Toy-Soldier Beats a Tactical Retreat: But Who Cares or Believes Him?

After slavishly following Jato June 4th to disturb the public peace of Somanya, in the otherwise quiescent Krobo-Hills, Toy-Soldier is at it again. He seems to think that he can fool his countrymen and women just about anytime and anyhow he wants to, and so this time he either invited himself to – or was invited to – a peace-fest reportedly hosted by an organization called the West African Dispute Resolution Center (WADREC).
But what was rather interesting about Toy-Soldier is least the fact that scarcely a fortnight after impugning the constitutionality of the ruling New Patriotic Party, ECOMOG's Commander-Manqué would also call on the same government which he so resolutely despises to “set up an early-warning and guard system to deal with the management of conflicts” (Modernghana.com 6/17/07).
What chutzpah! And just exactly what “Early-Warning System” (EWS) does Toy-Soldier have in mind? Most definitely not of the sort that so abysmally failed to stake his rear-end up at the Teshie Military Range, to pump into him the kind of democracy-destabilizing war-mongering to whose dumb orchestration he had blithely danced that godforsaken June 4th with Joe Jato.
A classical case of a cat guarding against meat-pilfering by the King of Cat-dom, I guess you could aptly say. Which makes one wonder whether Toy-Soldier is not up to some dirty tricks. Or I guess you could say that the Son-of-Water-Cannon was about the solemn business of brokering peace when on June 4th, 2007, he gently patted the drooping shoulders of Joe Jato and proceeded to lament about how stupid and outright idiotic the longsuffering people of Ghana had been in choosing to vote the most democratic government into power: “It was an apocalyptic mistake,” Toy-Soldier screamed like thunder, an imaginary thunder, of course, into the wonky microphone.
And surely, the man appeared to know just what he was talking about, just as he had looked like a real, professional soldier the day that he embarked on his flank-exposing sortie in Monrovia. And boy did he look like a real soldier! Totally floored me into believing that, indeed, he was a true professional soldier, the sort of soldier of whom Ghanaians needed to be extremely proud – and then, alas, the endgame came and the proverbial bottom fell off in less than a split-second, almost as if it never even existed. And then, in what seemed symptomatic of “Meritocracy” Jato-style, Toy-Soldier got another Black Star added to the lapel of his camouflage!
In the June 17, 2007 Ghana News Agency story, Toy-Soldier was frantically wiping torrents of sweat tumbling down from up the top of his Sahara-like skull and almost innocently crooning: “History has taught us one lesson; that we cannot afford to take peace in this country for granted.” And why not, after all, Ghanaians took peace for granted all these whopping twenty chilly years, when Joe Jato paraded our mothers and sisters stark naked up and down Kwame Nkrumah Avenue and High Street, belting their big buns, literally, to mush on the quite “revolutionary” grounds that our mothers and sisters have attempted to make ends meet, as it were, by selling Yor-ke-Gari, Jato's favorite dish, two pesewas above the controlled price.
And if, indeed, “History has taught us one lesson; that we cannot afford to take peace for granted,” as he was vehemently insisting, then, if the reader may aptly ask: “Just what did Toy-Soldier think he was doing on June 4th, in the gay and hearty company of Joe Jato (or is it Jato Joe?) calling forth hellfire and brimstone upon the grizzled pate of President Kufuor and the Asantehene, even if not in so many words?
And then when Toy-Soldier attempted to tug at his beardless cleft chin and bawled: “There should be a fundamental shift in attitudes of people towards each other in this country,” you just knew as the high heavens that Toy-Soldier could seriously not be meaning what he was saying. Maybe the register – the occasion and the rhetorical context – necessitated that he say something to throw his discerning audience off his feline's trickster-trail, regarding the fact that just under a fortnight before, he, Toy-Soldier, and Joe Jato had been rapturously discussing just how the two of them could stage a hat-trick – a third comeback – into the Osu Castle without a single Ghanaian elector having cast a single ballot for them!
And you guessed right, the guy was smiling and laughing sheepishly like good, old Professor Humility, and so you readily sensed it was all sheer make-believe. And then you began to wonder and mutter to oneself under one's breath: “Imagine if there hadn't been any fundamental shift in the attitude of Toy-Soldier; exactly how would he have behaved that Jato Day in Somanya? Launched an apocalyptic air-strike against the rooftop of HIPIC JUNCTION, perhaps?
*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., teaches English and Journalism at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E- mail: [email protected].
##########################################