Where exactly does Fadi Dabbousi stand in the Marwako Restaurant controversy?

By: Kwarteng, Francis

Yes, we have not heard from the blabbermouth-siren, Fadi Dabbousi, since the media broke the news about the Marwako incident in which a young woman’s face was allegedly dipped in blundered or ground pepper.

This is inexplicably strange and very untypical of Dabbousi, a first-order notorious muckraking journalist who also loves to indulge in the sensational artefacts of political gossip.

Well, this is not the moment for him to retire his controversial pen from public discourse, even from public accommodation in matters of social criticism, but rather we see this scandalous incident as a golden opportunity for him to demonstrate his fiery streak of nonpartisan patriotism, assuming he has all the facts in the case at his disposal.

No, Fadi Dabbousi need not hang up his inquisitive pen-gloves at this point when we need him the most.

It has widely been reported that Jihad Chaaban, the supervisor at the center of the storm, allegedly baptized the face of a female kitchen staff, Evelyn Boakye, in a hot-pepper paste for supposedly being grudgingly fidgety about the use of a blender.

This condemnable narrative, however, appears to sum up what is generally believed to have taken place in that restaurant.

Unfortunately what actually happened, in this author’s opinion, has been drenched in so many putatively irreconcilable narrative versions and emotional colors as to require the inky tabloid expertise of Dabbousi to unravel.

But he is nowhere to be found.

He’s nowhere to be found because this incident doesn’t directly border on extreme partisan politics, where the National Democratic Congress (NDC) is always wrong and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) always right.

Just imagine if Jihad Chaaban were an NDC member!

Just imagine if Evelyn Boakye were an NPP member!

And just imagine if Marwako Fast Foods were owned by a member of the NDC! Certainly all hell will break loose in Dabbousi’s political world if these scenarios were actually the case.

This is what we get from our deeply politicized and polarized open-defecation democracy.

But then why employ someone who answers to “Jihad” or “Jihaad” as his first name, the supervisor?

Could there be a link between Jihad Chaaban and the Gitmo-2?

What if Jihad Chaaban were a Ghanaian supervisor, Evelyn Boakye a Lebanese, and Marwako Fast Foods a Lebanon-based Ghanaian chain restaurant?

What if the Chief Executive Officer Alhaji Marwan Mohammed of Marwako Fast Foods who is a Ghanaian, were instead a Lebanese?

What if Ghana were Lebanon?

And what if, finally, Bernard Opoku, the Kitchen Supervisor at the same outfit Jihad worked, were a Lebanese?

What stupid rhetorical questions, all seven of them!

Pastor Mensah Otabil criticizes fufu as being dangerously unhygienic and therefore upon hearing this prophetic condemnation of fufu from this respected Man of God, Ghanaians quickly began trooping in at Marwako Fast Foods for junk food.

Junk food is what is killing Ghanaians, not fufu. It is rather junk food, not hot-pepper paste, which nearly took away the facial life of the victim.

Yet this incident, if true, may not have risen out of the blue, may not have existed in a vacuum. These foreigners may have been taking teachable cues from ready political precedents. Here are a few notable examples:

When Akufo-Addo reportedly says All-Die-Be-Die!

When Collins Dauda’s brother, Naaba Abdulai reportedly declares “I kill people every day”!

When Kennedy Agyapong reportedly asks Akans, Asantes primarily, to genocidally massacre Ewes and Gas!

When Kennedy Agyapong alleges that Madam Charlotte Osei traded her womanhood for the leadership of the Electoral Commission (EC)!

When Montie 3 reportedly threaten to “kill and rape judges”!

When Madam Akua Donkor reportedly says Akufo-Addo is more dangerous than the Gitmo-2!

When Akufo-Addo reportedly sneaks in Serbian and South African mercenaries to train political terrorists who make up the Invincible Forces!

Yes, jungle lawlessness is bound to happen when Eugene Arhin plagiarized portions of speeches by dyslexic George Bush and Monica Lewinsky’s political philanderer and playboy, Bill Clinton, possibly without ever anticipating his being caught!

Oh yes, plagiarism is doing violence to others’ creative ventures, their intellectual properties!

And when judges barter justice for salon massage, sex, tubers of yam, cash, and goat meat!

And also, as we probably all know too well, when the courts let off the hook politicians who steal millions of dollars but hand down stiff verdicts and sentences in the case of petty thieves!

And when we allow foreign nationals and our citizens to underwrite galamsey-driven pollution of our pristine forests, waters, and the future of unborn generations!

And when abuse of incumbency, coercive power, and arrogance of power pollute our political landscape!

And when we think Ghana Hybrid System (GHS) is far profitably better than Production Sharing Agreement!

And the issue of trokosi, and the fact that we Ghanaians marry off baby-girls to grandfathers!

Of course, none of these outrageous rhetorical indiscretions and behaviors will justify Jihad’s actions on the assumption that they are indeed true.

This is really sad!

Yes, this is sad because Jihad Chaaban may not have painstakingly have read Eve Ensler’s Holy Text—called “The Vagina Monologues.”

Perhaps there was some aroma of hot-pepper-paste sexual attraction between Jihad and Evelyn.

Perhaps Evelyn is suffering Jihad’s retribution because she refused his sexual or romantic overtures.

Ghana, a jungle democracy!

Ghana, an open-defecation democracy!

Ghana, a stinking banana republic ruled by lawless Dung Beetles!

Of course, we need to tread cautiously how we sort out this controversy of culinary physical abuse given the many contradictory versions of the said incident.

This is why we so badly need Dabbousi to help us untangle the convoluted circumstances surrounding this matter.

Perhaps, he is waiting for all the details to come out before making a definitive statement on the matter known his readership.

But if this were indeed the case, then he must surely learn to extend the same courtesy to his political opponents whom he had always suspected of committing crimes against the state.

The presumption that one is innocent until proven otherwise still holds, and Dabbousi must remember that.

In the meantime Otiko Afisa Djaba, Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, and Ignatius Baffour-Awuah, Minister for Employment and Labor Relations, have a more difficult tasks ahead of them.

Their ministries must travel around the country and free all those children who have been employed as slaves in the mining, cocoa, and fishing industries, even as some of these politicians connive with foreign nationals in the galamsey business to pollute and destroy lands, forests, and rivers for unborn generations.

How about their ministries freeing all child-street hawkers?

How about their ministries building brick-and-mortar structures for children who study under trees across the country?

And how about Otiko Djaba Afisa, Prof Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, Ignatius Baffour-Awuah, Joseph Kofi Adda, and John Peter Amewu being asked to listen to Daddy Lumba’s “Children of the Future”?

Where was Otiko Djaba Afisa (and Fadi Dabbousi) when a vigilante mob of barbaric men inserted their dirty toes in the vagina of a suspected female thief, thereby dehumanizing and depersonalizing her in the process?

Inglorious, attention-seeking hypocrites who call themselves politicians!

We shall return…