The Dirt and Ugliness of the Atta Mill’s Funeral

How do you bury someone you love and respect in so much filth, dirt and disorganization? I ask the organizers of the Ex-President funeral a question 'have any of them gotten out of their comfort zone and inspected the surrounding of the capital city? Beside the gory black and red clothes that are adding to an already dirty city, and the painting of dirt-black and brown curbs with white to hide our shame as a dirty country and have they even bother to try and carry out a general inspection of the routes besides seating in meetings?

Accra is a very, very dirty city and it does not honor a great man like our Ex-President. Accra is always unprepared for anything because of filth and poor management, our roads are littered with garbage and potholes, our barriers along the roads are broken, the roads are lined with beggars, mentally–ill people, and the very things our Ex-President hated, plastics, I am sure as you read you remember him say, 'plastic here, plastic there, plastic everywhere', therefore I ask another question 'is it worthy for Accra to hold the 'body' of this great man'?

As you go around the city, you see the black and red cloths tied to broken signboards and light poles, broken rails, broken barriers; is this the best we can do as organizers, is this the best Ghana can do to honor its dead President, is this the best image we can portray, or we have sunk so low we do not even see what is wrong?

I write this article with many questions; if you are involved with the preparation and the organization of the funeral, you will step out and have a look around, and examine yourself; are you as dirty as the streets of Accra, in your thoughts and actions or inaction or a hypocrite?

Let us take a walk through the Airport and 37 Hospital areas of Accra, do we not know what beauty and cleanliness is any longer? Have you seen how ugly and dirty the area is; broken down items have been wrapped in red and black; these items must be in jubilation, someone is covering their shame whiles exposing their own ignorance and shame. Do we not have any more good people in Ghana; was our Ex-President the last good man in Ghana? No one seems to find anything wrong. Look at the so called lawns, flowers and trees, are we saying this place is ready to host the international community, visitors and Ghanaians are we saying this is the best we have? The place is covered with posters, sand lines the streets like we are in a desert, the grass are brown, illegal paths line the lawns, and broken barriers ornamentally line the streets. I cry for our president, I weep for his mortal remains, where can it lie in peace, tranquility and cleanliness.

So once more I ask again, who are those organizing the funeral, or are they just organizing the financial aspect, we are sitting on an insulting and disrespectful situation if we go ahead and bury our Ex-President in such filth, dirt and ugliness. No one deserves to be buried in such mess.

The death of Atta Mills keeps teaching us, even from the grave this great man is still teaching us, this time he is teaching us about how dirty and unprepared are as people. Our prime areas are dirty that even when we try to hide our dirtiness and filth under whitewash it does not make a difference. We are so unprepared, our leaders and those running our cities are never forward looking, they are not visionaries, they wait, wait, and wait then they react, even in reaction they fail.

We should move away from being a reacting nation to a people who preempt, to city that is always prepared, a city that is clean, a city with good road markings, a city whose streets are cleared of the mentally sick, beggars and filth. Before I finish this article and I stop typing, I pose this question “was it the death of our president that cause the contractors to resume work on the Accra-Tema Motor way”. For months now, nothing was going on, for months now, our leaders have used that route at night and during the day, so why did no one bother do something about the stalled work. Do we even have leaders who notice such abnormities; do we have leaders who can ask the right questions?

I solemnly pray that our Atta Mill will continue to teach and expose our weakness as leaders so we can change and make Ghana a better place. Rest in peace Sir, you are definitely in a better place and not this ill prepared land that is not even worthy to hold your remains because of the dirt and ugliness surrounding it. Common sense, common sense, our leaders lack common sense to make Ghana a better place; God bless Ghana and rest in peace Mr. Ex-President,