body-container-line-1
02.05.2016 Feature Article

When Ignorance Meets Stupidity

When Ignorance Meets Stupidity
02.05.2016 LISTEN

Oh how I love the social media, for otherwise how can such scintillating happenings around the globe reach us so cheaply and quickly with such ease?

I have just been woken from my recent stupor by two emails I have received in the last forty-eight hours. The first email that has been forwarded several times lists a number of celebrities that have passed away during the past few months, claiming rightly or wrongly that those deaths have deprived the world of entertainment of some of its geniuses. And, typical of news originating from Africa, the article then goes on to link these deaths with the deaths of some African politicians and in particular, that of the Late Professor Atta Mills of Ghana, to spiritual attack by the opposition New Patriotic Party in Ghana!

In the second email, an audio attachment depicts a Ghanaian lady in Germany who laments about a Ghanaian gentleman who befriended her on Facebook and within a matter of five to six weeks of chatting on the social forum, managed to love her, propose marriage to her and subsequently dupe her by a whopping 5,000 Euros. Apparently, but for the intervention of a kindly Sierra Leonean acquaintance, this Sister would have handed over another 13,000 Euros to this faceless, phantom Don Juan

According to the lady, the gentleman used some spiritual medium to convince her with “sweet nothings,” to believe his lies and to fall for his trickery. Let me think again, this man somehow goes for some concoction, drinks it into his body and presto, he is suddenly imbued with such great powers he is able to speak words into the airwaves that are able to deaden another person’s brains to do anything?

Habah, my people! What is wrong with us, especially the Sisters of Ghana these days? I have heard really daft things about the spiritual realm in Africa and Ghana – the occultists, so-called churches with their “powerful men of God” and other gangs, but these two beat them all!

I would not be surprised if in this crucial election year in Ghana, some political parties and their leaders have already begun throwing money at useless deities and occultists, in return for assurances of electoral victory.

Rationale
My strong Christian belief apart, in terms of simple native common sense, which does not seem to be very common among my compatriots these days, what really makes anyone believe that he or she can go to another individual and purchase some concoction, powder or music that can be applied in some remote manner from wherever, to make a voter at Fa Nkyen Ko or Bra Ha Bebo Me vote for a particular party or candidate? Are there people in Ghana and Africa for that matter, with such extraordinary powers? Why then are there so much poverty and misery on the continent?

Not surprisingly. there are even some among the “political elite” in Ghana who believe that some individuals have deities and “mbowa tsia” that are able to enter the stronghold of the Bank of Ghana to steal monies from its vaults and make the national currency depreciate?

In that case, how about other deities making the currency appreciate without our having to work hard or even export anything? Why do we have to dissipate our lands for cocoa production, for instance? Why do illegal Chinese miners have to pollute the water bodies of Ghana if it is so easy to use some kind of magic wand to change the economic fortunes of our dear country?

Powers of life and death
Where are these people with such life and death powers over fellow human beings? Do they own mighty factories? Why are they not able to make the rest of us spend our monies in their shops? Is there any need for anyone to advertise or even employ marketing officers in that case? All we need to do is spend a few thousand cedis at the deities and presto, we have a readymade markets. Can anything be simpler than that?

And why are there so many spinsters among my acquaintances in Ghana? Haven’t they heard about these magic powders and potions? How about the suffering menfolk? Haven’t they heard about the man on Facebook? Why do they continue to suffer the indignity of life-long loneliness if there are such powers coursing through the airwaves?

The NPP has suffered four major election defeats since its formation in the early 1990s, if they know people who have supernatural powers to make others disappear from this life; surely they should be able to win elections without even campaigning? In that case why did they even have to kill Prof? Wouldn’t it have been much simpler to have just remotely brushed him aside and gone on to install their party in government?

Sloppiness
Come on, my people, this is mental laziness. We need to begin to put on our thinking caps and start some basic thinking. These outrageous powers do not exist anywhere on planet earth. Our forebears might have dabbled in such primitivity five hundred years ago, but even they were intelligent enough to hold their own against slave traders and religious hordes. That is how they managed to come this far south. This is the twenty-first century, my people. We do not have to re-invent the wheel. The benefits of science and technology are so easy to tap into. Nobody on this planet in 2016 ought to sit wide eyed and allow another person to treat them that horribly; certainly not without physical force.

While science has not yet found the cure for some of the diseases that afflict us on this side of heaven, we can at least begin to do something about the stupendous stupidity and ignorance in our part of the world.

We are here on this earth for a short period. Our Creator is the only one who has the key to our lives, when to give or take it. It is not in any mortal’s power to deprive us of our God-given happiness unless we let them. We cannot prevent the birds from flying overhead, but we can at least prevent them from making their nests in our heads.

I shall return with my beaded gourd, God willing.

body-container-line