Season Of Carnage

What a month and week! This month and indeed the past week and the current one have been visited by so much blood-spilling that some Ghanaians think something is spiritually wrong.

For them, a special spiritual intercession would be necessary at this point to avert further carnage across the country.

We shudder to think that the curtains are yet to be drawn over the carnage and the accompanying disruption of family lives these criminalities spell in homes.

Since such homes come together to form towns, cities and a country, the far-reaching effects of the social disruptions can only be imagined.

It would appear that the mother of all the recent carnages was the recent gory one staged by a policeman at Tema and expectedly made our front page.

He signed for his service rifle but instead of heading for his night patrols, he went to undertake his deadly assignment: his kids and mother-in-law, including him, were left dead, the country was scarred and scared by the abomination.

Whatever informed the senseless murder and suicide might never be known since after all, there was most probably no explanatory note otherwise called suicide note.

Dead men neither talk nor tell stories about what happened to them. We might only rely on speculations and what close associates of the deceased tell the police or the rest of us.

The wife, who escaped death by the whiskers, could also be a good source of information, if she is able to gather herself and subdue an expected depression.

L/Cpl Amuzu, the dead cop whose action remains unimaginable, opens a new chapter in how to avert tragedies in domestic conflicts.

Some people have asked for the termination of marital unions when the contract is no longer in the interest of the couple and could even endanger their lives.

We do not dispute this stance if the continued maintenance of the relationship can only lead to the Tema scenario which prompted this commentary.

The late Amuzu and his wife were not in a happy relationship, stories originating from sources observing the challenges have pointed out.

The detention of the deceased after he had chased her wife with a knife said it all about the troubled relationship.  His detention was at the instance of the IGP. Did anybody in the families of both spouses bother to follow up on what the relationship was like with a view to suggesting a divorce or reliable address of the challenge? The wages of the glaring negligence is the death which has been visited on the innocent persons- kids inclusive.

The families of the couple definitely knew about the low point of the marriage and having failed to remedy the fracture should have opted for a divorce.

When a marriage is punctuated by threats of physical attacks or even death, demanding a divorce is not an aberration.

Management of marital challenges should not be left in the hands of couples only especially since many psychiatric cases abound in our societies as observed by a non-governmental organization in their recent survey on the subject.

We think that the cop exhibited some unusual traits before committing the ultimate crime. God save us.