A Gruesome Metaphor

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

A Ghana News Agency (GNA) report of the murder-decapitation of a 38-year-old man in the Breman-Asikuma district of the Central Region set me thinking about such Akan maxims as “Excessive friendship it was that caused the crab to lose its head,” and “Bad friendship brought me ill-fate” (See “Headless Body Discovered at Palm-wine Factory” Ghanaweb.com 9/2/11).
The foregoing set me thinking because inebriates or heavy drinkers are often said to drink carelessly almost as if they had no head over their shoulders. Actually, the proper location for one’s head is smack-dab on one’s neck. But, perhaps, since it has long been observed that some people have such short necks that it would have, literally, been better if they had no necks at all, I guess you could aptly conclude that having a head on one’s shoulder is a better way of skirting around the possible accusation of rabidly discriminating against those who are not as “giraffely” endowed as the rest of us.
Anyway, I hasten to observe the laudable arrests of the suspects in the brutal murder of Mr. Kodwo Badu. And here, of course, the credit must unreservedly go to Mr. Samuel Doe, the Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) and District Commander of the Breman-Asikuma district and his staff.
Naturally and logically, it came as hardly any surprise that the suspects reportedly included the owner of the palm-wine factory near which the mangled remains of Mr. Kodwo Badu was dumped, and three others. For, while “social drinking” has routinely been said to differentiate the classy or well-cultivated from the rat-pack of the rest of us teetotalers, nonetheless and paradoxically, the same drinking culture has been observed to unravel many a fast friendship.
I also, by and large, tend to believe that Ghanaians are among the most mild-mannered and peace-loving people in the world. And so once awhile, when the report of a gruesome murder such as that involving Mr. Kobina Mensah and his three accomplices, namely, Kwame Abudu, Yaw Nkromah and Kwabena Baah, hits cyber-media space, I find myself struggling to make sense of such bestial depravity. And ultimately and almost invariably, about the only logical conclusion that I am able to reach is the fact that fundamentally speaking, all humans are animals at heart – political animals, that is. Which is why we often appear to be in constant need of being preached unto and lectured at, to do what is righteous by God, be the latter Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or Ancestral.
I am also wondering what the defense of these criminal suspects is likely to be. That, for instance, they had had too much to drink on that fateful day as to have caused the quartet to have involuntarily vacated their rational faculties, or superego, as psychologists are wont to say, and unintentionally and unconsciously taken the machete to the neck of their victim in order to, perhaps, rectify the egregious error that the Creator, or the Divine Godhead, committed in organically affixing the human noggins on top of the human torso and limbs?
In times like these, I would rather have two same-sex partners publicly French-kissing and moaning pleasurably and happily before the rest of us straitlaced heterosexuals.
Then, there is this daily embarrassing dosage of 60-plus-year-old adult-males sexually violating toddlers and the newly-born. On the latter score, also, I begin to wonder whether the world is passing through a lurid phase of the over-production of perverts, or it is simply that information technology has made an otherwise normal human conduct seem more rampant and depraved by the glut of output.
Whatever the case may be, it is quite obvious that the government has been doing far less than it can and ought to be doing to remarkably stem the high spate of violent and deadly crimes.
Anyway, in the lead-up to Election 2008, this same question was posed to a quite confident, and even jaunty, presidential candidate. And the answer that came out of his mouth staggered my senses. “Get real, buddy! This is the Brave New World. And Ghana is no exception to the rule.”
We may, indeed, be no exception to the rule. Still, for good or ill, Ghanaians often like to believe that we vote our leaders to power with the palpable expectation that they would remarkably improve the quality of our lives!

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of 22 books, including “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: [email protected].
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