Rebels, smelly armpits and me

Last Sunday the old boy hit six-zero, Jomo. No bam, bam rhythms on stereo. No big banquet. Just some deep throated humming of 'Now thank we all our God…” in the bath, and I was on my way to the church house where Osofo graciously offered up a prayer of thanks on my behalf during the service.

God bless Osofo papapa! The strange coincidence was that it was Osofo's birthday too. That is why I have just offered up a sinner's little prayer for Osofo in return, see? I will probably send an anniversary picture to be printed in all the newspapers, seeing how I am a famous chap and all that…

Septuagenarians may be amused by my anniversary fuss but hey, I was in school before Ghana's independence from British colonial rule and many of my school mates have long departed, so I need to thank God for keeping me alive, yah. Sorry, old chap, this tale is not about me.

This week many residents of the port city of Tema, its suburbs and some parts of Accra managed the unbelievable miracle of staying for days without water.

It got to a critical point during the week, when many people bought and laboriously emptied water from those palm-sized plastic sachets meant to quench thirst, into buckets, and then used the precious fluid of life to clean armpits and other intimate crevices and orifices of the anatomy before leaving for work or going to bed.

The water company had announced that it was laying new pipelines and that the exercise would take 48 hours. Fourty-eight hours stretched to a whole week without water supply to consumers.

The water company did not bother to explain to consumers what the heck was going on. It did not send tankers around communities to supply water and save consumers the inconvenience and health risks in having water supply cut of for a week either.

This kind of total disregard for the needs of consumers by the utility services serves Ghanaians right if you ask me. That is what happens when all people ever do is sit down and grumble about poor utility services without coming out to picket outside the offices of utility companies or demonstrate in the streets with placards demanding better services!

A school headmaster at Akwatia in the Eastern Region dressed up as a school kid this week and went to write the Basic School Certificate Examination which is in progress across the country and was promptly arrested. I pray they don't throw the bloke in jail because he is just a crank with a capital “C.”

He certainly must have known that seated in a “babies class”, grandpa would be as conspicuous as a chimp among three-day old chicks.

I suspect that like him, a good percentage of the population is beginning to go round the bend, Jomo. That is what comes of living in a country where there is a severe crisis of truth and where suddenly, from politics through internal security to social discipline, nothing seems to make sense anymore.

I am told that as an individual, there is absolutely no way I could ever hope to influence change for the benefit of society without first being involved in active politics.

The trouble, Jomo, is that I am far from impressed with the conduct of politics in this country and the acrimony among politicians seeking national leadership authority.

Do you recall Nana Akuffo Addo thanking New Patriotic Party delegates for electing him the party's presidential candidate for Election 2008 and saying of fellow contestant Allan Kyeremateng who made an impressive showing: “This young man gave me a good run for my money”?

Do you reckon Allan thought to himself that Nana Akufo-Addo was being condescending? I had this very strong hunch that he did, but then my name is not Simon the Sorcerer and you might ask Allan himself if you run into him.

That he has launched an even more vigorous campaign far ahead the of the NPP primaries this time round, hobnobbing around with party polling agents all over the place and drawing large numbers of party faithful, to the chagrin of the party leadership, suggests that he must have.

Now the rivalry between Allan and Nana threatens to cause a huge fissure in the NPP.

Word which Nana has staunchly denied in a statement, is that Nana has struck the most unlikely of alliances with Attorney-General Betty Mould –Iddrisu to get Allan out of contention, by getting him prosecuted in court for alleged wrong doing, on the basis of evidence allegedly provided Betty by Nana. Ridiculous, Jomo. Absolutely ludicrous.

These politicians are in the mean time, so obsessed with their quest for power for its own sake , that they seem totally oblivious to the most elementary principles of party organization.

There is the so-called foot soldier crisis in the NDC, which hopefully, is serving as a lesson for the NPP leadership: To have hundreds of thousands of people from disparate backgrounds working under a political programme without a code of discipline and central points for education, information and orientation, is sheer madness, don't you think?

Large political parties need decentralized forums for foot soldiers, not to cram them with abstract ideological theories in political philosophy, but to teach cadre discipline and give them a sense of purpose in what they are doing.

You know what, buddy? The foot soldier does not really exist. He was created by the media and political forces because the terms “party supporters” and “party cadres” are too flat and commonplace to make any impact in political propaganda.

Now that he has acquired the media-assisted image of a ferocious political force on the rampage, many jobless and famished supporters and cadres of the NDC who fought for the party's electoral victory are falling behind his image to “fight” for cash and jobs.

What are the cadres thinking? You wonder how anyone could want to belong to a political organization where there is no code of disciple and where grassroots members spend all their time insulting and threatening the leadership without sanction and much to the delight of its opponents.

Some say JJ has such an influence on cadres of the NDC that it is he who should lead an attempt to call the renegades to order. The trouble is, forefingers are wagging in JJ's direction as the source of the agitation in the very first place. So? Solateedoo, it is the NDC's bowl of porridge. Adjust or die slowly!

George Sydney Abugri is a prolific, multi-award winning, Ghanaian newspaper journalist.

Read more of his articles at http://sydneyabugri.com/ or email him at [email protected]

Originating at times.fienipa.com