Fellow Ghanaians, our elders say if you are not a traveler and clinch to your comfort zone without abandoning the status quo, you will never believe and know that elsewhere a dog is called King Solomon.
Conflict has been part of humanity. But what people often fight over is very important.
Like in Troy, though in movie, the Trojans fought Greece for love. Whether love for a woman is worth fighting for is debatable. Whether against or for the motion, there was at least a meaningful purpose for that war.
What do the people of the northern regions are fighting over?
"Popcorn?"
Milton Leitenberg recorded that there were over one thousand seven hundred and sixty-three (1763) conflicts that took place between 1914 and 1991 with resulting deaths amounting to over two hundred and thirty one million (231,000,000).
The people of the north is therefore not the pioneers of wars and conflicts.
The Ashanti Empire is great today because their rulers like Asantehene Opoku Ware in the 1750 slaughtered human beings in wars like Salah rams to consolidate the Ashanti kingdom.
Many of these conflicts that caused the deaths of over 231 million people, were nationalistically orchestrated by various states in their attempts to ensure their collective safety and prosperity.
People deserted their luxurious homes and went to fight for their very existence and freedom.
It is "nambolistic" (pathetic) and sometimes hilarious what people of the north often fight for.
Many of our conflicts are often meaningless and purposeless saga of sorrows that calls for proper orientation and deeper reflection.
In one breadth, Konkombas and Dagombas fought over a Guineafowl.
Somewhere last year, a conflict that left three or so people dead between Dagombas and Konkombas occurred because of a pig (not pigs).
Sometimes it's embarrassing what sparks turmoil leading to the burning down of villages in the north.
When did we descend this low?
Why can we continue to increase our own woes and tribulations in addition to the seemingly insurmountable and inescapable naked Wahala?
One just can't rub his brain around what is bringing about all this turbulence.
Whether it is pent-up bitterness of the past or just personal scores to settle with trespassing neighbors, we don't know why people like to always jaw-jaw and war-war.
But one thing is certain.
Chunkiest of the people are still leaving in ancient times with the "only might rules" mentality and who are not exposed enough to explore modernity in order to find something challenging to live for.
As a result, people are just too okay after "six parts" of "Tuozafi" with palm-oil-less Ayoyo soup without even a bone on top of it to at least make the soup fishy.
In order words, the belief and practice of "gangsterism" to get what one's needs or claims to be entitled to which used to be the order of the day some primitive centuries ago, is still ingrained in the psyche of many residents of the northern regions.
This dreamless, if not hopeless life in that part of the world is the result for the endless barbaric mindsets of "going to war" and unscrupulous disposal of leaders through palace coups in the 21st century.
Despite the intolerable levels of sucking poverty, unacceptable famine, malnutrition, and leaving in "fourth-worldism", people don't see the need to sell and convert bullets into corn to feed themselves.
It was Frederick Engels (1820 -1895 ) who said that "mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion etc…"
Abraham Maslow's theory of human needs posits this same thing.
The unbelievable illiteracy and unforgivable docility in such parts of the north are responsible for these nefarious activities with their accompanying precarious effects on the people and their thinking.
You see, almost all the intelligentsia of the north have found solace and comfort in the south.
This is due to their adventurous nature either through education or commerce that exposed them to the south to find life different and worth living for rather than concerned about which ethnic group is mightiest.
The pattern of rainfall is also responsible. The farming season has always been shorter and once in a year.
And the devil, as we know, has always found a "rewarding and very lucrative" job for the idle hands. Evil.
Nonetheless, hunger being an inseparable companion of the man who chooses to do nothing or coerced into joblessness, many people tend to ventilate their frustrations and life's zigzag on their fellow men.
Otherwise is it not shameful that the north remains the capital of poverty and yet burns down the little that they have been able to do over the years?
Whatever the snake hatches must belong.
And truly, the blood of the head's wound our elders say, stains the neck if the wound can't at least wax to affect the neck.
Is it not shameful that the intellectuals of the north who mostly rode on the sheer ignorance of the uneducated masses to luxury are practicing "refugeesm" in comfort with their families? And sponsor, and supply the unlettered peasants with ammunition to maim themselves for life?
What is the benefit of your education and intellectualism if some of you are the architects of these genocidal threats?
And how are you better than those poor illiterate, terrified, homeless, hopeless and hungry masses your inactions generate and fuel?
Mahatma Gandhi once boasted that nobody can hurt him without his permission.
Not only nobody can hurt the north without its permission, nobody can help the people of the north to halt and recover from their shameful wars without their permission.
Government pursuing our vainglorious and unreasonable demands is tired already and can't restore the needed calm and peace in those trouble pond areas.
Let the intelligentsia of the north come together regardless of linguistic difference to find an everlasting solution to these embarrassing brawls!
For it the goat barks at a stranger, it is the eternal disgrace of the dog.
Let's stop the washing of our dirty linens in public.
May the God of Africa restore peace on the continent.
Long Live Ghana,
God Bless us all.
The writer, IDDRISU ABDUL HAKEEM, is a student at KNUST, Department of Religious Studies.
E-mail: [email protected]
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