“Babylon” System

“My father was feverish, almost paranoid in his routine exordium and introductions of these men to me. He would elevate them to the highest heaven for their educational laurels, which would eventually end up in his adulation of their significant roles and contributions to the UN, whereupon, these elderly men would become inflated with ego, almost saturated with pride and panache at this exaltation. And they would blush!”

Working in the United Nations was the quintessential dream of many young people, particularly students with above-average endowments in my youthful days. The United Nations symbolized the echelon of achievement, the highest definition of success, the swollen shoot of individual accomplishment, and the Medal of Honor that beckoned all high achievers.

Growing up in my little village of Anfoegah, I remember how two particular individuals who had a little stint with the United Nations system were heroically praised, respected, and honored above everyone else, irrespective of the fringe roles they played in the UN system.

My father was feverish, almost paranoid in his routine exordium, and introductions of these men to me. He would elevate them to the highest heaven for their educational laurels, which would eventually end up in his adulation of their significant roles and contributions to the UN, whereupon, these elderly men would become inflated with ego, almost saturated with pride and panache at this exaltation. And they would blush!

I cannot tell whether it was a strategy by my dear dad to get my soul drunk with desire and dream to work for the UN, so I could also grow up to become a community United Nations trophy, like his friends. The United Nations is still a respected global institution, thanks particularly to the works of the late Kofi Annan, the son of Ghana and the pride of Africa.

But times have changed! Working in the UN today is not the same as the days of my father, for the UN has had its own challenges and changing fortunes over the years, and like all other institutions, it has been criticized severally in its handling and management of conflicts in troubled spots all over the world, including its failure to prevent the Rwandan genocide of 1994, where within a hundred days, some 800,000 people were slaughtered by Hutu extremists while the UN looked on.

And the UN is in the news again here in the land of gold, for the wrong reason. A certain Dr, Kwame Owusu Fordjour organized a sham Global Blueprint Excellence Awards under the guise of the UN where he decorated some of the best high flyers of our land with fictitious awards draped in elaborate encomia. He succeeded in attracting some of the best brains of our land to a beautiful hotel and performed one of Ghana’s most elaborate official international scams imaginable in our time.

How much he pocketed in the name of the UN system is probably in some thousands of dollars, but that is not even my original concern. How he succeeded in attracting some of the most respected performers of our time, serious academics of erudition, already famous musicians and journalists of sagacity, and many such noble minds without a semblance of impurity, and all these under the nostrils of our security apparatus, the UN itself and all investigative journalists and alarm blowers is nauseating. Is this an admission of serious flaws and operational gaps in our national security apparatus, or it is just a case of a little fly escaping scrutiny because national security was having lunch?

May Dr, Fordjour be praised for his feat! He had studied the system, and he knew he could pull this off before the lions awoke from their slumber!

If there is any award left, let’s heap it on him, for he deserves all the flowery compliments the system can conjure!