the toughest decisions a president of Ghana has ever made in peacetime, including the decision to lockdown the country in order to slow down community transmissions and flatten Ghana’s infection curve, which is currently higher than Italy’s was in the same number of days after first coronavirus confirmations. The president is screwed if he makes that call, and he is also screwed if he doesn’t make that call. In fact, while deciding between the calls, he is screwed in the waiting period. To understand his absolute screwage, we need to examine what exactly a lockdown in Ghana will look like, and why the president is probably taking his anxious time.

On average, a visitor to Ghana spends around GH¢41 ($7.38) per day. In Accra, the average Ghanaian spends GH¢14 ($2.50) on meals a day, and GH¢13 ($2.43) on trotro. When you add rent, water, electricity, internet and side chicks, there really isn’t enough to go around having three square meal supplies beyond 2 days without needing to restock. If you throw the pure water seller into the equation, you can’t lockdown Ghana beyond 6 hours a day. The president must clearly be worried about the economy taking huge hits from a lockdown in addition to the hits we are taking for falling oil prices.

Unlike the UK, and until the $100 million money arrives, government must be extremely worried about feeding people in a lockdown. Government cannot pay all of us; neither can it send a collapsed food distribution corporation to bring Ghanaians food in their homes. The fear of economic collapse is what likely fed the late closure of our borders and airport, and the fear of not being able to feed Ghanaians is what feeds into allowing businesses to continue to operate until lockdown. Without adequately answering these concerns, a lockdown will place curfews on hungry people. Before long, those people will revolt from not being able to feed their families and themselves and usher in an unrest that can quickly escalate the infection rate and mess up the economy.

Enforcing a lockdown requires the security agencies. The president couldn’t keep a rein on the miserable NIA. He would need to highly equip the Ghana Armed Forces and the Ghana Police Service before he can ask them to assume the all-out risk of enforcing a lockdown. Without appropriate gear, we might lose a full quarter of our security because the rate of spread to date of the coronavirus suggests that the years of health sector fuckery by governments and an incompetent NHI system will catch up to us by the time we hit 400 cases. These costs require careful thinking before lockdown enforcement. This is the reason we are asked to fast and pray because, to be honest, we will be overwhelmed faster than western countries have been, and while all the talk of sanitation will help, the vast majority of our people are too poor to make sense of the gravity of the situation and alter their lifestyles accordingly.

In spite of the above challenges, government needs to lockdown by Friday, March 27 or risk having an Italy on its hands. And these are the reasons, beginning with an address of the predicaments outlined above:

(1) While clearly broke and at risk of messing up the Ghanaian economy, a lockdown will provide pause for the government to assess organic compliance and estimate what level of preparedness to send enforcement troops in. Ultimately, people may comply with the strong suggestions, and government can then recommend only essential movements. This might remove the delay in imposing the needed restrictive measures without spending too much. The problem of food access for the poor and the need to thin down numbers in our markets can be cured if government operated shift systems in local markets. Indelible inks can cut down sellers’ numbers to one-fifth of total market capacity a day, and buyers will have only one day in a week to do their weekly shopping of basic foodstuffs. This means fencing markets and putting in incorruptible prefects.

(2) We do not have enough ICUs to wait to get to 100 infections because for every 100 we confirm, at least a thousand will be vectors. Already 24 confirmed cases is too much, and that line about a victim dying from underlying medical conditions is a load of crap. Dead is dead, so long as the person tested positive and, when folks begin to lose loved ones, confidence in medical competence will dwindle, forcing citizens to remain at home with their infections and under-report themselves to authorities.

(3) Government has sent mixed messages that will haunt it going forward if a lockdown isn’t immediately ordered. Silly hashtags calling for calm and the call of a secular state for religious prayers and fasts can only do so much in the beginning. But when infection numbers increase, the populace will correctly interpret those calls as cover-ups for gargantuan incompetence, and the legitimacy and intent of government will be called into question.

(4) A lockdown is required to protect vulnerable groups, especially the aged and people with chronic diseases. And that includes all the old people we have in the Jubilee House, Parliament House and in the Supreme Court.

(5) We do not have to lockdown indefinitely; we can lockdown intermittently or partially in order to reduce transmissions. Since urban centres are more at risk, we can ban all travel from the interior to epicentres. The Italian experience proves that we need to take bold steps to isolate the virus and the infected, and limit people’s movements around both immediately and with absolute conviction, and then strictly enforce compliance. 24 cases call for desperate measures, and it is action that will save us, not the ecstatic, unintelligible gibberish of tongues-speaking prayers and fasts.

🙁
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KalashniBlog

Here’s What the Yes-Vote Campaign Fails to Understand About Nay Voters

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November 18, 2019

- Category : KalashniBlog

- Tags : 5G, Adventure, Chieftaincy, Coronavirus

The work of devolving political, administrative and fiscal authority to local governments that begun in 1988 seems to have called for what might be the biggest showdown in referendum history in this apampamu-store republic. And while MMDCE elections since then have barely made the headlines – other than Assemblymen-wannabes sharing cola nuts and making local gin bitters loosely available in village squares and apio bars respectively – this referendum on the same local government decentralization process is a differing cup of tea.

It all started in 2016 when the current government in its manifesto promised to oversee the direct election of MMDCEs within 24 months of coming into office. Even that did not so much as pique social media curiosity until, probably in search of some trumpian quid pro quo, the government decided to require partisan MMDCE elections as a trade-off to relinquishing the power to appoint our abronye DCEs. Because the 1992 Constitution frowned on partisan elections at that level, the government needed to hold a referendum to amend Article 55(3) of the Constitution.

The offending article reads: “Subject to the provisions of this article, a political party is free to participate in shaping the political will of the people, to disseminate information on political ideas, social and economic programmes of a national character, and sponsor candidates for elections to any public office other than to District Assemblies or lower local government units.”

This is what the government wants us to amend by referendum. Whether we vote YES or NO, MMDCEs will in the next district assembly elections be elected from among local MMDCE contenders. We, the People, are only to decide whether we want partisanship contests at that level or whether we want that prohibition in place. Piece of cake, really, but here’s why it’s not:

A nosy lawyer-journalist called Samson Ayenini wrote a piece provoking a No-Campaign that got social media debaters drawing swords and reining in long-forgotten Spartan shields. Since then, everyone else that didn’t give a squirrel’s posterior about the outcome of MMDCE elections, including people like me who have never voted in those elections, have taken up arms and chosen sides in this battle that, if nothing at all, will give Ghanaian future governments pause when it comes to considering referenda as easy ways to give politicians what they want. Even the National House of Chiefs is divided on the matter with the President of the House calling for a No-Vote, and the king from the President’s tribe calling for a Yes-Vote. It’s fair to assume that opinions are split right down the middle on what to do. The governing NPP says to vote hell-YES and the opposition NDC says to vote tweaaa!

H. Kwasi Prempeh, for example believes that “there is room for divergence of opinion as to what might or might not work. If winner-takes-all, loser-opposes-all is one of the underlying causes of the counter-developmental partisanship in our space, as many of us believe, then I don’t see why it is so unreasonable for some to see a YES vote, which opens up the prospect of opposition party participation in direct governance at the local level, as a reasonable antidote to the problem” of partisan politics in Ghana. Many prominent opinion leaders like Franklin Cudjoe of Imani Ghana agree with him. They all argue that the prohibitively non-partisan MMDCE elections is latently partisan anyway and it’s best to cement our multi-party democracy by extending the canker of partisanship down the district lane. The strongest point for the yea-sayers is that it breaks the culture of winner-takes-all that has bedeviled Ghana’s democratic experiment over the years. The nay-sayers and No-Campaigners say they’d sooner gulp down swine flesh with a swirl of akpeteshie in an Arab state than condone the sickening, disgusting partisanship that dogs national elections at the district level. They swear by the seven gods of Berekusu that this country will go down irredeemably into a despicable quagmire of NDC-NPP politics if we let political parties in.

This Jungle Boy pitches his tent irrevocably in the camp of the No-Vote Campaigners. I don’t believe our forebears forsook gari and beans and laid down their lives so our thieving, conniving politicians can sweep into every facet of governance in this republic. That would be a terrible waste of gobe.

But there’s one important thing Yes-Vote campaigners fail to understand about No-Vote campaigners. Yes, we engage you on Facebook and Twitter and pretend to offer this or that intellectual thought as our reason for choosing to vote NO. But deep down in your guts, we know you know that for us, this referendum isn’t so much about the issues at stake as it is about having our say, passing a vote, and saying our honest-to-jollof view about partisan political participation in this country. We simply refuse to give up the relishing pleasure – the orgasmic thrill – to give Ghanaian politicians the middle finger with a capital “F” in this referendum enterprise. We choose to not pass up this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have our true say, never mind that FVCK YOU is not really on the referendum ballot. For us, NO and a brown smudge are synonymous with a big, red, lipstick-wearing middle finger. And if the politicians don’t like it, what do they plan to do about it?

😛

So, next time you argue with a No-Voter, remember, Yessies, that it is all truly about our inalienable right to do a Juli Briskman on Ghana’s teefing politicians. Your heart rates and cardiac arrests should improve dramatically with this knowledge.

😀
0
KalashniBlog

Why Can’t National Security Pick On Someone Their Own Size?

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July 3, 2019

- Category : KalashniBlog

- Tags : 5G, Adventure, Chieftaincy, Coronavirus

The past three years haven’t been a good time to be a journalist in Ghana. It seems every journalist walking around has a sign on their forehead that reads, “BEAT ME”, and boy do they get beat! (in African-American slang). The Police Administration says they lack the intelligence to find the policemen who cracked a Multimedia journalist’s skull; the courts only handed down a fine of no more than $100 to a policeman who rode an unlicensed motorbike, broke through the red light and assaulted three journalists, one of whom was a female recently hospitalized for a caesarean section; and we still don’t know who killed investigative journalist Suale. The simple truth is that everyone attacks journalists. The Police beat them up all the time. The military turn journalists into slapping bags. Even Fire & Rescue officers are in on the action, and a notorious female political activist delivered some serial round of beatings to some journalists in Accra recently.

We might have to start providing some body armour to our pressmen and women if we expect them to survive the next ten years. The pen might be mightier than the sword but no pen is mightier than an AK47 rifle butt in this apampamu-store republic, and that is a fact no victim of press brutality can gainsay. And now, after failing to give satisfactory answers for the unreasonable display of braggadocio and the shameful assault and battery of an MP at the Ayawaso West Wuogon by-elections at the Emile Short Commission, our National Security Council have turned their antennae on journalists. Armed with Soviet-era Kalashnikovs, sporting WWII helmets and sure-footed in foot-rot inducing leather boots, National Security operatives stormed the offices of online news outlet ModernGhana.com, presented no warrants (who cares about Miranda), blindfolded three staff including an editor, and whisked them away to a National Security facility where one of the victims alleges they were tortured and electrocuted on allegations of cybercrime. The National Security Council swore by the president’s respect for the rule of law (and their absolute lack of sincerity) that they did not torture anyone, and that the editor was a liar, liar, pants on fire (LLPF).

With the Ayawaso West Wuogon slaps and assaults still ringing in the nation’s (and definitely in Sam George’s) ears, it beggars belief that the National Security setup would do such a thing as attack a media outlet in Rambo style. Clearly the managers of our national security lack perspective (euphemism for a remarkable lack of good sense), and that lack was punctuated by the letter they are purported to have issued in the backlash of LLPF’s accusations of torture. The National Security Council Secretariat in a press release issued on the morning of Tuesday, July 2 said it took a serious view of the torture allegations, writing it off as a deliberate attempt by the LLPF suspect, Emmanuel Ajarfor Abugri, to discredit the investigations and the case against him. “Torture and manhandling of suspects are not part and parcel of the culture and architecture of the secretariat under the administration of President Akufo-Addo”, the statement said, sending half the population of Ghana into guffaws, not so much for the clearly arse-kissing attempt to remove the Akufo-Addo administration as far away from the scandal as possible, but for the part about the denial of a culture and architecture of torture and manhandling by the National Security.

Ghanaians know better, of course, the ill-advised, unsigned press release notwithstanding. Ghana’s National Security is all about manhandling. There were recent reports of a National Security agent drawing his pistol and arresting an ayalolo bus driver who questioned his use of the bus lane near Tessano last year in addition to the AWW brutalities that cost an innocent by-stander his leg bones. Until recently, and thanks to recent amendments and reviews, the National Security apparatus was all about terrorizing, harassing and intimidating political opponents of government. This history, coupled with recent happenings, is why we all keeled over with contempt and disbelief when the statement read, “We wish to categorically state that the suspect, during questioning, was never manhandled, neither was he subjected to any form of forced physical contact”.

Of course blindfolding and hauling pressmen off to undisclosed locations isn’t the stuff of manhandling and physical contact. What an unintelligent press release from a presumably intelligent national security apparatus! But my beef really is this: why doesn’t National Security pick on someone their own size? Like those Rambo-style bank robbers who once killed a Lebanese accountant at North Industrial area and made off with cash we still haven’t retrieved? Imagine if, while the robbery and murder was in progress National Security operatives had appeared in Sikorsky S-92 attack helicopters, abseiled and shot the robbers all the way to some point between Accra and a robbery grave? Or, if National Security had invaded Saboba in the Northern region shortly before the Konkonba-Chokosi conflict and brought all their manhandling powers to bear on brokering a permanent peace deal? That is the essence of national security if you ask me, but you have a terrible habit of never asking this jungle boy anything. This business of attacking unarmed media houses and practitioners with guns and batons doesn’t make sense beyond a masochistic delight in harassing journalists and innocent civilians. Methinks it is time to fire the National Security minister, run the entire apparatus through some sensitivity training (and training in the use of a lot of common sense) or, failing these, send them off to Somalia where they can pick on someone their own size… like Al Shabab terrorists.

My big mouth has ended.
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KalashniBlog

It’s Her Fault She got Raped?

By on

December 19, 2017

- Category : KalashniBlog

- Tags : 5G, Adventure, Chieftaincy, Coronavirus

The first time I ever shook hands with a girl who wore longclaws – you know, those dastardly long nails, hard as bone, and capable of taking you into the clinic for tetanus shots if you snapped their fingers the Ghanaian way of greeting – I believed with all my heart those nails were designed to pluck out rapists’ eyes. I also believed a girl could, during a moment of attempted rape, reach out a hand, grab the rapist’s scrotum and rip out the darn balls, along with the dingdong, in one clawed swipe. This is what girls should do to raping scum. (That’s what I would do. With homosexuality on the rise, even boys might need longclaws at some point wae. You dey there and don’t get into the nail salon soon).

This week’s stories of gang rape, and the escort exploitation of Miss Ghana pageant contestants seems about to bring to head a very long drawn-out feminism battle, but, as the world knows, that is not a fight I am prepared to participate in.

No sir!

I have a very different dog in this fight. I don’t much care for rapists. If a loved one got raped, I’d just shoot the perpetrating sonofabitch. Right in the gonads.

Us jungle people don’t play. No long discussions biaaa. Consequently, I don’t have much of a beef with rapist scum. Just like Saudia Arabia. Its sharia law for me when it comes to rape. Those I can’t stand are the buffoons, the pillocks, the idiots and the misfits who find it in their voice and tongue to immediately rise to the defense of rapists when an incident gets reported. Someway, somehow, these fools always make it the victim’s fault.

“What was she doing in their room in the first place?”

“Why didn’t she scream?”

“Why didn’t she fight them hard enough?”

“If she didn’t want it, why did she invite him into her home?”

These are the answers we demand of rape and sexual assault victims in the Republic called Ghana, and it might surprise you to know that close to 40-percent of commentators on these issues support the perpetrators. Here, we have a video of five or so males sexually assaulting a girl who puts up a spirited fight worthy of the fame of Yaa Asantewaa of Ejisu. Outnumbered, overpowered and restrained, she put up a hell of a fight. The bastards filmed and shared the whole darn incident, unaware, thanks to their clearly illiterate orientation and lack of knowledge, that law enforcement could hunt them down. As we speak, three of them have been arrested, yet social media is awash with folks who have chosen to defend the perpetrators by attacking the victim. This culture must stop immediately.

Someone suggested somewhere on Facebook that the victim could have fought a lot more by screaming. It it this kind of thinking that clearly marks people as animals belonging to an animalsylum. How exactly would screaming help the lot of a young woman held down by thugs who are hell bent on rape? This sickening attitude that puts the onus on the victims of rape to extricate themselves from their helpless situations with screaming need to stop. We think thoughts of the production of a scream is the first thing that comes to a person’s mind when s/he is being sexually assaulted? About 9 percent of all rape victims are males. Why doesn’t anyone ask them why they don’t scream? What kind of backward thinking is that? But that is sadly becoming more and more the sentiments of people who choose to support rapists and sexual assault scum. Even more ludicrous is the suggestion that a girl should never be alone in a room with a boy or a group of boys. Even making that assertion alone provides an excuse for rape, and how stupid is that thinking!

The only way to justify that sentiment is to assume that boys are raised in Ghanaian culture to the level, and the level only, of rabid, raping dogs. If that were true, what a sick culture the Ghanaian one would be: a bunch of savages without the teaspoon of civility required to understand that there never is, and never will be, a justification for rape and sexual violence. It increasingly seems to suggest that Ghanaian culture supports rape. Chiefs and leaders go to great lengths to protect perpetrators by withdrawing cases from the Police and settling it “amicably” at home and in the community. Uncles are protected when they rape nieces (never mind that the same courtesy – if we can call it that – would never have been extended to the house-help or watchman who rapes the same niece), and powerful men get away with doing same with those they have economic, social and political powers over.

This image of our country needs to be erased forthwith, and the best way to do so is to call out all buffoons who share sentiments that support rape and sexual assault. I must commend the CID of the Ghana Police Service for issuing warnings against sharing these vile assault videos. For once, our Cops were proactive on a matter of this nature. That is one of the ways to stop the madness. By having no part in disseminating these loathsome acts other than surrendering it when received to the Police, we could well help to bring raping scum and their supporters to justice.

As to the exploitation of women in the Miss Ghana beauty pageant, my long-held opinion remains to ban the darn shows. What, exactly, does the Miss Never-Mind-What pageants add? Their entertainment value? How exactly is that of value when it comes at the cost of turning the presumably prettiest of our young ladies into escorts and sex playthings of the CEOs and Directors of the companies who fund such entertainment falsely so-called? It’s exploitation. Simple, really. The KKD saga and similar incidences are the evidences we need that some beauty pageants only go to serve the libidos of the wealthy and the seemingly powerful. All beauty pageants do is to expose the sexual appeal of young girls to slavering men with potbellies as huge as twin-pregnancies and peckers as lustful as dogs’. Who remembers how contestants answered questions when well-oiled cleavages are in plain view on TV? I refuse to consider myself a part of a society that exploits women, forcibly and implicitly, and the idea that a victim is considered to be at fault for getting raped is one that so sickens me I really want to shoot someone.

Mtseew!
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