Cut Your Vanity, Mr. Pelpuo!

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

Following the first intallment of my reaction to the passing of Mr. P. V. Obeng, the man who may well have singularly facilitated the extortionate and protracted dictatorship of the former Flt.-Lt. Jerry John Rawlings, several of the usual suspects volleyed torrents of attacks at yours truly. Well, let me put on the record books that, while I may not have personally known Mr. P. V. Obeng, not that it matters, anyhow, I had the "privilege" of meeting all the ministers of Mr. Rawlings' Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), with the exception of Mr. Atukwei Okai, then Greater-Accra Regional Secretary, at the Anokyekrom of the Ghana National Cultural Center. I was the one and only secondary school student invited to read some of my patriotic poems for the entertainment of University, and other tertiary, students who had just concluded carting cocoa beans from rural farms to railroad sidings. The period must have been early 1982 or thereabouts; and I was a student at St. Peter's Secondary School (the world-famous PERSCO).

Anyway, what is hopelessly laughable about such attacks, as directed at yours truly, is their underlining rather vacuous and facile presumption of there being in existence any such Ghanaian cultural norm as never talking or saying anything foul, "evil" or maledictory about the recently deceased. And, well, I am as Ghanaian as the most Ghanaian of citizens - if, indeed, there were any such phenomenon - and I don't remember any of my honest, diligent and illustrious ancestors and relatives passing on to me any such at once hypocritical and downright stolid tenet as being integral to my set of cultural norms and taboos, both as an Akan of the highest breed, and a bona fide Ghanaian national.

One very thoughtful commentator, however, captured the essence of what I generally stand for, in terms of a moral ethic that seems to be sorely lacking among our people and citizenry these days. And it is the fact that a remarkable percentage of Ghanaian humans among our ranks seem to be so morbidly afraid of death and dying that if the death of Satan were to be announced on any of our airwaves today, most Ghanaians would start singing the praises - I prefer peans - of Satan, almost as if Satan were the best among our Christocentric legion of celestial angels.

That commentator could not be more accurate. And this clearly pathological crisis of the psyche appears to be the greatest bottleneck to the rapid and salutary advancement of our beloved nation. Well, I just can't help being the Akan, myself, that I am and was born and raised to think and believe that I am, and also behave as such. And, of course, according to the revered mythical lores on which I was raised - call it Akan philosophy - it is only when a toad/frog dies that we are able to fully measure its length and height.

This aspect of civilized human culture is second nature here in the West. We have witnessed the critical and meaningful assaying of the significance and heft of the legacy bequeathed Britons, for example, by the late Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The same constructive and forward-looking analyses have been conducted on the lives of former Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan right here in the United States these three decades that I have been here.

Somehow, however, in Ghana we are supposed to behave as if there were no patriotic, intelligent, progressive and enlightened citizens amidst us. All a President has to do in order to be glowingly, and gloriously, remembered and paid tribute, is to have simply been president. The material and / or palpable contributions made towards the advancement of our collective patrimony, as a nation, do not seem to matter one way or another.

Indeed, so foolishly vain have we become that a facade in the law faculty at our country's flagship academy, the University of Ghana, was recently named after the late President John Evans Atta-Mills. Our Chief Justice, Georgina Theodora Wood, had even suggested in the immediate wake of the passing of President Mills that a court building complex in the heart of our nation's capital be named after our deceased leader, merely because the latter had performed the mundane duty for which he had been elected, by making provision in our national budget for the erection of the particular building that she would have named after President Mills!

You would have thought that such momentous recommendation would be predicated upon some concrete path-paving contributions made by the dead man towards the significant advancement of our judicial system and culture. Is this, really, the Ghana that my legion critics would have me proudly salivate over for being an integral part of?

Well, now, following the passing of Mr. P. V. Obeng - a man whose conspiratorial shenanigans with the bloody likes of Messrs. Rawlings and the Tsikatas have brought oceans of tears to the faces of the overwhelming majority of Ghanaians, and summarily and wantonly destroyed the careers, businesses, lives and livelihoods of many more - the Minister of State at the Presidency for Public-Private Partnerships, whatever such rhetorically staggering, and stumping, portfolio means, suggested that Mr. Obeng be honored with a State Funeral. And his reason?

Well, according to Mr. Rashid Pelpuo: P. V., as the deceased nation-wrecker was popularly, and even affectionately, known was "Once a Minister, Once a Presidential Advisor and now a Presidential Advisor; he has always been at one point, was always there for the Presidents since the Presidency of Jerry Rawlings, Atta-Mills and at one point became the Prime Minister of this country."

Now, the foregoing titles and positions are perfect by way of personal achievements, even superb. The real question that thoughtful and patriotic Ghanaians ought to be asking, though, is as follows: "And just what heck of a difference did P. V.'s aiding of these bloody bastards make in the quality of life of the overwhelming majority of Ghanaians?" This is precisely where the length and height of the dead toad/frog matters most.

And if a State Burial offers the best curative for getting over our all-too-sickening and interminable worshipping of the dead, then, I say, "Go ahead, Mr. Mahama, give it to P. V. Shove a State Burial, and Funeral, down his butts!"

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Board Member, The Nassau Review
May 20, 2014
E-mail: [email protected]
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