Emerging from the Shadows of the Flood. Part I

By Dr. Samuel Adjei Sarfo
Attorney and Counselor at Law

Whoever wants to know the mindset of the typical Ghanaian can simply examine the kinds of comments our leadership make or the panacea they propose in the face of our problems. Not too long ago, when some female artistes in Ghana organized a demonstration against the erratic power supply dubbed “dumsor”, a reaction by a key government official was to call them prostitutes. Members of the Ga traditional Council later attempted to impose a fiat on these people, stating that their traditional gods would be unduly disturbed should the demonstration proceed. When somebody drew attention to the fact that vehicles would continue to operate in Accra during the so-called period of quietude, the traditional leaders opined that the gods were only interested in noises that were intentionally made, not those that were unintentional like those made by vehicles.

Mr. Moses Asaga, Chief Executive of the Ghana National Petroleum Authority, recently stated, in reaction to the flooding in Accra, that Ghana is not to be deemed backward simply on account of the flooding because even Houston in the USA also experiences flooding. He did not discuss the volume of rain that would cause flooding in Houston, nor the roads nor drainage systems extensively constructed to avoid same. Neither did he try to disclose the types of government assistance available to the people in the USA if they fall victim to natural disasters. Mr. Asaga was just then in his merits, having stated beforehand that Ghanaians should not complain about the increased prices in petroleum products because they have enough money to buy expensive BMW’s. Now that flooding and petroleum products have caused a conflagration in the capital, one wonders what is running through Mr. Asaga’s head.
Now, it is no longer possible to document the kinds of wind-headed comments made by people in leadership nowadays since the trend appears to be that intelligent comments are not the rule, but rather the exception. Unlike in the past, there appears now to evolve a pattern of obscurantist statements engendered by a desire to prove foolhardiness, not wisdom, in our present crop of immature leaders. Former president Rawlings’ previous answer to the perennial flooding in Accra was, like his progeny Mahama, to wade through the water to cheers from a clueless public. Today, he wants a bulldozer to continue with his demolition exercise, which he started long ago with the Makola market, and which culminated in the demolition of private properties all over the country.
But in case we want to know the value of our human quality or our intellectual capacity, we should find it right here on Ghanaweb. I have been browsing the net to find any site in which asinine and ludicrous comments compare with that spewed here on Ghanaweb. On the aggregate, there is none in this world. There is nowhere in the global websites in which there is more ethnocentrism and tribalism or illogic or illiteracy and plain stupidity. There is nowhere in which we have people that are presumably educated parading themselves as opinion leaders and thinkers when they do not even know what it means to be Ghanaian or Black or African……when all they do is to be some vuvuzelas for their political party goons. So I was not surprised when our educational system was deemed the worst on the globe. Our people might well be too! We still harbor extreme superstition and prejudices and impressionable postures no matter how educated we are, and there is nothing we acquire that enables us to resolve any of the teething problems in our society. At best, we are mere town criers and praise singers of dead and living tyrants. And at worst, we are plain hypocrites and ethnic war-mongers, people who have never sat down to reflect on simple actions and reactions, or the logical continuum of cause and effect in the process of nation-building, and have therefore not inquired seriously into the kinds of behaviors and actions that we can perform consistently to turn our country around.

For an example, consider the pettiness of former president J.J. Rawlings in intruding upon the recent Mayors’ conference in Accra. The president had, in all his wisdom, asked his foreign Minister to deliver a speech on his behalf; but for some unknown reasons, probably arising out of a personal hatred for the foreign minister Ms. Hannah Tetteh, Rawlings took upon himself to decide that the President’s decision to send the foreign minister was all wrong, and got busy working the phones to get the president to send the Vice President. In the end, he succeeded, after holding the meeting in abeyance for some time and having the Vice President give the same speech as the foreign minister was billed to give. And the question is: All to what intent and purpose? So we have the former president show his clout to the delegates gathered that he still called the shots in Ghana. Tomorrow, this sitting president and other officials will deny that they are tied to the apron strings of J.J. Rawlings. But if, in this small matter, they could not decipher the futility and tawdriness of Rawlings’ posturing, in what else are they going to be able to see through the man’s congenital pettiness? And when the issue came to be debated online, it was as usual on the talking points of those who hold personal grudges against the foreign minister, or those to whom Rawlings has become some sort of a tin god, or those who either support the NPP or the NDC. The issue never came up as to what actual purpose was served by the overhaul of the presidential fiat at the crucial time when all the mayors met in Accra….

And to confer on the Ghanaian mayor of Accra the title of the best mayor in the whole of Africa is one more ruse perpetrated on the minds of the people, and for this, even the gods appeared to cry for revenge. This is the fact when one considers Accra’s multifarious problems as a failed city within the global community. The city has no drainage systems whether surface or underground to repel any riparian catastrophe; it has no enforceable building code nor the requisite road networks nor even car parks. Besides, the city simply stinks for the most part because people throw human waste into the few open gutters or even ease themselves and urinate at obscure corners because of the general lack of toilet facilities. In Ghana in general and in Accra in particular, there is no requirement to provide a certain number of toilet facilities per household, nor any demand to provide same for commercial buildings or business lots. Where we have the few toilet facilities, their very nature spurns the notion of elementary hygiene. Toilets overflow with feces while houseflies and maggots repopulate en masse in these so-called places of convenience.

So how come that the individual presiding over this dunghill of a city will be the best mayor in Africa? Of course unless in the rest of Africa, we do have bigger mountains of dunghill in the cities. And when we accept to be champions in the race of the cripples and get too satisfied with our station by comparing ourselves only with the worst, the result is the type of flooding we had in Accra recently in which just too many of our citizens perished. We have deceived ourselves into thinking that we are exceptional in some intellectual and infrastructural sense and gone ahead to receive accolades when no one can exactly point out how come we are so exceptional.

And is it any wonder then that when we accepted the accolade of having the best mayor in Africa, our city flooded on the day of the coronation of the “best mayor” in Africa? And when we fail to provide the wherewithal for our firemen and women to discharge their duty in diligence in the face of fire outbreaks, should we be surprised that hundreds die even in a mere fire outbreak that occurred during flooding? And when we sit under trees or dilapidated structures to study without books or well-paid and well-resourced teachers and still expect that we will be best by dint of some magical powers, will it come as a surprise that we are put at the bottom of the global ranking? And without good education or strong institutions or economic planning…….without proper behavior or conduct or thinking, in what exactly are we any superior to anybody anywhere? If we cannot see into the future the repercussions of our present actions and will engage in mere prayers and fasting for some deus ex machina to resolve our problems, wherein lies our maturity and intelligence? And who says that after sleeping like Rip Van Winkle for others to build mansions on waterways, their mere demolition will make the drainage problem disappear? Or have our engineers, city planners, hydrologists, environmental scientists, and construction engineers already run out of ideas as to how to circumvent the problem without necessarily destroying property?

The answer to our progress and prosperity has nothing to do with any knee jerk action or reaction or the imbibition of some high falutin accolades from some obscure corners of the globe.. Our salvation as a people will not come with any unwarranted beliefs in our achievements even in the face of contrary evidence. In fact, our ungrounded belief in this instance will make enemy of our reasoning and lead to false satisfaction and eventual stagnation.
That is why we must first of all accept that we are nothing much if measured on the scale of the present global system. We must accept that we have done nothing significant or even constructive with our freedoms or independence, or our educational system, or our economic system, or our infrastructure, or even the trust we must assert as true citizens eschewing graft and corruption and fickleness and pettiness. We must encourage the types of thinking and discourse that aim to reverse our present dismal trend…..In our schools, we must aim to train the truly patriotic citizens, not those owing allegiances to cultic personalities or political parties. In our churches and mosques, we must dwell on those messages that enhance the human person, not on abstract messages about heaven and hell, or the belief in some ancient books, or in our faith in some miracles. In the media, the trend should be on intelligent conversation on how to deal with the intractable problems of our time, not on some knee-jerk actions nor useless contests in insults and puppet shows in demonstrably asinine statements.

In short, we ought to build the stronger and broader national policy framework encompassing our education, religions, media, art and cultural traditions, and having as its sole aim the things we have to do to make our country truly great. If we fail to seize this opportunity and rather relish in some accolades conferred on us by people who seek to please us, we will never rise to the occasion of our greatness, and when we finally hit the bottomless pit, we will find, much to our chagrin, that we lived in the gory glory of the mirror of sheer smokes.

Samuel Adjei Sarfo, J.D., is a practicing attorney in Austin, Texas, USA. He writes the weekly New Statesman column “Thoughts of a Native Son”. You can email him at [email protected]