Digging Unmarked Grave Of Discarded Lies!!!

Who says we should not play politics with the Sodom and Gomorrah demolition exercise? And did I hear the president say the demolition exercise was long overdue? The very day President John Mahama said Ghanaians were forgetful and shortsighted, I decided to start chronicling and recording whatever he told Ghanaians. My intention was to keep all these statements in my private library so that come 2016 I will prove to him that not all of us are shortsighted and forgetful as he told us.

During the 2012 electioneering campaign, Nana Akufo Addo, the flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party(NPP) told porters (Kayayes) that when he held the reins of power, he would make sure hostels were built in Accra and other cities to accommodate Kayayes who used to and continue to sleep in the open at the mercy of the weather. He added that skills training institutes would be built to train them in different trades so that at the end of the day they would be self-reliant and go back home to ply their trades. That message sunk in so much so that all the Kayayes in Accra were grateful to Nana and vowed to vote for the man to come to power so that the dream of getting a befitting place to sleep will be realised.

When President Mahama realized that the Kayayes swallowed what Nana told them in full, he also told Ghanaians that what Nana said was so insulting to Northerners that he did not go to sleep on that day the statement was made. He told Ghanaians that Kayayes were not destitute for Nana to tell them that he would build hostels for them. He went further to say that it was not the fault of Kayayes to leave their towns and villages in the North to dwell in Accra and other big cities in the South and that in his case when the NDC was voted back to power he will use the SADA to develop the three Northern Regions so that rural migration will be a thing of the past since there will be more jobs in the North for these people to do and earn a living instead of travelling down South to do menial jobs.

Then candidate Mahama invited the Sodom and Gomorrah settlers and the Kayayes to the Trade Fair Center where he instructed that they should be registered so that when the NDC regained power they could be given skill training. The Sodom and Gomorrah settlers happily queued and registered hoping to get the best in their miserable lives. It has been nearly four years since that registration and the dream of getting skill-training has been as illusive as trying to find a needle in the Atlantic Ocean.

In 2007, ex-president Kufour secured a ten million-Euro loan to resettle the squatters of Sodom and Gomorrah at Adzen Kotoku and Amasaman. The Odaw river was being dredged and so there was the need to relocate the squatters in that slum. Plans were far ahead to execute the project when a certain NDC lawyer who has been rewarded with a Deputy Ministerial appointment took the case to court on behalf of the squatters. He won the case and so the squatters could not be relocated. Because majority of the squatters at Sodom and Gomorra were supporters of the NDC, the party used the court case to campaign among the squatters, telling them that because Kufour was not from the North he had no sympathy with them and that he wanted to drive them away from Accra. These Sodom and Gomorrah dwellers moved in sympathy with the NDC and voted massively for the party in the 2012 general election. As for the Adzen Kotoku resettlement programme, it died like how a whale dies when it is washed ashore by the sea. Even though the NDC, deep in their hearts knew the relocation project was the most appropriate approach to solving the problem they abandoned every value as far as the relocation plan was concerned except the will to power. Today, the slum dwellers at Sodom and Gomorrah have come to realize that they have no truer friend than the NPP.

The demolition exercise which was done without a human face with no plans to resettle these poor souls brought untold hardships to these our Northern brothers in a single day and at night fall, they saw themselves in a different world, a world where poverty and destitution were prevalent. The sad aspect of this calamity which had befallen the people of Sodom and Gomorrah was that, come 2016, these same people would collect a pittance and vote for the NDC. Sad indeed! The NDC tactics of winning the votes of the venerable is very simple: continue to impoverish them so that when it is time for election any little thing you give them will be highly appreciated.

Barely eight years down the line, the NDC government is now demolishing Sodom and Gomorrah with the excuse that it was the slum which contributed to the flooding in Accra which killed several people. By the grace of God this time around their own kinsman, John Dramani Mahama is holding the reins of power and he has even gone further to congratulate the Accra Mayor for the demolition of Sodom and Gomorrah. To add insults to injury, the Accra Mayor has told those displaced Sodom and Gomorrah dwellers that he had made buses ready to convey them to the Northern Region if they think the kitchen is too hot for them to stay in Accra. Meanwhile their kinsman who promised them honey is comfortably living at the Flagstaff House with his family. As at the time of writing this piece about fifteen buses loaded with these miserable slum dwellers had left Accra to the three Northern Regions. Call it re-enactment of the Aliens Compliance Order and you will not be far from right.

And did I hear some NDC communicators saying the spontaneous demonstration embarked by the Sodom and Gomorrah slum dwellers was masterminded by the New Patriotic Party? How backward and infantile! Since the NDC came to power, all demonstrations were masterminded by the NPP. When doctors, nurses, teachers, POTAG, UTAG etc went on strike the NDC attributed all those strikes to the NPP. I am beginning to think that the NPP in opposition is more powerful than the NDC in government. Anytime they make such allegations they forget that their statements imply that those who went on strike like the doctors, lecturers and teachers were so daft that they needed the NPP to convince them to go on strike. What sort of absolute nonsense is this?

President Mahama is not a Muslim so he doesn't understand the premium that Muslims put on fasting, one of the five pillars of the Islamic religion. Majority of the slum dwellers at Sodom and Gomorrah were Muslims and so if you demolish their places of dwelling during this Ramadan, you have disrupted a way of life. In fact, the wrath of Allah will be on the head of those who ordered the demolition. What the government should have done was to first find a place where these poor souls will be relocated and start building simple apartments for them. They can then be moved in small numbers while the construction and demolition continue. In two years time all these people would have been properly relocated and the place completely demolished. Driving them into the streets of Accra with their children is so inhuman and unacceptable!

Tema was a fishing village when Dr. Kwame Nkrumah decided to build a harbor there. He started building Community One while the construction of the dam was in progress. As time rolled by more communities were built and today Tema is a Metropolis. The South West Township (SOWETO) in South Africa was also like Sodom and Gomorrah when Apartheid South Africa decided to rebuild the place for the blacks to live there. Anytime I drive around Nima in Accra I felt guilty as a Ghanaian. Ghanaians are collectively committing crime against humanity through negligence. If Nkrumah could build Tema township, what keeps us from building similar township in Nima so that our brothers there will also have a decent place to dwell? If politicians, especially the NDC gurus go to Nima, their main aim is to recruit healthy and stoutly built young men to cause mayhem in town.

Once Bitten, Twice Shy
It has become abundantly clear that when Candidate Mahama went to the Northern Region in the run-up to the 2012 general election and told them that they should vote for him because he was their tribesman he was lying through his teeth. The man has no soft spot in his heart for these people who live in abstract poverty. The President, his wife and family members continue to grow fabulously rich while the people in the Northern Region suffer. His government has destroyed all the social intervention policies initiated by the Kufour regime. Those that he himself initiated like SADA, Asongtaba, GYEEDA have become white elephants and only benefited a very few NDC gurus.

It is now time for the people from the three Northern Regions to rethink and vote for a political party that can help them rather than voting on ethnic lines. I know by now the people from the Volta Region have come to realize that voting on ethnic lines will not help them. They do not need anyone to tell them that even though ex-president Kufour was not a Voltaian, he did his best to develop the area for the eight years that he held the reins of power. For the eight years that Mr. Kufour held the reins of power, his votes appreciated reasonably. The Voltarians recognized what Kufour did for them and responded by increasing his votes. Gradually, the issue of tribalism in Ghanaian politics is dying. I wonder what President Mahama will tell the Northerners, come 2016. May be he will say: 'Vote for me because I was the one who drove your people from Sodom and Gomorrah'

I have contracted a very serious catarrh and so I will spare you my usual 'Smokey environment'

By Eric Bawah