John Mahama Must Be Made To Get It!

Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.


It is rather sad for leaders like Vice-President John Dramani Mahama to facilely and cavalierly presume to mortgage Ghana's new-found oil wealth at the damnable expense of both presently living Ghanaians and posterity (See “It Will [sic] Be Foolish Not To Collateralize Our Oil For Credit – John Mahama” MyJoyOnline.com 11/29/10).

Sad because both Mr. Mahama and key operatives of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) do not seem to remarkably appreciate the need for the government to draw up a comprehensive plan for the sustainable development of the country, well before contracting the sort of humongous loans that they have been inundating our country with over the past twenty-two months.

For what Ghanaian leaders ought to be seriously discussing right now is “sustainable development,” not the vacuous, cosmetic, desperate and massive construction projects of the kind inordinately indulged by President Nkrumah and his infamous Convention People's Party (CPP) of the First Republic, which had no organic coherence, with regard to cultural maintenance and adequately trained indigenous personnel to manage such national assets. The result of such reckless and callow attitude towards development is, today, evidenced by such reparative eyesores as the Adomi (or Senche/Senkye) Bridge and the haltingly productive and virtual white elephant that is the Akosombo Dam. The least observed about our decrepit rail and road networks, the better.

Mr. Mahama also appears to be inexorably poised towards the massive construction of healthcare facilities; and so, perhaps, it is not altogether out of place to demand what comprehensive plan, it is, that he has so far laid before Parliament, regarding how to make our already existing major and minor health facilities function beyond the soul-cringing level of hulking morgues and veritable centers of disease propagation. I bet that if he is reading this article and is half-honest with himself, the Vice-President must be scratching his head like Mr. Wisdom-Pot Ananse and wondering why he hadn't bagged that one up his noggins.

Now, let us flashback to the Mabey and Johnson racket, in which the NDC government, chaperoned by the irrepressibly self-righteous Mr. Rawlings, engineered the most corrupt pontine-development scheme in recent memory, and New Patriotic Party (NPP) secretary Kwadwo Owusu-Afriyie (“Sir John”) is not wide off the mark when he speculates that the motive behind the febrile NDC attempt to amending the Fourth-Republican Constitution vis-à-vis the distribution of our oil wealth may be anything but theft-proof.

Mr. Mahama also claims that the Norwegians who, allegedly, helped Ghanaians in crafting that aspect of our Fourth-Republican Constitution regarding the appropriation of our oil wealth reserved the luxury, in their own peculiar case, of futuristically reserving most of the proceeds from their oil wealth, because the proverbial “black gold” came into the budgetary equation in an already industrialized Norway. That may well be the case. But does it really boost his status as the second-most-powerful Ghanaian politician for Mr. Mahama to lamely suggest that, somehow, since a remarkable percentage of our citizens are submerged in abject penury, it stands to reason for contemporary Ghanaians to blindly appropriate our new-found oil wealth, almost as if there were no tomorrow?

To the preceding effect, this is what the Vice-President is quoted as saying: “But you [i.e. We Ghanaians] live in a country where women are dying because the road from their village to the health facility is not done; and you say that the oil God has blessed us with, we should leave it to generations and generations but she must die today because she can't go to the hospital. I mean that is…absolutely baloney.”

I thought one of the salient bragging rights of the NDC was that under Chairman Rawlings, the governing party constructed more roads than any other government since 1957!

Well, not only is such scurrilous use of language grossly unbecoming of the traditional personality and image of a Ghanaian vice-president, it constitutes the very height of hypocrisy for a man who was fervidly championing a “Cash-and-Carry” healthcare regime just a little over three years ago, to be speaking almost as if Ghanaians were thoroughly bereft of any memory banks.

Actually, more Ghanaian women, both expectant and indisposed, have died under NDC governance trying to secure exorbitant medical fees than simply trying to reach the nearest health center, or hospital, by unmacadamized roads.

On a more serious note: what needs to happen now to put the proverbial brakes on visionless leaders like Mr. Mahama, is for the parliamentary minority leader, Mr. Kyei Mensah-Bonsu, to introduce an amendment bill that seeks to severely punish politicians who recklessly betray public fiduciary trust. Such punishment could, for example, entail the summary expropriation of the personal wealth and/or property of culprits, excluding one home and a car.

Indeed, were the possibility of such sanction in place, the likes of the former Information minister and Gonja MP would be more careful and mindful of their public pronouncements and deeds.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute. His forthcoming anthology of poetry is titled “The Obama Serenades.” E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net.

Law and disorder in Lagos

Thousands of motorbike taxis fill the streets of Lagos





Louis Theroux investigates just who wields the power on the streets of Lagos in Nigeria - and it's not the police.


By the standards of Lagos the house is palatial.

Set over three floors, it stands behind an electric gate protecting the shiny new cars parked in the drive, one of them a Hummer. Inside, the walls are hung with large photos in gilt frames depicting the owner, a handsome young Nigerian. In several he stands next to famous city dignitaries.
Elsewhere there are flat-screen TVs, marble-tiled walls, even a small private mosque. But if anything gives the sense of someone with a taste for the finer things in life, it's the collection of designer shoes in his penthouse suite, 50 or 60 pairs filling one corner.

The man whose house it is goes by several monikers, the simplest being "MC". On a tour of the property, accompanied by MC and his enthusiastic young aide Mammok, I remarked on the abundance of shoes.

"He's a very fashionable person," says Mammok, as MC nodded approvingly. "And he does his shopping in Italy."

Considering his glamorous and upscale existence, MC's day job is surprisingly prosaic. Officially, he is an executive in the city's transportation union. With between 15 and 17 million residents - most of whom do not own a private vehicle - Lagos's buses are its lifeblood.


MC's ordinary-sounding job title belies the power he wields

Each bus conductor has to pay union dues every day for the right to use the bus parks, as do the city's thousands of motorbike taxis and other commercial vehicles. This money is handled by the union, of which MC is the Lagos State Treasurer.

This on its own would guarantee MC a decent income. But in the area of Lagos over which MC has direct control - a rowdy, bustling district called Oshodi - he is much more than simply a union boss, something closer to a king - raising unofficial and semi-legal tolls on all those who want to do business, and ruling it, so the stories go, with an army of battle-ready youths.

Legend

I'd got to know MC as part of a documentary called Law and Disorder in Lagos, in which I was hoping to understand how power is exercised and order kept in one of Africa's most chaotic big cities. For me, MC seemed an exemplar of a certain kind of charismatic and informal authority, and I was trying to understand the man and the source of his power.

Of his glamorous, celebrity-type existence, there was much evidence. Always decked out in fashionable clothes, a hat cocked at a jaunty angle, he'd arrive at a smart social function, or possibly a celebration at a local mosque, donate thick wads of cash. Then he'd leave amid a mini-riot of local youths, all clamouring for a glimpse of the man and, if possible, a hand-out.

MC's generosity was legendary. Indeed, one member of his entourage was a Nollywood [the term for Nigeria's domestic film-making business] actor of some fame - on MC's payroll, seemingly, because he was having difficulty finding work.

What was harder to see and understand was the use MC made of the armies of semi-employed youths, known as "area boys". Though MC was an elected official in a legitimate institution, it was widely understood that his position in the union owed as much to his ability to control the streets and command the respect of local toughs who would do his bidding.

Within his domain it was hard to overestimate the power of MC. He was even rumoured to have the ear of the Lagos top man, Governor Fashola.

One afternoon, MC's aide Mammok agreed to show me around the area MC controlled. He pointed out a pair of young men entrusted with taking cash from motorbike taxis. One obligingly showed me the day's takings, a wad folded in his palm.

Then he introduced me to a woman stall holder selling a small pile of goods on a blanket. When I asked if she knew MC she looked rather frightened and shook her head.

"It's more of a political thing," says Mammok, explaining her reticence. "You wouldn't expect her to tell you that. They have to play politics."

Blood

I'd been told that one of the services MC provided to the business-owners on his patch was "protection". But protection from whom? "The police cannot harass them," says Mammok. "That is the primary thing. Sometimes - all over the world - the police can be very very overzealous."

As time went on, and I came to know MC and his organisation better, I got more of these glimpses of the shadowy, less strictly legal side of his world.

As it happened, a few days into my visit, MC's status as union treasurer was challenged by political rivals and he was forced to call an election to reaffirm his position.

On the day of voting, I turned up at the polls to find a ragtag army of MC's supporters, some holding broken bottles, with blood running from fresh cuts, as they jogged along behind his four-by-four in support.

Skirmishes were reported - an opposition gang was rumoured to be in the area - which may explain why someone began firing a shotgun from MC's car. And yet the whole election had a touch of absurdity to it, given no other candidate had the courage - or possibly the opportunity - to come forward. MC had run unopposed.

I relaxed afterwards at the victory celebrations, which were no less jolly for having been a foregone conclusion. Police in uniform drank beer and one drunkenly fired his pistol in the air.

'Private fiefdom'

Mammok was - understandably - protective of MC's reputation and not keen to talk about the occasional need to rely on street violence or the details of a business that, viewed unkindly, was a glorified protection racket.

"The ways of the Caribbeans are not the ways of the Americans," he says when I probed him on the subject. "It has become like a way of life in this part of the world."

When I asked him if it seemed a good system to him to have someone in charge of an area holding a king-like sway over his private fiefdom, he compared MC with the Queen of England, suggesting MC was not so different.

The truth is, in my time with him, I'd grown oddly fond of MC. Granted, the occasional street brawls and the lack of accountability might be taken as a frightening and perhaps depressing symptom of the weakness of the social contract in Lagos.

But in the absence of dependable police, MC and his boys did actually seem to do the job of keeping law and order - up to a point anyway.

For now it may be that in areas like Oshodi, MC and his brand of area boy-based authority are the best they can hope for.