Are these Ghanaians residing abroad but acting lawlessly in defence of chiefs in Ghana normal?

I cannot get my head around certain demonstrated behaviours by some Ghanaians living in the white man’s land. The more I spend time cogitating about why some Ghanaians living abroad have resorted to threatening their fellows they find to be disrespecting some elders back home (Ghana) with capture, deportation, harm, etc., the more I can’t get it.

One will naturally expect a Ghanaian living abroad to be wiser to understand how the laws of the civilized western countries they live in work. In the western world, their laws are enforced to the spirit and the letter. Anyone caught committing acts contrary to the stipulations of the acceptable laws is consequently dealt with as it is required by the law. This is unlike in Ghana, my country of birth, where the rich, the most powerful and those with political connections are able to breach the laws by committing acts or crimes that are in contravention of the laws and get away with them.

In the western world, the truthfulness or forcefulness of, “the law is no respecter of persons”, can be witnessed or felt. “When we do wrong, the law punishes. When we do right, it rewards. Everything is according to law and order” No wonder that their countries have prospered to become magnetic fields to pull the citizens of the third world countries into them.

Should the above expression be true, why should some Ghanaians living in the developed white man’s countries for decades still aspire to break the laws and hope to get away with it? Are such Ghanaians seeking to import their African bestial mentality into their foreign countries of abode any rational beings?

In order not to beat about the bush but to hit the nail right in the head, let me inform my fellow Ghanaians the world over of my motive behind this write-up. Of recent times as established on the various social media platforms, many Ghanaians, some deemed unintelligent, have the infatuation with heaping insults on the leadership of Ghana. These youngsters for various reasons, either correctly or wrongly, have been taking the traditional and political leaders of Ghana to the cleaners. They have been insulting them from their foreign countries hideouts for not all good but mixed reasons.

They may be trying to put across some important points and views but how they carry them across has become a bit problematic. The level of insults applied is damaging to most of the views they will like the leadership to note and implement.

Nevertheless, the desire and determination by other sycophantic Ghanaians living abroad or in Ghana, to attack, harm or cause the arrest and deportation of the denigrators (insulters) is what is raising an eyebrow. The people who should have known better that you cannot threaten or plot to harm someone in the civilized world, especially, when leaving verifiable traits of evidence to your evil intent, and go scot free, are rather those fooling about insisting on arresting, harming, deporting, etc., the Ghanaian leadership bashers.

On a number of occasions, Ghanaians claiming to have been living in the United States of America (USA), United Kingdom (UK) and Belgium for decades, have come out to threaten the lives of people like Twene Jonas (USA) and Ohene David (Germany), the avid bashers of some traditional overlords and political leaders in Ghana.

Much as I find some of the bashings of some traditional and political leaders by these youngsters senselessly baseless and uncalled for, I equally see those trying hardly to intimidate and threaten to deal drastically with the bashers were they found, equally without merit, if not criminals. This is because in the white man’s country, you cannot proceed to harm someone because he has been insulting your master, let alone, insulting someone in faraway Africa.

If those being insulted feel that their reputation has been tarnished by the content and extent of the insults, they can take court action against the culprits. However, mere insult without alleging or accusing one of committing a crime, does not constitute a prosecutable offence, unless the person being insulted can prove that he or she has suffered irreparable damage of some sort as a result of the insults heaped on him or her. The sufferer can only sue for damages through civil lawsuit.

Therefore, those idiots who out of ignorance, stupidity, sycophancy and what not, are although residing abroad, pursuing illegal means to deal with the bashers are advised to watch their steps, pronouncements and actions before they get themselves landed in the breaches of the laws.

In the white man’s land, if you are caught in the tentacles of the law, you cannot extricate yourself easily without facing the full rigours of the law, unlike in Ghana where a big person can arrange by a phone call to set you free.

The more people threaten and try all means possible to intimidate the questionable guys bitterly and devastatingly insulting the Ghanaian traditional and political leadership from their overseas comfort zones of their apartment and public places, the more they facilitate the chances of the insulters being granted permanent residence abroad, if they were currently illegal immigrants. Once they can prove that their lives will be in danger when deported to Ghana for any reason, using proofs from the social media and phone messages as are readily available to them and in the public domain, they will be granted asylum in the countries they live in.

I am not sure President Nana Akufo-Addo or Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II has ordered any Ghanaian residing abroad or in Ghana, to seek to arrest or harm any of their notorious bashers residing abroad. Therefore, should anyone go their own way, out of sycophancy, political expediency or inexpediency or whatever, to harm any of those guys insulting them, such people must have themselves to blame. Should they be caught criminally at variance with the laws of the countries from where they try to harm the bashers, neither the Ghana president nor Asantehene will step in to assist them in anyway.

Let me recount my own bitter but unforgettable experience to warn those residing abroad but are eager to harm some bashers in and on behalf of President Nana Akufo-Addo and Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, without the victims soliciting their assistance.

In 1973, while a student at then Kumawu Tweneboa Kodua Secondary School (TKSS), now Tweneboa Kodua Senior High School, and to be precise in form 3, I stood in to defend one of my form/classmates, Roland Akorsah, against bullying visited upon him by one Joseph Amoah, also a form mate. Akorsah is now a successful consultant in a field I am yet to find out, in Ghana. He went to Harvard University in the US where he obtained his Master’s degree and many years later, relocated to Ghana. Amoah did his university courses in the US up to obtaining his PhD. He has for several decades now been teaching in a US university as an Engineering Professor.

On that fateful day, I found Amoah to be out of order. I stood in to defend Akorsah, a calm and composed person when Amoah started to intimidate him and was ready to beat him up. We were all living in the same House four dormitory.

The long and short of the story is, I ended up with Amoah being punished by then Assistant Headmaster of the School, Mr Atakora. We were removed from classes for two weeks. When lessons were in session, Amoah and I would be weeding a vast glass land to the left of the Administration block and behind the Classrooms and staff residential blocks. When it was time to go to dining hall for breakfast, we would stop weeding and join in. When classes were over at 14:00 (2 pm), then we ended the day’s punishment. We did this for two consecutive weeks and during the weekdays.

I was later to learn that Mr Atakora had decided to expel us from the school only to be saved by the intervention of some masters on our behalf.

The painful message about this story of mine that I want all readers to note is that Akorsah never ever expressed sympathy with me. He never asked to know how I was coping with the punishment. He behaved as though nothing had happened. He minded his studies and cared not a hoot about me.

How stupid I had been! I could not accuse him of ungratefulness for after all, he had not sought my help to intervene on his behalf. I went my own way and had myself foolishly landed in trouble.

Many of our classmates were shocked at Akorsah’s behaviour towards me. He was not only my class, but also, a dormitory mate.

I have narrated this story to warn those who are stupidly going their own way to seek to deal with people like Twene Jonas and Ohene David without having been tasked by President Nana Akufo-Addo or Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II. Should you be caught in the grips of the law, neither the president nor the Asante overlord will do anything to help you. They will dissociate themselves from you, for after all, they don’t know you in the first place and secondly, they have not asked you to do any silly thing on or in their behalf.

If you are living abroad for so many years, please learn to be wise. Leave your jungle stupidity and bestiality in the jungle, if you thought you were living in the jungle. This goes for both the bashers and those seeking to deal with them.

Rockson Adofo

Friday, 28 January 2022