Why I Always Give A Damn

We are all good people aren't we, Jomo? Ha, Ha. Good people. Surely you cannot deny that this is indeed the case or try to argue that there are good people and there are bad people. If you did that, you would quite naturally count yourself among the good people and since that is precisely what everyone else would do, the substance of my original argument is easily proven, yah?

It is a thought about life and come to think of it, about politics in Ghana, which any enterprising songwriter could craft lyrically into a piece of chart topping music.

Me, I love good music. Great soul and mind food if you ask me. The mid takes the message of the lyrics into the heart and digests them right in there, and the soul does the same with the rhythm.

When my spirit takes a bit of a dip, I listen to tracks at the vertical tip of the market charts and frequency modulation radio stations in town always pay the cost.

Unfortunately, I sometimes tune into a radio musical programme and find a DJ who seems to think his skull packs greater wisdom than old Solomon ever had and he cannot keep the teeth over his gums for even half a second either.

He just keeps blabbing on some cranky philosophy of sorts of his own while the music is playing and is soon in such fierce competition with the playing artist for the ears of listeners, that his hollering drowns out the music.

…Age is catching up on this fellow, Jomo. What is it I was telling you about before all this rubbish about DJs and political clowns?

I was pointing how we are all good people, wasn't I? Tema Oil Refinery Board Member Lawyer Alfred Agbesi is a good man and so is Dr. K.K Sarpong, the former CEO of the refinery. Probe K.K. Sarpong straightaway.

That is a solo track by Lawyer Agbesi which has been playing in the media to Sarpong's utmost chagrin.

Some workers of the refinery also want Sarpong's skull. They want him to tell Mills about US$ 473 million that allegedly cannot be accounted for. Sarpong says the money went to subsidise the cost of fuel in our great republic.

All said and done, they think as former CEO, he should be held by the jugular for the refinery's woes and the nation's recent petroleum supply problems.

Petroleum prices took a five per cent hike this week amid a lot of grumbling from us consumers. It means we get to pay more for a centimetre-square piece of bush meat and for transportation from Abeka Lapaz to Kwame Nkrumah Circle by taxi.

The good news is that Mills finally managed to get some crude for the Tema Oil Refinery to refine: That has not stopped the agitation to prove Sarpong and re-assign or fire the Minister of Energy and his deputy.

I don't know if you have noticed it too, but scholars and other accomplished academics who abandon or refuse to put their knowledge at the service of academia and our research institutions and jump on the train of politics because of the gravy on board, generally come to great grief sooner or later in varying degrees.

It does not usually seem to matter whether theirs is active involvement in partisan politics at the leadership level or the acceptance of positions handed out on the basis of party affiliation.

They will probably deny it but consider the cases of academics like Dr Josiah Aryee, Professor Wayo Seini, Dr Obed Asamoah, Dr. Sipa-Yankey, Dr Tony Aidoo, Tsatsu Tsikata, the late Professor Adu-Boahene, Prof Frimpong Boateng, Dr Kwesi Botchwey, Dr Charles Wereko Brobby and others and the frustrations they suffered in politics.

I will leave out the names of others like Professor Mike Oquaye and Professor Ameyaw-Akumfi for possible future reference. Some may not have encountered the kind of problems likely to have a profound negative effect on their lives but they are the best judges of whether or not they would not have better applied their scholarship to career projects other than politics.

What has the Mills administration been able to achieve in 10 months? Good question. A lot of the information the public gets on a daily basis is about what Mills has failed to do and what he is doing clumsily!

I have not read any sanitised and data-based appraisal anywhere. The St Petersburg Times in Florida in the US has launched a project called “Politi.Fact.com” with the express aim of “helping you to find the truth in American Politics.”

An email account has been opened for the public to deposit any information they may have regarding promises Obama made during his campaign. According to the newspaper, Obama made 500 promises and the idea is to track down each one of them.

Unlike what has transpired here with regard to campaign promises Mills made, this project is trying to establish the rate of progress made with regard to each promise made:

If Mills promised to help hunters increase their seasonal game catch from two antelopes to 10 antelopes and two wildbeasts and they managed three antelopes and one grass cutter, then he did fulfill his promise, if only partially, see?

There is another aspect of this project that excites me: Information being collected from the public is being used by the project to “fact check” all statements and claims made by Members of Congress, the White House, lobbyists and political pressure groups. Lying officials and activists are easily exposed. That should keep those here from talking “by heart.'

When it comes to questions of morality, personal integrity, principle and commitment to the progress of our great republic I doubt that many would hold Mills himself to suspicion. Not with his socialist credentials and austere lifestyle.

Besides, the spiritual side of Mills has been established to the point of his detractors making constant comedy of his relationship with a bearded Nigerian evangelist credited with the power to wave fly whisks and make Third World soccer teams win world cup tournaments.

That is why Mills may want to learn from Jesus. Jesus was not concerned only with what people and especially his detractors thought about him or were saying about him. He was also concerned about what his Apostles themselves thought about him.

Who do folks say I am, guys? It is greatest test of whether or not a man's followers understand and share his vision clearly enough to help him succeed.