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Opinions of Wednesday, 24 June 2015

Columnist: Kwabena Nyamekye

Today Sodom and Gomorrah: Tomorrow Nima!

Opinion Opinion

It was a sight that made me forget my woes when I saw bulldozers destroying that monstrous slum Sodom and Gomorrah.

However, to prevent the woes coming back, could the government of the NDC, as useless as it is, please set to work on Nima? Sodom and Gomorrah was a hell-hole of vice and iniquity and destroying it actually does the miserable dwellers there a service.

In one day, the government of the party that tapped so many votes from there freed the people from filth, squalor, disease and persistent poverty. Why anyone is crying is strange. The people of Accra, Ghana, perhaps the entire world should give the NDC a big round of applause for getting rid of boil on the bottom of our country while at the same time educating the residents on the finer points of politics in Ghana.

You see the NPP planned a phased re-settlement of the miserable wretches in Sodom and Gomorrah. Re-locating them to Adjin Kotoku was going to be gradual yet in the long run, you will have benefitted from fresh surroundings and a healthy, clean environment.

Yet you allowed yourselves to be hoodwinked by the NDC into believing that the plan was against your interests.

Being irrational, full of misplaced hatred for the NPP and thus divorced from common sense, the residents jubilated when the NDC rallied to their cause and politicized the NPP agenda. Even after the NDC members lost the case in court the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah continued to mobilize against the planned removal to a much cleaner place complete with infrastructure.

Given the near equal distribution of votes between the 2 parties it is not surprising that the NPP had to tread at a snail’s pace to execute its agenda and by the time it left office, only a small aspect of the work had been done.

Now the NDC is in power and obviously none of the folks in Sodom and Gomorrah had read Animal Farm because if they had they will have been acquainted with Napoleon and Squealer.

These were 2 cunning pigs that hoodwinked the animals into supporting their power grab and then proceeded to teach them sense after Mr Jones the Farm owner was no more.

The NDC is aware of these two tricky pigs because it has, to my delight I must repeat, bulldozed Sodom and Gomorrah. Realpolitik it is called. At the height of the internal struggle for power in Animal Farm, Snowball proposed a windmill for industrialization on the Farm while Napoleon proposed an agricultural revolution.

To show his contempt for Snowball, Napoleon urinated on Snowball’s plans for the windmill but as soon as he had seized power and Snowball had fled into exile, he declared the windmill was a wonderful idea and commenced its construction! When asked, Squealer said that it was tactics, tactics! Later on he actually re-wrote the Farm’s history and said the plan for industrialization was really Napoleon’s plan and that he had only pretended to oppose it to expose Snowball as a traitor to the Animal’s cause.

Now as the NDC is on the rampage, claiming it has the political will to pull down structures, can they please set to work on Nima! The place stinks! A foul den of armed robbers, pimps, prostitutes, and the general scum of the earth, Nima is an eyesore. It has no redeemable qualities and is in the centre of Accra – an eyesore to all. My request to the NDC, now that it is in bulldozer mode is to pay the residents of Nima a visit. Give them a week to clear out and then do what you folks do best – destroy the place!!