Crime Among Ghanaian Teens Abroad

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

We have had quite a few of our own here in the Tri-State area of the American northeast, encompassing New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Generally speaking, though, here in the United States, Ghanaian youths are far more likely to become victims of criminal acts than being themselves involved in such anti-social anomalies.

And so reading about the apparently high spate of criminal activities among our youths in Britain, particularly in the London metropolis, definitely gives great cause for concern (See “Ghanaians in London to March for Stabbed Teenager” MyJoyOnline.com 4/20.10).

The crime that we are talking about is murder, and it involves largely young men ages between 17 and 22. Needless to say, the latter range of years is also the most critical in every human’s life. Overwhelmingly, social-behavioral experts tell us, one’s chances of succeeding or failing in life are determined during this stage. What is strange, though, is that I can vividly recall growing up in Ghana that the crimes typically associated with late teens and early twenties were fisticuffs and petty thefts and, maybe, hooky playing or truancy.

The greatest danger had more to do with the indiscreet young man impregnating a young woman, oftentimes his own age or younger. And the danger primarily entailed the likelihood of the young, or teenage, father having to drop out of school in order to fend for his accidentally begotten family. I personally had several cousins who strayed this way. The savvy ones were known to “sweet-talk” or induce the knocked-up woman to have an abortion; and in most cases, this was silently induced and each went their separate ways. There were, however, a few unfortunate cases in which the abortion-seeking young woman perished in the process. And the latter were largely instances in which unorthodox abortion methods were indulged.
One particular case that continues to stick in the craw of my memory, as it were, was that of an eighth- or ninth-grade woman who died in the process of inducing the abortion of a fetus. Her pregnancy was rumored to have been at a very advanced stage. Perhaps it was five or six months old. And she was rumored to have used either a wiry coat-hanger or the stem of a popular slime-producing plant routinely used for garden fences, or even a combination of the two.
This incident occurred at Akuapem-Abiriw sometime between 1973 and 1975. I was a pupil at the Akuapem-Akropong Presbyterian Middle Boys’ Boarding School. And I remember the incident almost as if it occurred yesterday, because all 210 of us SALEM boys had been lined up and marched to the funeral. The young woman lived close to the old Abiriw Presbyterian Church – the new, cathedral-like one was partially finished or still under construction. I forget precisely which.
Anyway, considered by our teachers and housemasters to be rather too young to be frontally assaulted by such raw encounter with our own mortality, we were not allowed into the victim’s house where her remains had been laid in state for public viewing. Still, the “Curious Georges” among us managed to peek in by craning our necks about the window of the room in which the young woman, dressed like a wedding bride, lay. We could only visualize her in profile.
At any rate, what makes the statistical gravity regarding the high rate of murder among Ghanaian teens resident in London, as alarming as it appears, difficult to grasp is that at the time of this writing (5/10/10), I have no population figures against which to compare these crimes. But with nearly ten of such incidents having been recorded between late 2008 and 2010 alone, such incidents readily warrant a sit-up and serious moral and literary reflection. Perhaps it even demands a public national conversation back home.
Several critical factors, however, are missing from the preceding equation, as it were, such as what percentage of these Ghanaian-parented children were actually born and/or at least partially raised in Ghana, as opposed to their having been born and raised in England. This, of course, is not to imply that knowing the preceding in of itself would alter the substance or veracity of such criminality in any significant or meaningful way, particularly with calls on our youths back home to resort to violence as a means of drawing government’s attention by Strongman Jeremiah John Rawlings. At least so it has been widely reported in the media, even to the extent of provoking well-known journalist Mr. Kwaku Baako into publicly accusing Togbui Avaklasu of being the chief mastermind of youthful violence and terror in Ghana today.
What is also certain is the fact that, indeed, during the quarter-century that I have been resident here in the United States, the Ghana that I knew and dearly loved growing up has drastically altered into something palpably sinister, something verging on outright monstrosity! And the rambunctious and still morally impenitent and self-righteous Togbui Avaklasu appears to be smack-dab amidst the details. But, of course, his has been a massive, cacophonic orchestra of the like-minded and the hopelessly depraved.
I also don’t have reliable statistics vis-à-vis youthful crime for Ghana as a whole, or even locally, to undertake any objective analysis of this emergent nightmare. You see, until very recently, when one’s child misbehaved or showed any unsavory signs of being prone to gang violence or any kind of antisocial behavior, all that a parent had to say to put the proverbial brakes on that wayward child was: “If you don’t shape up, boy would I ship you back to Ghana on the next flight!” And, believe it or not, all at once, sanity got restored. These days, though, I am not so sure.

Now, I smile that knowing adult smile at my misbehaving toddler, curse a Rawlings-infected and irreparably polarized Ghana under my breath, and wistfully mutter: “Boy, you better cut the crap or I may have to throw you into the meat-grinder!” Actually, Ghana, sub-textually, is the meat-grinder.

*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 a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI), the pro-democracy policy think tank, and the author of 21 books, including “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Atumpan Publications/Lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: [email protected].
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