The Mpianis & Brobbeys: Biographies of Educated Bandits:

*By Akadu N. Mensema Ph. D.; Post-Grad. Dipl.

The “NDC government will exercise the option of prosecuting the Chairman
of the Ghana@50 Planning Committee, Mr Kwadwo Mpiani and the Chief
Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana@50 Secretariat, Dr Charles
Wereko-Brobby (Ghanaweb Jan 4, 2010)”

I. LEPERS WITH THIEVERY HANDS
Educated elite gangsters
Ghanaian banditry elites
Academic mercenaries
21st century Tarzans
In a paradise of noble thieves
And silent ignoble worshippers
Crooks among us
Political lepers among us
The untouchable Mpianis
The untouchable Ahwois
Untouchable Ft. Lt. Indemnity
Untouchable Hotel-4-K4
Leprous leaders who fail Hope

II. KILLERS OF OUR DREAMS
Ghanaian banditry elites
Educated gangsters
The killers of the dream
Those who abort our hopes
Whose only fame is thievery
That defrauds the only workers
The exploited cocoa farmers
The only genuine workers
In our mother Ghana raped
By burglars who wield pens
Pickpockets with state pockets
Muggers who use state offices
Assailants who use signatures
Thugs in parliamentary suits
Educated elites who never work
But only steal from state coffers

III. A TIME OF HEALING
Let us summon all the bandits
The political lepers among us
And we already know them
We eat from their leprous hands
We use their sputum as sugar
We revere their thievery
We happily breathe their air
Their political flatulence
But in this hour of healing
If the evidence on theft is solid
Let us prosecute them
Let us imprison them
The thievery untouchables
Lepers with golden fingers
Let us pave Nsawam
With golden barbed wires
For they love to have gold

IV. THE WORST CRIMINALS
Ghanaian banditry elites
Let them share kinship
With small-time criminals
Those who stole chicken feet
At the Nkrumah Circle
To heal their hunger
To pacify their anger
BUT Remanded for life
Serving life imprisonments
While the BIG thieves
The Rawlingses
The Kufours
The Kwadwo Mpianis
The Wereko-Brobbeys
The Ahwois
The Sipa Yankeys
The Kwamena Bartels
The PV Obengs
The Tsikatas
The Albin Bagbins
Seasoned criminals
The educated thieves
Are REVERED
Live among us
The killers of the dream
Thieves who wield pens
Armed robbers in suits
Who rape Ghana
Of its young females
Of its abundant wealth
Of its ontological dignity
Of its bright future
Of its rich cultures
Yet are revered
And worshipped
And live among us
And enjoy their loot
At our impoverished expense
Bankrupting our way of life
Corrupting our worldviews
We worship big-time thieves
Adore their long biographies
Of thievery
Of moral decay
And detest small-time thieves
Who are imprisoned for life
Who are on remand for life
Cowards who worship thieves
And yet need healing
From traumatic histories
Inflicted by ecstatic thieves
In the land of our sorrows

*Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema is a nationalist Denkyira beauty. She is a trained
oral historian cum sociologist and Professor in the USA. She lives in
Pennsylvania with her great mentor and teaches Africa-area studies at a
college in Maryland. In her pastime, she writes what critics have
called “populist hyperbolic, satirical” poetry. She can be reached
at [email protected]