The Shame on the Streets of Accra & Other Cities

Wondering how anybody who has hogged any vague vestige of political power in paralytic Ghana at any time over the past 20 yawning years can dandy-drive through the city streets and fail to feel like a spectacular success at nothing.

Hello, Call Me in 5 Hours, I’m Driving Home from Work

Road Accidents. There are too many of them on our streets. Mostly inter-city and in semi-urban Ghana, but too many nonetheless. Enter a new law. Don’t talk and drive. All-round brilliance in Ghana once again. But it is not quite a new law. It is only now being enforced now.

There are only minor brushes we call accidents in the cities. The idea behind the law is good, but it is rubbish economically speaking. We spend 3 or more hours simply commuting from home 10 kilometres away from work. Let me not tell you how much is lost in money terms.

AND YOU WANT ME TO PULL OUT OF THE TRAFFIC QUEUE TO PICK A CALL AND THEN FIGHT BACK TO GET IN, RISKING AN ACCIDENT ANYWAY, SO I TAKE 5 HOURS TO GET TO WORK AND BACK HOME?

GENIUS, won’t you rather solve the road traffic problem first? Are we happy that we all work at maybe 20% productivity?

African Girl in African Dress on a Ridge Sidewalk

Stout African girl sashaying down a rainy Ridge sidewalk in her African dress exploding with colours. Guavas, lemons, melons, sunflowers and lilies sprout about on the glamorous print. An off-matching canary belt clasps her medium girth and promotes her parabolic posterior more than she pretends to know.

Apapa Kama Sutra – There Was No Sex Before Camera Phones!

So a Junior High School boy and girl had a table-top tryst, and the boy folly-filmed it on his camera phone. Big donkey deal. Then, he went bananas and blue-toothed the clip to all the boys in the hood. Big deal. Boys will be boys. Then there was a crazy, chain reaction. Education authorities banned mobiles phones. As if the poor phones caused the sex. As if you can only have sex if you need a camera phone to have sex. Therefore if there were no camera phones, there would be no teen sex. Brilliant! Now the school has expelled the girl. In her private pleasure, she seems to have humiliated the school! Excellent thinking all-round. Now we can all forget about the development we dream of. Our educators know nothing! If I were a camera phone in Ghana right now, I would be very, very offended.

It Takes One Generation

A UN police commander just said on Al Jazeera that they are training the local police in Timor L’Este to take over law and order duties. He said it took one generation to achieve such a thing.

This brought my mind to the Ghanaian police and the changes it needs right here right now. It should also take one generation, no? One generation should it take to shake off the mentality it acquired post-colonially, and everything else. I'm talking about the bribery, the poorly investigated cases and the bullying.

All education, training, regeneration should take at least one generation to change things developmentally. How long is a Ghanaian generation? Twenty-five years? Maybe thirty. We best start finding that transformational education now.

“Cocaine Ghana”, Ghanaian Cocaine, Ghana & Cocaine

Cocaine and Ghana are easy to link. I cannot tell you when this began, but it has been helped in no small way by the current breed of politicians. I used “breed” deliberately (think of it). It does not matter in which government our security system became lax or in which period the State was suspected even of sponsoring the trade. So when our elected MPs spend the taxes tortured out of us empty-barrelling about whether it is Cocaine-NPP or Cocaine-NDC, then I’m asking for my wasted vote back with interest. 

Paying Crude-Oil Tithes to Ghana’s Western Region

Battle lines over revenue. Ghana. Ten regions. Oil in Western Region. Western Region chiefs want ten percent. Politicians not giving. Chiefs angry. If Western gets ten percent, do other nine regions get ten each too?