Ananse’s Awards: Week One

You people have always named me the cunning one. Yes, I am the one who sits and perches in the corner of the ceiling listening to all your stories and doing all the kokonsa. Even the white man in his intensely coat-coat and esoteric technology couldn’t use a better name to call his most important invention any other name; yes, he named it after my abode. The Web.

Aha.

Well, since you people have always been using my name as a benchmark for stories that might be true or not, I have also decided to watch all of you from my perch, in all your abodes, and liken what I think about all of you. Afterall, this is the country where Odumankoma Onyankopon decided to leave me in, and I am tired of cackling in amusement at what has been going on in the scenes.

So, this is the first of many things I will be talking about through my own 8 eyes. You see, in Sikaman Ghana, some of the things that happen here even shock me to the extent that I usually need to buy a half piece of cloth to wipe the tears of laughter in my eyes.

Every week, I will award all those who gain my attention with webs. You get 5 webs if you are exceptional, and if you are as useless as my son Etinkelenkele, you get 1 Web.

I, the Great Kweku Ananse, Odumankoma’s own begotten nephew, will be gifting you mere mortals with these awards every week, either to commemorate your usefulness or uselessness, and I don’t expect you to agree with me.

So, here are my Anansekrom favorites for the month of January so far:

1. Oko “Rick Ross” Vanderpuye

You see, this man is my man of the millennium. He is the mayor of the only millennium city in the world. Like me, he has the most dubious accolades and wins awards every week. Infact, I want to have a shrine with a goat beard as his effigy. Wait, did I say goat beard? But where will I buy the goats from?

He is saying that the goats have been causing fires in the markets. But in my whole life, ever since Odumankoma brought me to this earth to infest the minds of people, I have never seen inflammable goats oo. Ntikuma and Efudihwediwhe, as stupid as they are, will never even set fire to a goat to see what will happen.

Let me tell you a secret: The man doesn’t like goat meat. This whole thing is a ruse to make all goat sellers poor. You see, he doesn’t like the way the goats run infront of cars and do the aponkye brake. I saw him telling someone in his office how much he hates their antics. EEEH, yes, that is the reason why he is banning the sale of goats. The last time he got goat soup from Agbogbloshie the chop bar woman gave him only one small piece for 10 Ghana Cedis.

Verdict: 1 Spider Web. He wants to monopolize beards in Accra

2. Asiedu-Nketiah

You see, this is a man after my own heart. He is the testimony of the kind of training I give people. He has indeed “torn my eyes” — wa ti ma ni paa…… He alludes more to things I would do more than anybody. First of all, he pulls a great media stunt against some of his own friends under the umbrella by telling them that they should support those coat-coat too known middle-class people called OccupyGhana.

Don’t mind those occupy people. They don’t even tell stories about my exploits to their children. You only hear them talk about some stupid girl called Goldilocks and the 3 bears and Brer Rabbit. I will haunt their children in their sleep. No wonder they get so scared of Spiders.

General goes to Obimanso, and like a typical tropical dweller, all he needs is a coat to cover himself from the cold. Like me, he doesn’t give a hoot if it comes from an Opuro, an Osibo or an Adowa. Who even cares about whether it is for a man or a woman when he is only there for 4 days? Twwweeeeaaaaaaa!!!!

Wo na wo bu fur coat. Awia na ewo Sikamanso no, ebe gyai anaa?

Verdict: 4 SpiderWebs. African man proper

3. Ghana Fire Service

Do you remember the story they tell about me and my trip to the party where I was hungry and put the beans in my hat? Ask, I might be nice and tell you that later. But my friends who have been putting off the fires that my friend hunters use to chase the few nkrantie, and nkusie have been doing a great job.

It is sad that only useless people that my pot-bellied son Efuru wont even drink palm wine with are going around burning markets and warehouses. You see, they are destroying some of my kin’s habitats in all these warehouses. Do you know the number of spiders that die anytime a warehouse is burnt?

They don’t even bother to come for our funerals or donate money. I thank the Fire Service for trying all they can to save this genocide of my people. However, they need all our help and support, and my eight hands will be available anytime.

Verdict: 4 Spiderwebs

4. Miss Universe Ghana

First of all, let me clearly state that Aso and Akonore are the most beautiful women in the world. I am still contesting with Odumankoma for a DNA test on Yaa Nkonhwiaa, who makes me weep with sadness at her poor looks.

But even she will not go and wear kaa kaa motobi headgear with a costume like a samba dancer in Brazil as traditional clothing from our dear Sikaman. How? Edieben? Even my too known Cape Coasters in all their mbrofosem will never stoop so low.

I need explanations from Odumankoma about when we began dressing like decorated cockroaches.

Abaadze haw dem basia no? She should hurry up and come back home from that chicken show called Miss Universe. Ah ah ah… and they choose to put this on my kokonsa wire called the internet?

Yieee Asem ben koraa nie!!!

Verdict: I cant give a half Spiderweb so she gets 1.

5. Controller and Accountant General

You see, I like these people paa. They like telling stories, just like me. Infact, this January, I give them free permission to compile their own book of Ananse Stories. Just for their own use.

They say they don’t pay ghosts ooo. Everybody they pay in Ghana is real. Infact, my whole family also receives pay from the government. All of them are there, and the beauty is we don’t even do any work at all. This is what I call progress.

As for me, as far as they insist to pay me on time I have no problem with them. Ghost names or not, man must chop. You all know that’s my motto. The more free money the merrier. Afterall, isn’t it government money? They when they take your money do they pay back? Me I will help them chop the money but you know that when alarm blow, that one is my back case ooo. Anaa?

Verdict: 2 Spiderwebs.

EEEhhh, I will continue doing kokonsa this week. Please don’t get insect spray to get rid of me because now I use the internet.

But me dierr I am watching all of you. Wo be te m’enka. You cannot hide. Let me go and get some palm wine to drink. I might be summoned to the Ahenfie very soon. I need to be in the mood.

Please comment below if you have any nominations for next week. I will think over your nominations with a calabash of palm wine.

What Are We Gaining From Our Education?

It started as a seed of thought and a personal rant. After my baby wouldn’t let me sleep in the darkest of nights, and in frustration, we dumped him into his cot to sort out his sleep issues, I began to examine the post I made on Facebook about the reason why we pursued our graduate studies.

The answers I got did not surprise me. They actually enforced a nagging suspicion; we have not really thought through why we pursue those endeavors, and there are four thought streams emerging in my mind why this is so.

These are:

1. The Traditional Educational Trajectory
2. A Market Failure of Wants
3. The Societal Aspirations and Impressions of Success
4. Poor Perception of Merit in Education

I will dwell upon all four areas, but will like to start with one:

PART ONE:  The Traditional Educational Trajectory:

So, every parent is proud in Ghana when their children pass the BECE in flying colours. It is usually a source of hope and pride of a bright future when the low aggregates roll in. You see fathers and mothers beaming with joy at the selection of their candidates to the so-called elite schools. The enclaves of Cape Coast, Accra and Kumasi get agog with teeming, wide-eyed children ready to take the world on.

Fast-forward 3 years or 4 years ahead, depending on the whims of political roulette players managing the educational system, and these same children are knocking at the doors of adulthood, factory processed on the line of education.

Line One: They are made to choose a discipline of study. Usually, the so-called brilliant students do science. The “less brilliant” ones do business or general arts. The “others” do visual arts, while the “dumb ladies” with probably very little prospects of further education are relegated to areas like home economics and the other rarer courses.

Line Two: Pupils are force-fed a narrow curriculum of subject matter, often having to memorize long bits of text. They are rushed to complete a long syllabus of topics related to their elective programs. By the time they are in the year before the final year, the geography of their school shapes their destiny. Let me tell you how: the more “elite” schools begin to rig or hack the minds of the students into passing examinations, while the less “elite” and privileged schools are on a time attack mission to complete the syllabus.

Line Three: School children in their final two terms of school are then, according to the education factory that we have, semi-finished goods, where their main test of quality comes in the form of mock final exams, super mock exams, exams written in hidden rooms with possible and likely exam questions appropriated by dubious characters from the examinations council.

While in school, these children are made to specialize or concentrate solely on the subject matter of what is taught at school, and there is a huge emphasis NOT to deviate from stated curricula, the main thrust of it being to actually specialize only in areas that frequently appear in examinations.

Line Four: Our dear SHS graduates come out of school with only one skill, memorizing meaningless texts and procedures meant at only one thing, squeezing a pass out of final exams. Most come out with dreams of being something great in future, which actually a great thing, but have no idea how to start.

Their biggest weakness is that they have not been taught to think for themselves. Unfortunately, this flaw in the traditional educational trajectory is what will be their Achilles heel in almost every endeavor of life. Even the best students who come out with the best grades usually have almost no idea about interconnections of professions, people, activities and life out of school. They would have been continually shielded by this factory that they become defective, but fully minted products for the job market, and life.

It does not end there. The next stop in this factory is usually a four way, mutually exclusive path: the university, the training college, the polytechnic or health training institutes, and private professional courses. Of course, there are the remedial colleges, which are an even more barebones and bootstrapped system designed just to pass exams.

The university candidates are further entrenched in the cycle of a grand mockery of their intellect through lessons designed some 30 years ago by lecturers who, for some reason, have lost the passion for their vocation, and are just doing it for the money. Unfortunately, this attitude is contagious as it allows students to cut corners and only concentrate on passing exams and making the pass grades.

It does not help, either that at the citadels of knowledge, where flair in thinking should be displayed by discourse and journeys to discovery, we have lecturers limiting students’ abilities to freely question theories, trends and perceptions. Instead of the universities allowing our students to think about the universe, they are forced almost to focus laser sharp on one particular lecturer’s personal philosophies, usually borrowed from an ancient space and time, and seasoned by the ego of that lecturer to the point where divergent views are aggressively discouraged and punished.

There is no leeway for different schools of thought or opinion on most subject matters, and everything is limited to a handout or other, published by the self-same lecturer, and these watered down pamphlets suddenly become the holy grail for any kind of rapid ascension into the hallways of erudite scholarship, especially in our traditional universities, i.e. the trifecta of government owned, over-populated universities we see as the flagship institutions worthy of emulation.

This second level of refinement leads to graduates with almost no penchant to be self-starters, and who begin questioning the value of their education only when they are supposed to have attained those values in the preceding years. We would now have scores of thousands of graduates ill-equipped to have well-rounded education that could help in the rapidly changing landscape of decision-making in the country.

The same could be said of polytechnic graduates, where there are more students actually studying core polytechnic courses and opting for the low hanging fruits of business administration, marketing, procurement studies and other liberal courses.

Teacher training and nursing institutions just become the fast-track means to a livelihood, not necessarily drawing from a pool of people with a passion for a job that requires a lot of self-sacrifice and devotion.

We have sunk into this black hole of irrelevance because the gravitational pull of colonial and pre-colonial educational philosophies haunt us. I once watched a TED presentation on education, which depicted how education was serialized to fit into the nature of a factory conveyor belt system, where children were promoted year in year out at various stages, and how these were the workforce for a mass-production kind of interface and job market, where factories were required and people were educated in similar manner.

We usually ask what has changed since independence. We forget that our legacies were an educational system that fit into the times, some 70 years back, where a sense of accomplishment as a person came from so-called white-collar type jobs like clerks, officers, civil and public servants. These people commandeered all the aspirations of a new kind of elite, where such professions meant honor, and equality to our colonial masters, or so-called white people.

Our initial national ambitions have however been watered down from the Nkrumahist blues of Ghana being a regional industrial powerhouse of sorts, and we have now been reduced to a creaky gateway to an equally economically volatile and unpredictable West African sub-region. With the evaporation of this national dream has also come the realization that we need to realign and re-engineer what we want with our education.

The near collapse of the country in the late 70s and early 80s, and the structural adjustment programme that followed should have changed our path to make way for better systems, but we must admit that the changes that were made have not achieved those results. The initial commitment to create the right atmospheres in our educational institutions backfired through advancements in technology and the computer age, which I am sure the designers of our current educational system didn’t foresee.

We have not been able to adapt, and have stuck rigidly to our colonial curricular structure. We will still continue having our young graduates orbit aimlessly in the galaxy of opportunities if we don’t begin to align our education towards free thinking, adaptive, economically relevant and socio-culturally sensitive education.

But it all starts at the home. For me, I will teach my child world geography at 5 years old if that piques his interest. If his interest is in history, he will learn about the Yaa Asantewaa wars and the Battle of Fomena by age 5. If it is computers, he will write his first Java program by 5.

What do you aspire to?

Please answer the poll and share with friends:

Protecting the National Pride

Ghana is a very jealous country. It loves and seeks and covets attention. If Ghana were a woman, she would be a nagging, vicious scheming, manipulative bitch bar none. She would also be a fierce warrior who would protect her children from outsiders, accusers and friends. She would defend her children and absolve them of all faults, even if it was to her personal injury. She would actually turn a blind eye to her transgressions until she herself grew totally blind, only getting to hear her snickering children prod her destitute body with glee.

The classic Frederic Bastiat in his book, Economic Sophisms, once wrote about how candlemakers were petitioning the French Parliament to Ban the Sun. Frederic should have lived in our times. Ghana’s jealousy has been so contagious that it has affected our mainstream thought. We believe that the best way to progress, is actually to ban anything that competes with us. We either need to have a copy of something or else we create a copy of an industry or else we ban it outright.

In the name of creating local content, we are all too eager to drape the national flag on any enterprise. We seem to believe it is our right to own industries. This unfortunate legacy of a heady post-independence era means that like the Matador’s Red Flag, we can attract the raging bull of progress right into our fold, tame it, and let it breed prize cows of successful enterprise, all draped under the umbrella of our national colours, under the keen eye of a smiling, affable, loving and fatherly president and leader.

This utopia is further enforced on the minds of Ghanaians by invoking the nostalgia of days gone by, when national enterprises thrived, when people got free stuff as a result of their nationality, when people got free food, free water, free telephones, free….

Our sense of entitlement means we believe that the government must as a matter of fact conjure from nothing national shipping lines, national airlines, national football leagues, national knitwear factories, national sugar factories, all in the name of making jobs, all in the name of upholding the national pride.

We cannot have national pride without a dream. I am not a sociologist, but I am sure every sociologist will tell you that you cannot have pride without a dream, without purpose, without achievements to point to, without a bedrock of success against the odds.

Any people that perceive the growth of private enterprise as a threat, whether foreign or local, needs to understand that the world is not a closed economy, and it will be absurd for instance to block foreign news from Ghana, in the name of homegrown news. It would be incongrous to block foreign made computers, in the name of using only computers provided by rLG. We refuse to think about the fact that if Swiss decide on nationalizing confectionery and eliminating Ghanaian cocoa, and use only cheese, we have no market. Similarly, if Europeans decide to eat only beetroot and not eat bananas or pineapples, we will all be reduced to subsistence.

As far as we do not create the skill, manpower and level of education to see the value that can be created and added to what we have, there is no way we would have any national enterprise worthy of ownership, even if it were given free capital of $500 Billion. The truth is, we can never have any enterprise that will not face competition in one way or the other.

The question is, what are the objectives for which we so zealously seek to have national enterprises? Is it for revenue generation, national pride, job creation, expansion of government mandate or what? What is so different if the government decides to create a conducive atmosphere for its people to be able to build these businesses and manage them more efficiently? Is it that the governments do not trust that the private sector should have a hand in national growth, or is it that the governmental philosophy in Ghana, whichever government you look at, believes that the best way to get to the hearts of Ghanaians is to create a Ghanaian version of any and every kind of venture under the sun?

Without any re-engineering of what government stands for, we are in danger of creating a Santa Clausian image of government. The leader of government should be the Santa, while his ministers and cohort of reindeer are the elves, with citizens being the expectant children on christmas day. So, we either erase the idea of lazy living from the Ghanaian psyche by firstly acknowledging that government can ONLY create conducive environments for its citizens to prosper, while encouraging its citizens to prosper, or we even get practical and remove barriers to activity that allows them to do so.

To do that, we need to discover what our advantages are. An OECD report in 2005 shows that even in both imports and exports, sub-saharan Africa requires 8.5 documents to export an item, 18.9 signatures for that export, and an average of 48.1 days for the product to leave the ports. While the data is different for individual countries, this is the stark reality we face. Until it is easier to open businesses, register tax, pay tax, file tax returns, get access to credit, even the Ghana flag will not save us from sinking, and the governments with the big ideas on plastering the Ghana flag on everything will be the big losers.

The questions that have always been asked are these:

1. Does the government REALLY DESPERATELY Need to own the Enterprise

2. How different will the government manage it from private practitioners

3. Does the government have the right managers in place to outperform competition?

4. Is it so strategically important to national security or public safety that it cant be left in the hands of private enterprise?

5. Does it necessitate a ban or moratorium of sorts before the enterprise can succeed?

These are serious questions.

We as a nation are a sum of all the individuals. If we dont create powerful individuals, our nation will never be strong.

 

Valueless Degrees

I have two things to say to my “teeming” fans:

1. Your degrees are overrated pieces of paper if they havent equipped you to provide any extra value in life. THink of it this way, those of you with Masters Degrees:

i. Has, or did your education and thesis work discover anything phenomenal in your field of study or career, to the point where you could abandon your job to follow through on conclusions of your study sustainaby?

ii. Did your work in any way show you a pattern that could be exploited, or the seed of an idea that could be used as a body of knowledge for some advisory purpose, or a strategy or methodology that uniquely improves your professional or academic field?

If its none of the above, then your masters education and your run-of-the-mill associated job opportunies will only lead you nowhere. I have realized that in Ghana a Masters Degree holder will do less work and have less experience, be taught by that Polytechnic graduate with 10 years experience but still collect higher pay because of his or her degree.

Most of these people have very little work experience and just use the degrees to bolster their employability. We have a lot of people getting these degrees without any depth or incremental value in skill.

2. The above phenomenon has meant that people have now devalued the worth of a legitimately acquired Doctoral degree, to the point where they think that it could be acquired “honourably”.

Therefore, we have a plethora of awarding institutions specializing in subject areas such as “theology” and very very subjective subject matter areas, to which “achievements” such as enterpreneural acumen are awarded as benchmarks. So, if I own a group of companies, a theology institution awards me an honourable doctorate.

How there is a convergence between doctrine and wealth creation to the point where academic laurels are bestowed on personalities is not only baffling but patently stupid by every yardstick imaginable.

But then, when you have a society that glorifies itself in the superficial, without bothering to question actions and results based on a stream of logic, or a sequence of activity based on a cause and effect analysis, this is what you get.

Afterall, we are a fast food nation. The conveyor belt of hardwork and struggling to put the pieces together is beyond us. Anyone who has the ability of Aladin’s genie is our hero. Therefore, we are out seeking miracles while on the way we stumble and allow our wounds to fester without first aid.

Who needs first aid when there is a miracle working God?

Chapter Three: Turbulence

How she got herself sitting in this interrogation cubicle was incredible. This was surely going to be a disaster. One thought kept ringing in her head, slamming her consciousness with the precision of a well drilled army on parade. She was sure there were unseen spirits lurking in the bland whiteness of the walls, their bare nature giving nothing, but a cold hard assurance that there was no hope, no getting out.

Two hours earlier, she had been enjoying what was to be a night of firsts, first flight out, first time in London, and definitely a first time making some really good money. She had been light-headed after two glasses of wine on the flight, taking in the atmosphere as she dreamed of good things to come. There was this matter of the risk of getting caught. The cover story was simple. Feign no knowledge and insist you received the yams from a family friend you were doing a favor for. Keep it simple and straight. We will take care of you if shit goes down.

Not that she had expected any mishaps. The seat was comfortable, having gotten a window seat on the Boeing 777 airliner, where she took in the wonderful view of Accra at night on takeoff, the million shimmering lights below giving her hope. That was a good sign. Mimi was 7 rows behind on seat 24A, opting for the aisle as she was a bit claustrophobic. Sefakor preferred to dream and look out the window. Of course, they were not to be seen as travelling together, as that would make for complicated explanations in case any of them were caught.

As she tried to put her hand luggage in the compartment above, she felt a tap on her shoulder, and turned to see a smile that took her breath away. The smile offered to stow her luggage if she would willingly allow, and she obliged to the smile. I am Yoofi, the smile said. The recovery was swift. Sefakor is mine. Thanks for helping out. First flight? Yoofi asked. Sefakor answered in the affirmative, welcoming the small talk from this handsome stranger. Truly, the suns and stars aligned on this one. She began thinking about all the things she would do to him when she got his address…

I am going for a short trip too, but I go to Europe at least once a month. I am the West Africa manager for a mining equipment, he elaborated. In the middle of the flight, Yoofi declined any offers for food however, but Sefakor thought nothing of it. Afterall, frequent fliers had their own weird habits, she thought, but decided not to dwell anymore on it as she tuned into some jazz to lull her into sleep.

Max hated babysitting. Dealing with rookies was always very dangerous, but this was merchandize, and the money still had to keep flowing. As he sat in the arrivals area in Terminal 5, he took out his phone and studied the pictures of the two girls who were bringing in the cargo. Emeka and Judy were stupid. He insisted they used someone more experienced, and they wouldn’t listen. He had a bad feeling about this, that’s why he brought some insurance.

Emeka and Judy were being too complacent and getting too powerful handling the export side of things from Ghana, and therefore Max had decided to keep a better eye on them. There were a few people who owed him favours back in Accra, and he decided to run a parallel operation just to monitor them while also tapping into new alliances. Yoofi Quaicoe was a front for the Minister for Mines and Natural Resources, who, together with Max and some other partners, kept holdings in different countries for a web of politicians. You cant trust the Swiss these days, so the best thing was to have multiple assets in different countries to legitimize your holdings in the semblance of a multinational empire.

One things foreigners to Africa never understood was that in Africa, rich men never put their eggs in one basket. To be truly seen as successful, you had to own the semblance of an empire. That meant holdings in real estate, mining, agriculture, oil and gas, manufacturing, telecoms and construction. But of course, to finance all these fronts in lean times, the other economy had to deal with bankers, pastors, politicians and of course, drugs.

Yoofi Quaicoe met Max in the University of East London while doing his MBA in Finance. Yoofi was broke, had debts but was smart, and Max was the party animal who helped Yoofi out. At first, it was just a brotherly kind of relationship which worked well. Yoofi was a natural charmer with good looks, and Max had the money. Together, they partied through the course.

For Yoofi, he faced an uncertain future, and Max decided it was time he paid for his tuition and party bills. Max introduced him to the family, and it was decided he will be set up in Ghana with a friend of the family, the newly appointed Ghanaian minister for Mines and Natural Resources. A simple narrative of a hardworking, young and successful Ghanaian brain setting up back in Ghana was plausible, and the capital accounts, offices and necessary facades put together. Another young and promising African business mogul in the making.

Only this time, the demand for merchandize meant that Max needed 15 kilos of stuff to set off some heat on his trail. It was running it very tight, but that meant the rookies Judy and Emeka got needed a backup. Yoofi had done this before and owed him one for sorting out that mess with Francesca back in Tottenham. Well, of course, Yoofi will get his cut of $15,000 for running this errand, which wasn’t bad. Yoofi bought the tickets for Sefakor and Mimi, while making sure he was right by her side.

Yoofi was swayed by Sefakor’s stunning, lively figure and had it all planned out. He would take her around town the next day after she had met with Max, intending that his 4 day stay should be put to some good use, and this hottie was just the right tonic. Until he began to feel the rumble in his stomach.

The flight was still 45 minutes into landing, but  Yoofi began sweating profusely. Unexplicably, he felt his heart beating very fast. Things were getting blurry as his breathing began to get labored. As he began shifting, then the reality of his situation, in all its gory horror, hit him. He was going to die. Very soon. Just as the shock of it all began to hit him, he shuddered, and at that moment he didn’t know whether it was the sudden fear of dying that hit him or the realization that one of the pellets in his stomach had ruptured. He knew his body frame was not one for taking punishment. The next wave of panic seemed synchronized with the wave of nausea that hit him. His mind began screaming, HELP! He turned and gripped Sefakor in her sleep, trying to call her.

Sefakor turned in alarm as she felt the hard grip of Yoofi right from her dreams. Before she could react, she saw the wild look on Yoofi’s face, and by the time a question formed in her mind, Yoofi retched, vomiting a whole bloody mess of fluids all over her. The screams could have been heard in the cockpit.

The Stockholm Syndrome, Ghanaian Style

Some of you might know what it is. Simply put, when you are kidnapped and you begin to sympathize with your abductors, and begin to appreciate every little favor thrown your way, you are a victim of this.

Yea, such crap. You are a smart person and do not fall for stuff like this. I have some news for you: the joke is on you. Unless you are not a Ghanaian living in Ghana. I will ask permission of Kofi Gbedemah, my facebook friend, to take a picture off his Facebook wall. It is a moving sight of Accra in the early sixties, to be precise, between 1961 and 1962. For many, the significance is lost, but for me it tells a story.

It tells a story of a nation with promise that slowly traded a piece of itself everyday for misery, like a junkie that slowly sells everything he or she has just to get a high. In our case, it is a dangerous cocktail of feelings, and a mix of peddlers who have snickered and enriched themselves at our destruction.

Every pothole in the streets of Accra, and all our major transport routes, are like the needles that a heroine junkie will have on all his major arteries, or veins just to plug in a shot. Every open gutter is like the rotten teeth of a crystal meth addict, every bout of low power like the cocaine addict knocked off cold.

We have been high on our ego, thinking we are still the best thing in Africa. We have mixed the pills of ineptitude, corruption and bold carelessness and watched as adults who have neglected their children in a ghetto of underdevelopment. We, the children in this ghetto, have been so deprived of basic necessities that we are now aloof and immune.

Like the psychology of captives, we now praise our abductors, the politicians, for every crumb and token thrown our way. We have paid taxes all our lives, watched our parents pay SSNIT all their lives. Yet we have been brainwashed to clap at the fact that, since 1968, we have barely doubled our energy supply. We have to praise governments for raising literacy rates by only 10 to 15% since 1957. We have to run to the streets and celebrate governments that have sunk us into debt, eulogize those that begged us out of it, and be grateful for others that have sunk us into even deeper debt.

As if that is not enough, we are not to question the ruling class, because we chose them. We are not to question their mandate, because it has been inked in gold. We fight against ourselves to please our captors. We fight hard, sometimes destroying people’s careers, just so we are seen as loyal servants to some “cause”. Tell me, how many of you staunch supporters understand what it means to be either a social democrat or a private growth led economist?

For those who so extol the virtues of dead politicians, after reading their biographies from anecdotal sources, what else do you really know about what they believed in? If they you were alive when they were, when they faced real battles and oppression, would you have  manned up to stand by them? Now that the going is cozy, and you are assured of perks, it is enough of a motivation for you to bide your time for an appointment, a better place at funerals, or in a church, all the time stomping on people who only mean well to others.

Yes, our biggest opiate is the sycophancy and hypocrisy that has controlled us  and made us captives, grovelling for favor among those who feed into that thought process.

If we had an abundance of options, if we handn’t slowly glorified hero worship, we wont be clamoring for titles, paying money just to be called Drs, Pastors, Professors, etc. If we grew and understood the virtues of merit, we wont be shackled by the overwhelming need to be noticed because we sing the loudest praises.

We can only emancipate ourselves. Its either that, or we will praise the nation into doom.

Ghanaian Sexism?

I just got this from Google

sex·ism

ˈsekˌsizəm/

noun

1. prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.

   synonyms:

   sexual discrimination, chauvinism,gender prejudice,gender bias “your hiring practices have generated numerous complaints about sexism”

Yes, what does it mean to the average Ghanaian? Most gender activists are wont to proclaim above the rooftops how men treat women like dirt, objects, fixtures and afterthoughts. I have seen situations where women are given the benefit of the doubt straightaway when any incident is reported, without any extra look at what the circumstance could have been.

Conversely, Ghana is one of the few countries in Africa where women are supported, to a large extent to go as far as they can. Wherever there have been barriers to a woman’s progress, it has always been as a result of poverty, not necessarily because she was of the weaker gender, so to speak.

The biggest barriers to women and their relevance in society have been their fellow women. Culturally, women have been the ones to enforce the rule on other women that they belong in the kitchen. In most urban households, a woman above 24 who is rising is always admonished by other family members, usually elder women about why she is not settling down. It has been very uncommon to find in most upwardly mobile homes, a father putting pressure on his daughter to get married.

Take widowhood rites. Most men would rather not let a woman go through so much abuse just because her husband got married, but you would realize that it is the other women that put pressure on her to follow through every arcane ritual in the name of grieving for her loved one, as if the grief that has been visited on her due to her loss is not enough.

My biggest worry, however do not come from these old influences, but the rising influence of women and women groups in the church, as well as other religious domains. Religion can never be divorced from our society here in Ghana. It saddens me when I see religious denominations, some masquerading as Christian denominations overtly and commonly subjecting women to degradation in some of the most annoying forms, just because they are women.

So women do not have the right to complain about their husbands. Women cannot wear certain dresses. Women should cover their hair. Women should not allow their husbands to cook, or clean. One church in Ghana actually encourages women to get married, mentioning that a woman who is not married is without honor.

In some churches, a woman who gets pregnant out of wedlock is hauled in front of the congregation, openly disgraced, and for a time period is made to sit at a certain location for all to see that she is a sinner. That, for me is the greatest hypocrisy that has been allowed, and the most grievous form of sexism that society has allowed to thrive.

Consider that the circumstances surrounding a young lady’s consent to sexual activity might not be out of pleasure, but in most cases out of necessity to succumb to pressure either being borne by a domineering “honourable and eminent” male figure, who she might not be infatuated with, but rather have a master/slave relationship with. Or, in some other cases, might just be careless pure love. Whatever the case may be, the victimization of the poor woman, who usually is young and might not have a secure and predictable source of income is the most blatant violation of her rights.

She is already going to have to adjust to making arrangements for a baby that is unplanned. She will have to find a means of sustenance in the first 4 months after pregnancy, if she is not in regular employment. She would need support of family, and friends, and mentorship, both spiritual and otherwise. Yet, that is the time when you see the most extreme form of discrimination, right where she is supposed to have sanctuary.

The paradox is that the Bible says:

Come to me that are weary and are heavy laden, yet when the people literally heavily laden with burdens come forth, they are spurned under the most judgemental and sexist prejudices,

Just because others have not been caught. Ladies and gentlemen, unless we learn to come to terms with the realities of our society, our sexism means that rape, sexual assault, sexual misdemeanors and mistreatment of women will continue to be entrenched in a society where women are the ones who enforce some of these rules.

Economically, women in the informal sector happen to be the economic fulcrum of their households, where their relevance to the wellbeing of the immediate family is much more significant than the man in terms of contribution, especially where women have the right to own property.

It is important that the cultural and religious shapers of society do not enforce their own brands of sexism onto the mainstream here in Ghana with their silly idiosyncratic notions. Like everything else that gets destroyed here.

Pre-31st Blues…

Today, there is going to be a shortage of Olive Oil, especially the 30 ml bottle types, while a lot of voltic and other brands of mineral water will be bought and re-labelled (wait,some will just go to a freaking borehole and fill the water into used PET bottles).

I am sure sticker printers and glue are working overtime, so are all the corel draw graphics guys finishing masterpieces of stickers with pastors in various suits of colors posing, while graphic designers are struggling with smart blur, gaussian blur and busy googling pictures of angel wings, golden crowns and clouds.

All of these will end up in churches, where bishops, prophets, apostles, apostle Drs, Professor Bishops, Healing Messiahs, Primates, and all other related title holders will sell and bless to teeming masses of congregants, both regulars and non-regulars, in the name of blessing them for a new year where they shall see no sorrow, pain, disappointment, death, bankruptcy, etc.

Healing and Miracle sessions will abound, and some pastors will end up with offerings that will require bullion vans to cart away to the banks.

Amen.

You can’t bribe God. You can’t pay your way into blessings. You can’t pay your way into the good books of a pastor or reverend or whatever and think that when he blesses you in gratitude it is automatically a blessing from God.

Know, if you are a Christian, that your life is in God’s hands, and all you can do is work your own salvation with fear and trembling.

No amount of anointing oil will cure you from being lazy, a gossip, a fool, poor judgement, reckless spender, philanderer, thief or corrupt person. You know yourself, You know where you have done wrong and where you have done good. You do not need a man of God to evaluate you when your own burning conscience has been working freely for you, right in your head.

No sticker stuck on your forehead, door, WC, Office or car bumper will save you if you drive recklessly or do something stupid. Be wise. Grow, help others grow, wish people well, follow your heart.

Goodness comes from the heart. God blesses those who bless themselves with the goodness of his mercies, and forgives those who are forgiving. If you are suffering setbacks, genuine setbacks, may the miracle of our faith be your strength, work hard and God will reward you. Your pastor is only a vessel that God uses, not a domain for siphoning money.

Be wise, the miracle is not in the church, but in your life.

HOW CREDIBLE ARE THESE CORPORATE AWARDS THESE DAYS, AND WHO NOMINATES THEM?

In recent times, corporate organizations in various sectors of industry have seen the need for independent, peer reviewed evaluations of their activities in order to establish benchmarks and standards for success. More than that, these awards are tools which competitors use to distinguish themselves from the rest of the pack due to the efforts made in evaluating the candidates.

As a result of that, various industry groups have successfully benefitted from recognition in the banking industry, the marketing industry, advertising and other major Ghanaian service related sectors. The oil and gas industry, as young as it is, has played a crucial role in advancing the political and economic potential and marketability of this country in the last 5 years or so.

The huge investments bring promise into a field that is in Ghana’s top 3 foreign exchange earners, a fixture that will continue for a long time coming. It is crucial therefore, that in such a field, awards for industry partners should be credible, and a fair reflection of industry trends.

It is therefore overdue that an awards scheme looks exclusively at the oil and gas sector so as to raise the level and quality of service of the industry as well as give it a familiar face and marketing edge to the rest of the country.

The upcoming Ghana Oil and Gas Awards is a step in the right direction. It has been noticed, however, that the award nominees for this event, and the categories in which they are, present a very questionable catalog of players in the industry, thus negating the credibility of the awards in question. It is sad that on the debut of such an awards event, which would be the benchmark of future industrial accolades going forward, dubious decisions were made. This mars all the hardwork of the many employees and companies in the oil industry as well as sponsors of the event, whose monies would have been used to promote shoddy industry accreditations.

A breakdown of the categories one by one shows very huge inconsistencies in the nominees, bringing to question what criteria was used in choosing them.

In the first category is the top lubricant of the year. While the biggest selling lubricant in Ghana is made by TOTAL, Shell Helix and Goil Power TROTRO were nominated. Clearly, there needs to be a justification of the major criteria used to select these nominees.

The second category has an award for Health, Excellence, Safety and Environment, and lists Star Africa Commodities as a nominee. This is a great discrepancy since Star Africa’s only upstream capacity is the ownership of an acreage of a concession, while it’s downstream activity is a feasibility study for a Tank Farm. Among all the other players in health, safety and environment, it is sad that most of the pioneering companies have not even had a mention, not to talk major deepwater players whose exemplary skill brought the oil to the shores of Ghana. This is very questionable.

Another category of interest is the promising oil company of the year. Three out of the four the oil marketing companies listed there, namely Jusbro, Frimps Oil, Unity Oil have all been in existence for at least 10 years. It is very interesting therefore that they are still “promising”, a category that should be reserved for newer upstarts. The owner of Juwel Energy, coincidentally is a classmate of the event organizer.

Service companies for oil and gas encompass a whole range of services, from janitorial, engineering, safety, transport and logistics, equipment maintenance and rental, among others. It is therefore very strange that 2 companies were picked from fleet management services, neglecting many other big services. This casts a big dent on the industry trends, and neglects efforts and attention to quality that lots of other companies have put into oil and gas services. Clearly, the selection of the nomination is not a reflection of industry, but of a naïve outsider who has no benchmarking criteria.

It will be very interesting to know what selection methodology was used to determine both the brand of the year and the oil marketing company of the year. A list like that should definitely include TOTAL, which has some of the widest coverage nationwide. With oil marketing companies like SHELL Ghana now operating as VIVO Energy, any serious industry observer would not confuse the two on a national level. This points t  o the kind of negligent and lackluster approach to the Awards nomination.

Secondly, Allied oil and Frimps Oil are not even in the top 7 oil marketing companies of the year, while in the list of OMCs for 2014 as referenced by the NPA, there is no company called Shell Ghana. For a company such as Frimps and Allied to get so many mentions, creates a problematic scenario.

Very interestingly, Blue Crest College, an IT institution formerly known as NIIT, is being listed among consultancy and recruitment companies of the year. That is very problematic, as Blue Crest College has never advertised itself as a recruitment company, while the likes of LAINE Consulting have been undertaking recruitment in that sector for years.

It is very interesting that the West Africa AIDS Foundation, out of so many policy organizations that have done oil and gas policy and advocacy is being nominated, while the likes of IMANI, CDD and others have done workshops, extensively developed policy frameworks and dialogues have been totally ignored. This is not credible.

Very interestingly, the likes of Schlumberger, Baker Hughes, Haliburton, General Electric and the rest have not been listed among the engineering and construction companies of the year, while the likes of Chase Petroleum, etc have not even been listed among the CEOs of the year. It is interesting how the scope of company choices is very limited to not more than 15 companies, when there are over 200 companies, both local and multinational involved directly in oil and gas, some even to the layman on the street much more recognizable in terms of capacity and ability more than those listed.

An award category like CEO of the year also seems to have the same companies listed in other categories re-listed. While it cannot be denied that it could be with reference to their achievements, it seems very interesting that companies not even directly involved in upstream activity are listed in the upstream segment. SINOPEC for example is deeply involved in the construction and development of the Atuabo Gas Plant for Ghana Gas Company, which makes it more of a downstream activity than an upstream player. It is important that these distinctions are clearly made so as not to downplay important technical aspects of a highly technical professional field.

All in all, no justification as to the choice of nominees have been made to the public, no citations or references to industry based statistics, such as those produced by the NPA, have been built in to awards selection criteria.

It is common knowledge that most of these award giving organizations blackmail companies into sponsoring events in exchange for these awards, almost like a pay as you go service. This is a blight on the credibility of a strategically national industrial interface, and it should not be cheapened by amateurs who are taking advantage of the situation to make money off the sweat of a lot of people who have championed the establishment of this industry for so many years.

To the extent that no datasets were referenced to, such as Oil Marketing Company data from NPA, one of the few salient statistical points of observance, to the fact that an AIDS NGO was nominated for oil and gas policy advocacy, points to the fact that someone is involving the nation in an activity akin to a white collar masquerade, whose only currency will be cheap plaudits for favourited players in an industry.

While this particular event lists the likes of eminent people such as Madam Joyce Aryee among others, as well as the likes of firms like Ernst & Young, I doubt if they were given the opportunity to supervise this rather shambolic exercise.

The questions still remain:

1. Can they give us citations and a methodology that clearly states reasons for their choices?
2. Whether they did not sweeten the award process by offering sponsorship incentives for the prices?
3. Why major players in the industry such as the NPA, Petroleum Commission, Tullow, Technip and the major known brands in the offshore and onshore business did not feature, sponsor, participate or nt even get mentioned in the runup to these awards?

That should not happen. The Ghana oil and gas industry deserves better.

Chapter Two: First Money

Django parked the Ford Van in front of the Night Angels Shop. A very well dressed lady stood by the glazed glass window, which carefully obstructs any prying eyes from outside, while Biggy went to the back of the truck. The gaudy orange on the package was stripped off, and in its place a carton labelled as CFL bulbs. Django and Biggy were ordinary delivery men delivering boxes of CFL bulbs. The one of interest had just a small difference, the box was labelled Large Size on the lower right corner.

Mimi and Sefakor were packing up. Roommates in the university, their bond was the function of fate and fortune. They shared the same interests and ambitions – men, money, the good life. Mimi’s mother was a successful businesswoman, while Sefakor grew up in Madina Zongo, in the same room with her six siblings and her mother. Her father abandoned the family when she was just ten years old. However, by that age, it was clear she had a good future. Always top of the class, she had soon blossomed into a voluptuous beauty with brains. She had excelled in secondary school, easily enrolling for a Finance degree at the University of Ghana. Already swamped with many admirers, she had decided that all was fair game, and one of numbers too. She would only get what she deserved in life. Afterall, what good did it do to get a guy with no money? A simple trip home to her family gave her all the insight she wanted.

This day however, her fortunes were going to change. At an exclusive VIP only party in town, she and Mimi met Uncle John. Uncle John was a soft spoken handsome man who had “connections”. You ladies have diamonds in your eyes he said. After the party, he politely invited the girls to spend a day with him in his beach house. They didn’t decline the offer. It was a weekend afterall, and there weren’t any heavy academic commitments. Not that it would deter them, not a bit. Uncle John was such a nice man. He picked them up in a really comfy customized Lexus LX 570 SUV, which had a 20 inch LED TV and a small cocktail bar right in the back. The car felt like a little cozy  pad, and save the occasional curve and turn, they could have been in a little comfortable room. Sefakor was privately overwhelmed, wishing for this world she could only dream about, but she was confident, the kind of confidence poverty gives you when your back is against the wall. I want this all, she thought, and I will do anything to get there. She decided now was as good a time as any.

Uncle John, I dont have time for games, and sex is just a fleeting pleasure that gives nothing much in return. What can I do to move up? I have the body, the brains and the confidence. I have nothing to lose, and I want to go far in life. If John was surprised, he masked it with his easy demeanor. He had already seen the spark and was planning how to carefully plant the idea in the girl. Good girls were hard to find. They weren’t loyal, especially these Ghanaian small girls. Just a little money and they either cut and run or dont have the guts to pull operations through. Long auditions had yielded nothing, and supplies were hard to deliver these days. Those slightly qualified did not have the right polish or style to fit into the kind of persona for these. He had already researched the background of these two girls, knowing that they could be pliable, but this, this situation where the fish swims into the net, that was hard to resist, but his sources were impeccable, so he stood up to the plate.

Ladies, it is a simple game. I can give you all you want. Shopping trips in Dubai, Paris, London. I can get you all you need, a nice little car for school, a nice apartment, a small shop somewhere in Osu or East Legon, anything you want. You will be on call to all the powerbrokers, travel with them across the world. You only need to know who the boss is. At this point, Sefakor stepped in, the hard life of mosquito-ridden nights giving her all the coaching she ever needed. I want that. I am not naive, but I also believe that my destiny is to do something better in my life. But Uncle John, I want total independence. I will do anything you want, as long as I get what I need, we will have no problems. To prove to me that you are ready to put me on board, when we leave Prampram, I want you to get me an apartment in East Legon. Also know that as a student, I will need some transportation. That should be our signing offer. Her heart was pounding, she could feel the thumping in her ears, but she wanted to stand her ground. This is it, no turning back, me running my game, calm down, breathe easy…

It can be arranged. Uncle John smiled. He liked her already, and the slow ache in his loins seemed to agree. This was going to be a great week. After settling the girls by the pool with some long island ice teas, John Emeka Obi pulled out his phone and dialled a number. Judy picked on the third ring, he said, I have just found your babies. I had already had them checked out, and they are smart, just like you. I want this to be a speedy one. Get Eric to find them a duplex apartment in East Legon. Make sure he installs the cameras at the right places, and I will need you to get two small cars, get a Toyota Matrix and a Kia Rio, we will need to equip our girls, they arent playing little league. Judy felt a tinge of excitement, this was afterall, her first full operation. She got her phone and began her assignment. John took a good look at the girls from his perch, stripped to his swimming shorts and stepped down the stairs to join the girls. Here comes 48 hours of pure, decadent entertainment, he thought, as he reached for a bottle of single malt blend and some cigars, this weekend is looking good…

Two months later, and Sefakor and Mimi had their UK visas for a vacation trip to London. Every detail planned to the minute. Pack your stuff, leave your cars at home, pick a taxi to Night Angels on your way to the airport. A phone number had already been memorized, but hey, Ike will pick them at Heathrow, and will collect the consignment just before dropping them off. They were giddy with excitement. Not only had Uncle John come good, they were expecting great things after this first trip. They had gone through the whole drill, listening to Uncle John briefing them about who to signal while passing through immigration. Sefakor was not afraid, she knew the stakes. Mimi however hid her nervousness well, as her background meant she didnt really need to do this, but why not? All the biggest men in Accra and even some from Lagos were beginning to notice her. What the hell.

They hailed the taxi at American House roundabout and put their tiny samsonite bags in the trunk. It was a 2 week journey, and they really didnt need anything from here. All they were sending were a few clothes, and foodstuff for family. Simple cover story, and always the best. Judy packed the powder in 4 tubers of hollowed out yam. This was done in such a way as to look consistent with the density of the yam if it had to pass through an x-ray machine. The yam was carefully packed such that they lay in the side of the suitcase. It had been carefully glued together so as not to show any sign of tampering. Yam tubers are usually very heavy, each 20 inch long tuber weighing about 2 kilograms. Altogether, 10 kilograms of cocaine had been concealed in the yam tubers.

The British Airways flight was scheduled to take off at exactly 22:50pm GMT for an estimated 6 hours 25 minutes before touching down in Heathrow landing at around 05: 15am. BA 78 is a very popular flight number, flying daily across this route, symbolic of Ghana’s strong ties with its colonial masters. Today, it had two very important passengers, young drug mules waiting to take the world on. Having collected their yams from Judy, Mimi and Sefakor successfully checked in their luggage, stating that the tubers were for family they were visiting. The ticket agent was quite friendly, encouraging them to have fun on their first trip abroad. To make things easier, the Akwaaba Business Class Lounge had been booked for them, where they relaxed 2 hours before the flight. They ate some chocolates and nuts, while fielding leering glances from the “big men” sharing seats in the plush sofas next to them. Inside, their minds and hearts were racing, but the last 2 months had told them this would be good.