IS THERE NO PRESIDENT BOLD ENOUGH? (Paga-Chiana)

Dear Nyaaba,

For as long as i can remember, meetings continue to be held by indigenes of Mirigu, Kandiga, Sirigu, Nabango, Yua, Natugnia and Manyoro, to discuss the prospect of elevation to the status of a district.

All these years it has come to naught.

If my memory serves me well, even my grandfather’s elder brother, Mr. Raphael Adazena Aborigo also fought that fight, except they were agitating for the status of council.

As i speak neither goals have been achieved even though it must be admitted that we have concentrated on the district in recent times, recent times being as recent as the days of Justice D. F. Annan.

Nyaaba, you very well know that i do not possess the capacity to ask this question, for there are chiefs and elders and opinion leaders and a Member of Parliament and political appointees and party officials and clergy.

Pardon my effrontery.

I am just a random voice whose interest was piqued because the President has today ordered the consolidation of some areas previously in the Volta Region into a new district, in the new Oti region.

This is the type of order that has long been required in our case, methinks.

All attempts at achieving consensus in-house for the location of capital have never ended well and one wonders why the successive governments have not decreed the matter, after all, that is what happens everywhere else.

Nyaaba, the truth is we the citizens of these areas are one big family, some historically through ancestry and others through centuries of co-existence.

We have intermarried and gone to school with each other. We go to each others’ markets and literally are one homogeneous lot.

Nyaaba, the above notwithstanding we have not been able to come to a consensus but we will not be the first to disagree within a family, the story of Cain and Abel gives ample proof of that.

In the light of this why are we continually pitted against each other by our own leaders when they can simply decree the district into existence?

It will not be roundly applauded but over time we will settle in to the fait accompli.

Nyaaba, the politicians appear to be using our predicament to their election advantage but that has to stop.

The injustice of lumping distinct peoples with distinct histories and distinct cultures together like in our case needs no emphasizing but i am no spokesperson.

I am only wondering whether there is no President bold enough to settle this matter once and for all, whatever way it goes or is it too juicy an opportunity to be exploited and thus should be milked till doomsday?

PS

Feel free to disagree but please be civil about it

 

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“STRAIGHT FROM THE ELEPHANT’S EAR” -an open letter to our chiefs (Paga-Chiana Constituency)

 

Dear Nyaaba,

About a fortnight ago, I let out a cry of despair concerning the long overdue re-demarcation of the Paga-Chiana Constituency. I wondered out loud if there was no President with the testicular fortitude to go ahead and do the needful. I wondered why over the life of the 4^th republic, all governments have brazenly promised to and then promptly reneged on their promise to re-demarcate the curious constituency.

Nyaaba, you very well know that this constituency is composed of the Kassem-speaking people of Chiana, Kayoro, Katiu and Paga and the Ninkare-speaking people of Mirigu, Sirigu, Kandiga, and Nabango. While we have historically co-existed in peace, our continued lumping together in one political unit is unfair. The vast expanse of land that is covered by this constituency is dependent on the resources of one district for development. Furthermore, the cultural and linguistic differences tend to stand in the way of a unified focus. Elections tend to bring to the fore these differences and thus the unity that is envisaged is still-birthed.

Nyaaba, when I wrote that piece, I got a resounding chorus of support but I also got a lone voice of ‘dissent’. That lone voice, from within the ‘elephant’s ear’ was not against the logic or imperative of what I was crying for. Far from it. The lone voice whispered to me that the matter does not lie in the hands of government or its functionaries but rather squarely in the hands of our traditional rulers. I was told we have several paramount chiefs in the said area and that if they came together, united and progressive, they could ask of any government what they need. That news gave me great joy, but it was short-lived.

Nyaaba, the concept of unity has eluded my people for rather too long. We are all too interested in getting everything for just ourselves. For far too long we have elected to magnify our non-existent difference and act oblivious of our commonality. Therein lies the difficulty. What demands are we going to make to government?

Nyaaba, it is election year and this is usually the best time to exact promises from politicians but here we are, empty-handed, with no concerted demands. What will happen therefore is that we will be treated as individual villages with pitiable requests. As the voice from the elephant’s ear almost told me, politicians will take advantage of every disunity to advance their aims. We cannot expect benevolence from them.

Nyaaba, though I write to you, I am hoping that this message gets to our chiefs so that they stop the quibbling over small matters and act in concert to achieve more long-lasting goals. We have almost given up on politicians and so it is time they rise to the occasion. Thankfully, nearly all of them are young and educated and so they should not sit around while the destinies of their people are toyed with by politicians whose only purpose is power and who know just only how to get said power.

Nyaaba, the institution of chieftaincy has been with us for ages and our 1992 Constitution has guaranteed it. This guarantee is not meant to cement their privilege, it is intended to legitimize their authority. And they must use said authority. Or the benefit of their people

Nyaaba, I am not by this absolving politicians of my expectations, I only join our chiefs to the matter.

Respectfully yours

The Siriguboy.

PS

If the form or tone of this article is deemed to be disrespectful of our revered chiefs, I sincerely apologize.

I merely seek to bring my sentiments to them our revered fathers.

“HE WHO WILL BE A LEADER MUST FIRST LEARN TO SERVE”.

 

Dear St Jude,

While involuntarily mulling over the politics of our time, especially in Ghana, the other day, I could not help but recall this often quoted but grossly misunderstood admonition by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Almost immediately I also pictured the enactments that take place at Easter, of the washing of feet by the celebrant of Mass. These enactments are dramatizations of what our Lord Himself did to his apostles and they are intended among other things, to demonstrate the humility of our Lord and his willingness to treat even the lowly with dignity.

These acts are so crucial to the spirit of Easter and indeed Christianity that yearly, our Pontiff himself makes it a point to do it in the full glare of the world’s media. Like many things though, these yearly activities have assumed the nature of ritual and have long lost their meaning. Christians will usually witness these activities and obstinately refuse to learn the underlying lessons.

St Jude, the world over, politicians are vying to serve the people and by service they actually mean, to lord it over their citizens. Every election year especially and all the other years in between, politicians are heard offering themselves for service and acting in the service of the people while in fact it is the opposite. And the language of politics today demonstrates it. When I was growing up the language was ‘when I come into office’, today it is ‘when I come to power.

St Jude, thankfully the words betray the real intentions. Once in office or better still, power, the citizen becomes a mere statistic, to be misruled and exploited, to be used and abused and to be mishandled and trampled upon. That has almost become the norm, however, what irks me to no end is that we the citizenry have grown accustomed to it and daily acquiesce to our own denigration. I have complained on many an occasion that the economies of the citizenry are inextricably related to their political allegiances and so it may well be unfair to judge them when they comport themselves in a certain manner and so it may just fall to the politicians to change the rules of the game. To return them to what they ought to have been, from the beginning.

Pardon me to take you on a grammatical detour, which though apparently frivolous may just be that necessary exercise that we need. When I first heard of the saying; ’must first learn to serve’ I took it to mean that the leader had to firstly learn to serve and then go on to the business of leading.

This understanding has lasted me almost all my lifetime until earlier today when I happened on what I believe is the real meaning. The language is a bit obscure and so one is forgiven to have my misunderstanding.  What that statement means is that service is fundamental to leadership. That it is the first thing that should always be borne in mind. That without service there is no leadership. For the avoidance of doubt, it is not a step by step process where one learns to serve and then learns to lead or goes on to lead. It means, bluntly speaking, that one should not contemplate leadership if they do not know it is grounded on service and are ready and willing to serve. If this my recent serendipitous awareness has been known to you for long, pardon my dribble but if like me you have always misunderstood it, then welcome to my excitement about my awakening.

St Jude, political theorists explain the nation state in various ways but the most popular is that of Contractualism, which theory posits that the individual members of a society have elected to subordinate themselves to an overarching authority which acts in their interest. Consequent upon this agreement, the power that belongs to the people is periodically vested in a group of ‘servants’ to see to the realization of the common good. How come that this otherwise beautiful entente has so metamorphosed into the over-lordship of the very many by the very few? How come the owners of power are now reduced to servitude, living and dying at the instance of their servants?

St Jude, the contract also envisaged a fair and fitting remuneration for the servants but what we have today is the servants helping themselves  to the greater portion of the common wealth and only grudgingly sparing some pitiable crumbs for the ‘masters’. In sum, the contract is everything but what it was meant to be and that cannot bode well for us, for when a contract is breached, the aggrieved party will have to resort to any such measures that they deem capable of restoring them to wholeness. When that day comes and I fear it may be sooner than we think, the servants will use our cavalry and constabulary against us. But for a while just. Methinks. For in that hour, when life will hold nothing over death, many a man will turn plough into spear and hoe into cudgel and hold their hearts thumping in their guilty palms and roar our so loud, there will be no sound, for the din of the voice of disenchantment sets new highs. Armageddon will seem like Disney-fare, all because our leaders did not first learn to serve.

St Jude, the dust gathers, the hooves are clattering, the princes in huddles, chests are heaving, stomachs growling, fathers, left without control and mothers, without clout. Preacher men in the line of fury and everyone a stranger. They say I am delusional, they say I have lost my mind, they say I see and hear things that do not exist. I pray they are right, I sincerely pray so but just to be on the safe side, please pray for us, in case they are wrong. Enlist your every vein and every muscle and pray without ceasing for even I, with my diseased imagination cannot imagine what lies yonder.