enimil ashon

I saw a GTV news item in which a woman who was arrested for openly defecating behind the Cape Coast Castle some time last year, looked (and sounded) offended.

I know of a Minister of State whose daughter lost her voter ID after the last election and has vowed not to renew it. Reason? She politely asked the dad: “What’s there to vote for?”

It was Kwaw Ansah’s reply to Graphic Showbiz editor’s note of scepticism that arrested my attention. “M’ewuraba” (my lady), he said, “in our long struggle, we have never been this way before; never come this far.”

In Ghana today, no matter what my crimes are, I cannot be prosecuted; nay, even be invited to answer questions.

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo will be remembered for one thing: being unapologetically Christian. I remember the copious biblical references in his acceptance speech at his residence on victory night. Even his first budget was a veiled promise to feed 27 million Ghanaians with “five loaves and two fishes.”

There is no country in the world whose citizen go to bed every day on full stomachs. Not even almighty America, United Kingdom (UK) or China, from whom we beg for and receive loans and grants. They, too, have stories of how some of their citizens battle hunger on a daily basis.

Who has, since September 2019, been in any doubt about the final outcome of what William Shakespeare would have described in 1599 as Much Ado About?

If I meet Martin Amidu in town, I will greet him, but not with a reverential bow, notwithstanding his anti-corruption campaign exploits in his pre-Special Prosecutor days.

Four-letter words are unprintable, and it is for a reason: they are offensive to decent people in society.

Dear readers, I need help. I need someone to confirm or deny information I have, that in 1961 or thereabouts, Kwame Nkrumah (in Ghana’s fresh days as a Republic) went to the aid of South Korea with a cash bail-out.

On November 27, 2013, the Prime Minister of Latvia, Valdis Dombrovskis, resigned because the roof of a supermarket collapsed killing 54 people. He said he took political and moral responsibility. That, to me, was “culture” in action: his action reflected the society’s norm.

Below, I am going to commit a sin in mass communication – the production of mass of text in a single sentence or paragraph. They call it semantic noise. Here we go.

My two best Presidents: Paul Kagame, the President of Rwanda and Croatia’s President, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovi.

In August this year, Nigeria shut its borders with all its neighbours, Republic of Benin, Niger and Cameroun. This is not the first time an African country is closing its borders to their neighbours.

Next Saturday at the National Theatre, a scheme that awards promises to grow into the mother of all awards in Ghana— namely the Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah African Genius Awards— will be held. One journalist who witnessed the maiden edition three years ago described it as “second in weight only after the National Honours given out by the Head of State”.

Do you seem, over the last few months, unable to fight off a certain fear that violence is about to break out before this year’s elections and that the situation might degenerate into civil war after December 7?

The Asaasegps Prophecy.

When a whole Vice-President of a country puts his reputation on the line and declares a Ghanaian product the best in the world, that can be pretty dicey; but that is what Dr Bawumia did. In 2017, when so-called experts and NGOs swooped down on Vokacom Ghana Limited like vultures upon a hapless prey, it was his voice that caused many Ghanaians to sit up.

I am not a publicist for the NPP government, and by my nature, I hate propaganda, but I would have thought that the panacea for tax dodging and motorists’ crimes is the digital addressing system.

The dreaded pandemic means many things to many people. For me, the picture of Black Cuban doctors arriving in Italy in response to an SOS from this European country of white men and women, was a moment of triumph for the Negro Race.

I have been struggling for a word for the events in Parliament on January 6 and 7. It was not merely a lack of leadership; it was a display of leaderlessness. The former is failure of leaders to show leadership; the latter is absence of leaders. I didn’t see leaders in Parliament.

In the last two months, a number of events have taken place that seem to confirm that the Ghanaian film industry is not dead; that even if there are no inspiring films, there are hopeful film-makers.

In April 2017, I wrote in the Daily Graphic, inter alia: “Long before the rest of Ghana knew Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, I knew him. Years before the business community named him Ghana’s Most Respected CEO, I had, in an article in the Weekly Spectator, put him forth as a businessman who wore his integrity on his chest, like a badge, in a marketplace populated by the corrupt and the crooked.”

Last week, I included in my examples of visionary projects (as opposed to a 450-seater Parliament Complex) the first Central Sewerage System being built in Kigali, Rwanda, at a cost of 96 million euros.

 Written By Enimil Ashon - In the film world, there are gods/goddesses and there are icons. In this industry, things operate contrariwise; so you find that the gods die but the icons don’t. While as many as 90 per cent of the film gods/goddesses last only as long as fads, the works of the icons are eternal references.

For Ghanaians in search of a single statement to sum up the State of the Nation, Ghana, after 60 years, here is free consultancy from me. They should look no further. That statement is in the lyrics of one Ghanaian musician’s desperate cry, “Ewuradze Begye Steer No – ooo”.

While I acknowledge that Presidents of Ghana, aided by their party majority in Parliament can pass any law, I do not believe that President Nana Akufo Addo, by his pronouncements in the last few weeks, was preparing the minds of Ghanaians for a re-naming of the University of Ghana after Dr J. B.Danquah.

The Africa Study Bible explains why God admonishes against the use of fetishes and charms – either in African traditional religions or in the Christian church. Why does a pregnant woman put a Bible under her pillow?

Before you read on, please take a pen and paper. List Ghana’s income sources. I can bet that your first 10 sources will not include “folklore”.

Washington DC - May 1, 2017: The 115th Congress of the United States of America passes a Resolution (‘HR 1242’) establishing the “400 Years African American History Commission” to carry out activities to commemorate the anniversary.

In the course of the past four weeks, there have been two occasions that have opened my eyes to witness why God is quoted to have said that “the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

When I saw the Executive Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), Professor Newman Kusi, making a presentation on ‘Ghana’s growing public debt-implications for the economy’, at a roundtable discussion last Monday, I blinked. I thought I was seeing Dr Mahamudu Bawumia as the presenter.

I will begin this week with the question I posed in my last paragraph last week: Can we seriously conclude, looking at ourselves, so far, that the Black man is capable of solving his own problems?

I will tell you what I do when I desperately need to fight off feelings of boredom or deep sadness. I go on the net and search for ‘Mrs Grace Mugabe’s Graduation.

Ghanaians woke up this week to news that transactions leading to our purchase of three military aircraft between 2009 and 2015 were tainted with corruption.

What is the Chief Justice aiming to achieve by complaining to the General Legal Council about post-judgement remarks made by Dr Dominic Ayine?

It has taken me weeks to understand what is expected of me in the polling booth on December 17.
Now that I understand it, my mind is made up.

Not very many years ago, you could swear by the Ghanaian.

I was at a ceremony in Accra this week at which the Standard Bank Group, in the name of Ghana’s Stanbic Bank, and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited (ICBC), collaborating with the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture, launched ‘I Go Ghana: I Go China’.

Words can kill. Listening to predictions by some of my most trusted radio commentators in the last two weeks, Christmas 2018 died in me.

God is having a good laugh up there. He has known, since Adam, that every imagination of the thoughts of the human heart is evil all the time. He looks at the greed, every grubby detail of our ‘clever’ plot to win Election 2020, and laughs.

News is that residents of Adoagyiri, Akwamu, Owuraku and Ntoaso in the Eastern Region are up in arms against a former First Lady, Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings, accusing her of unlawfully leasing their lands to an estate agent.

As I wrote last week, I am not against a replacement of the register; if it is not changed today, it would eventually have to be changed, anyway, after the December elections.

In the newsroom of the Ghanaian Times, in the mid-1980s, every journalist knew the maxim: when in doubt, leave out! We did. The news editor controlled the use of one of only two telephones with a direct dial (the other one was in the editor’s office).

In my inexperienced mind, I used to challenge a theory put forth by an economist that one of the effects of salary increase is a change of tastes from eating gari at home to eating fried rice in restaurants; from having only one wife to having multiple wives and concubines.

Some things in life belong to the category which someone has described as “the unalterable law of life”. An example is ‘Devaluation”. Another is “Pumping Dollars into the Economy”. No African Minister of Finance wants it, yet every African Finance Minister succumbs to their power. They are called, “Classical Economics”.

This year, Ghana is leading the world to remember the 400th anniversary of what history describes as the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade.

I can assure you that, nobody will be found guilty in the investigations, which the Ghana Health Service (GHS) is promising, into the circumstances that led to the death of the 70-year-old man after the LEKMA Hospital and six others refused to admit him due to the lack of beds.

Can somebody tell me why it has become so imperative for the Bank of Ghana to spend money to advertise the features of the two cedi coin? I am not convinced that this is profitable use of the taxpayer’s money. Such prodigality! I could cry.

Ask me how I will judge President Akufo-Addo after his first term. Certainly not by ‘One District One Factory’; not by ‘One Constituency One Million Dollars’; not by the fulfilment of any of his brick and mortar promises.

President Akufo-Addo has added another chapter to Ghana’s Book of Lamentations.

Within the New Patriotic Party (NPP) are party activists who neither fear God nor guide themselves by history. Ignorant of both history and the biblical reminder that it is only God who appoints kings, these activists are engaging in acts that are tantamount to digging the party’s grave.

In the 1952 film, ‘Ten Commandments’, by Cecil de Mille, there is a scene where Moses wants the truth about his true identity. His real mother, Yoshebel, afraid for her life In the presence of the dreaded Egyptian queen who had raised Moses from infancy, has just told him, “I am not your mother”.

I present today, a man who was, and is, a rarity in African politics. On the occasion of our Independence anniversary, as Ghanaians struggle to come to terms with how one politician and his brother applied Kweku Ananse wisdom to make themselves €3 million richer a lá Airbus bribery scandal, I celebrate Kwabena Gyima Osei Bonsu (‘C.K.’), 83-year-old former MP, former Minister in two regimes, lawyer and chief.

The biggest mistake in creation was making it possible for highly intelligent crooks to go to school and wear three-piece suit.

Are you not frightened that as a country, it is becoming increasingly evident that altruism and pride in public service are virtues that are in short supply?

Last week, the CSIR organised a cocktail event to which it invited in excess of 60 public and private sector organisations, many of them selected on the basis of the contribution of scientific research to their very existence, growth and continued profitability.

It was Genevan and British political theorist, Jean-Louis de Lolme (1740 – 1806), who in criticising what he observed as excessive powers of the British Parliament, wrote that "Parliament can do everything but make a woman a man and a man a woman".

Today’s column is a response to popular requests from two categories of Daily Graphic readers.

The Fantes of Ghana have a warning. “Efefee fun n’enyiwase a ihu saman” to wit, that if you go peering too close into the face of a corpse, you will see a ghost.

As a writer, I sometimes ask God why I lack the wit and biting sarcasm that grace the writing style of Professor Kwesi Yankah. Last Wednesday evening I was wondering how, as a ‘Kwatriot’ in the ‘Mirror’ newspaper or an ‘Abonsam Fireman’ in the ‘Catholic Standard’, he would have described President Akufo-Addo’s record 110 Ministers, especially if he disapproved of it.

In this 21st century, we still have people who do not appreciate that this land mass is now Ghana, not Akyem, Asante, Mfantse or Ga-Dangbe.

Some time in the late 1980s, a headline appeared on the front page of the then ‘Weekly Spectator’ that announced in bold capitals: “ONLY 11 PASSED” It was the result of that year’s Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) final examination for candidates who wanted to practise Accountancy. Against the resultant uproar and condemnations, the ACCA exam organisers came out with an explanation that was as simple as it was sweet: quality control.

On Wednesday, March 8 when the world celebrated its women, there were two names I wanted to hear or read about in the media. One of them was not only mentioned but was actually on air granting interviews.

They call themselves businessmen, though many of them do not hold briefcases or control any resources except their own pay cheques. Indeed, they are not businessmen; rather, “business men”. The difference is significant because for them, the word translates as “working men”.

After Ghana’s impressive, if delirious, tourism performance in 2018/2019 that has earned us a pat by the global community, I feel duty bound to remind us that having climbed up this high, we must purpose in our hearts to stay there.
Staying on top only means doing things right.

This article is caught between two schools. As a nation hanging by our fingernails and looking up to World Bank/IMF to prop us up through the COVID-19 nightmare, is it out of turn for a writer to start raising issues beyond bread and butter?

Cape Verde was so barren and so poor that its viability as a state was questioned by World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) economists at independence in 1975.

There are two kinds of talk. One is social media talk, the type so base even the talkers themselves strain to go anonymous; of course, with the exception of those who have convinced themselves that noise is equal to wisdom or that popularity is fame.

Last Saturday, for the first time in living memory, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) spoke with one voice on an issue.

In academic circles, all research is scientifically obtained - not because they are the outcome of work done in a physics, chemistry or biology science lab.
They are scientific because they are the result of empiricism, governed by strict rules of conduct. The rules are such that any other researcher using the same hypotheses, sampling principles, sample size and methodology, must arrive at the same conclusions, with a margin of error not too significantly below and above the sample statistic in a confidence interval.

Would the President grant audience to the Minority Leader without the presence of his minister of parliamentary affairs? So, was Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu at this week’s meeting between Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and Mr Haruna Iddrisu, the Minority Leader in Parliament.

The figures for malaria are always frightening. By my last check, the Ministry of Health was estimating the total economic cost of malaria in Ghana at $772.4 million. If, like me, such abstract figures are confusing to you, your case can be helped by what economists will term the real cost.

On March 4, 2019, two days after the latest earth tremors that rocked parts of Accra, President Akufo-Addo tasked the National Security and the Ministry of the Interior to prepare a national earthquake emergency plan.

By the time you read this column, the outcome of the FBI investigation ordered by President Trump into allegations of sexual misconduct against US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh may have been made known.

For two reasons, I envy winners of beauty pageants and TV reality shows.

There was one key aspect of Ghanaian life which the President missed in his State of the Nation Address – national values. In the ensuing parliamentary debate, no MP wondered about the President’s silence on the state of the nation’s morality.

On November 18, 2018, MyNewsGh.com reported that the government had begun demolishing bungalows housing Court of Appeal Judges to make way for the construction of a National Cathedral.

Knowing Ghana the way we have known her since 1957 – the traditional “yes sir, massa” compliant nature of public servants, including heads of State Owned Enterprises, all of whom have their positions at the pleasure of a strongman-President; some of whom are politicians without disguise; some of whom are boot-lickers without apology and only a few of whom would contemplate the fate of “going home to chew sand” when fired – are we really sure we should give a round of applause to the Environmental Protection Agency(EPA)? and the Minerals Commission?

If you saw a rat pop out of its hole one hot afternoon, eyes bulging, sensory whiskers vibrating, you can be sure something is the matter deep down that hole. In like manner, the human eye never gets yellowish green unless there is something wrong with the liver.

In Ghana, the masses have ceased grumbling. They’ve decided, rather, to return, in equal dosage, the ruling classes’ selfish greed and corruption. In times like this, a columnist’s mind needs extra fortification. The evil that men do sieges the mind.

News bulletins on radio these past few months have become a litany of woes filled with cacophonous voices of protest.

History tells us that in slave days in America, white women would often shave off the hair of their enslaved female servants because it supposedly “confused white men”.

Did you know that the second Friday of October is World Egg Day? Unknown to many so-called enlightened Ghanaians, the Animal Research Institute (ARI) of Ghana’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has been celebrating the day at some selected schools in the country.