Of Zoos, Physicians and Politics - Part 2

The recent announcement by Ghana’s Minister of Lands, Forestry and Mines to Parliament that his Ministry was in the process of creating a new zoo to replace the old one in Accra, saw a lot of cynical critics, literally, up in arms. Their problem appeared not to merely regard the fact that a new zoo was being created but, quite predictably, the cost involved.

And here must be recalled the fact that the construction of a new Accra Zoo became necessary when the New Patriotic Party government decided to build a new presidential edifice to replace the old Danish slave castle that has been used as Ghana’s seat of governance since March 6, 1957. There had, of course, been the Flagstaff House, which Ghana’s first president, Mr. Kwame Nkrumah, built on the same spot that is due to contain the new Presidential Palace.

Needless to say, not only was the Flagstaff House constructed with the exclusive personal interest and political ambitions of President Nkrumah as its blueprint, time has also duly conspired to render the old facility woefully inadequate for the more administratively inclusive twenty-first century Ghanaian democracy.

It is also quite interesting to observe that almost none of its most stentorian – or vociferous – critics have been able to point out the fact of how it became necessary for the Kufuor government to relocate the Accra Zoo. And here, for the benefit of our readers must be pointed out the fact that the old Accra Zoo was primarily constructed for the recreational benefit of President Nkrumah’s family, particularly for the benefit of the Show Boy’s children by Mrs. Helena Ritz Fathia-Nkrumah, which is why it was virtually constructed in a location that could be aptly described as the backyard of the Flagstaff House.
Interestingly, one critic who suggested the Achimota Forest, which is where the new Accra Zoo will be located, as the ideal location for Ghana’s Presidential Palace, did not elaborate, except to deviously and deliberately confuse the Achimota Forest with the town of Achimota itself. The implication here, though, might seem to be that Ghana’s Presidential Palace deserves to be constructed in a virgin forest because it is absolutely unnecessary, to begin with; or that it ought to be made inaccessible to the people, for whatever reasons best known to the critic. Needless to say, anybody who has traveled outside of Ghana might readily have noticed that Presidential Palaces – or residences – are the people’s home and thus almost invariably located where they can be readily accessed by the people, either for mundane but quite instructive and recreational purposes of tourism or any other relevant reasons, both official and unofficial.
During the summer of 2006, for instance, this writer was at the World Bank to confer with other Diaspora-resident Ghanaian intellectuals and professionals regarding the process, or mechanism, for modernizing and developing Ghanaian tertiary education, and had the privilege of visiting the White House, which is located at just a stone’s-throw away from the World Bank.

The new Accra Zoo, when completed, is estimated to cost approximately $100 million, which is only an outrageous amount of money when, in the memorable words of President Kufuor, one unduly privileges raw cost over the invaluable educational and cultural value of the project. And to be certain, yours truly has often wondered just why every single one of our regional capitals does/do not contain such a signal recreational and educational facility as a zoo, as well as botanical gardens! In sum, reading some of the criticisms leveled against the government, one gets the dolorous sense that some of our countrymen and women have become so pathologically poverty-obsessed that any project with the semblance of a salutary appreciation for civilized culture, perforce, verges on the prohibitive.
It is almost as if these “professional critics” have predetermined that until the last hungry Ghanaian, whoever and wherever s/he may be, has been reported by Ghanaweb.com or the BBC-World Service as having been fed a three-square meal – as it were – the government has no legitimate right, whatsoever, to embark on any project of cultural and/or moral significance.
The other side of the game has been for critics to indiscriminately and hyperbolically mix up monetary figures in Dollars and Cedis in retailing their well-manufactured “horror stories” to their readers. Consequently, one critic, quoting Professor Dominic Fobih, the Lands, Forestry and Mines minister regarding the construction of the new Accra Zoo, wrote rather phantasmagorically thusly: “Professor Fobih…said that the process for the development of a new zoo in the Achimota forests[sic] has begun and terms of reference for the design of the zoo, including design standards and guidelines, have been prepared with the pre-contract phase estimated at 6, 985, 000,000 billion cedis [Recognize the deliberate duplication?]. The report further said that 44.8 billion cedis would be required to put up the new zoo for Accra, including stocking it with exhibits” (Ghanaweb.com 6/1/07; also 6/4/07). Further, the critic goes on to allege that temporarily moving the exhibits of the old Accra Zoo to Kumasi and back would cost a whopping $ 20 million, without also apprising his readers of the number of jobs this process would create. And so you get the drift, dear reader, don’t you?
Needless to say, the entire cost involved in the construction of the new Accra Zoo is $100 million, which, indeed, is an outrageous sum of money until one begins to compare the foregoing figure with the amount of money that President Nkrumah liberally and freely doled out to such “sister countries” as Guinea and Mali, as well as the amounts of money involved in the construction of some of Nkrumah’s so-called prestige projects, including, of course, Peduase Lodge, the “African Show Boy’s” private haunt (which one critic suggested ought to be the location of Ghana’s Presidential Palace).
Dear reader, I don’t know about you, but ever since I learned in my Biology class that we, humans, are as animalistic as those of our kinsfolk left back in forest caves and trees, I have not ceased thinking about how, indeed, the best measurement of how civilized biped-sapiens like us are is inextricably interlinked with how well we treat those of our family members who are perennially trapped within the zoological range of our generosity.

Thus when my brother Okyere Bonna grimly writes: “Perhaps money is not an issue with our government when it costs over $20 million to relocate the animals to Kumasi zoo and much more to prepare the ground for construction,” I can only thank my stars and tearfully pity these zoo-encaged animals, particularly regarding how lowly some of their fellow Ghanaians think of them.

A presidential palace in the Achimota Forest? For who? Mr. Rawlings or Professor John Evans Atta Mills?

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., teaches English and Journalism at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005).

Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.