I have a theory. This might sound very crazy but please listen closely to me. All the troubles we’re suffering in Ghana and Nigeria are the results of curses. You tell me this is stupidity and ask me to show where I got such a ridiculous idea from. Listen, my dear friends…
It seems we are (or rather, we can be) very honest people. But if there’s an opportunity to get ahead by crookery, we don’t miss such an opportunity at all. There’s a man and a woman sitting behind me, talking about life in the US. They talk about this and that, but mainly about the enhanced place of the woman in American society. The woman seems to know a lot more about these things. She talks about the payment of alimony, about divorce, and men not having a right to lord it over the woman etc etc. And they talk about this with amazing social science objectivity. They simply say that it’s a matter of cultural difference, and that Nigerians don’t seem to have divorce as an important element of their social vocabulary. They don’t blame Nigeria or the US, and neither do they praise anyone. They’re just stating matters of fact.
And then the man starts to talk about his friend who had married a woman “for papers”. Things weren’t going quite right, the woman was giving him problems and the whole scheme fell through. But that wasn’t the end of the story. His friend went ahead to marry another woman. And according to him, this friend called him and told him that the woman he has married is “worwor self”, but “at least, he has his piece of mind”. This occasioned spontaneous outburst of uncontrollable laughter from both man and woman. If you’re familiar with Nigerian vernacular, you’ll know that “worwor” means ” ugly”. He continues that his friend is just waiting patiently until all is ready for his papers. The woman says something along the lines of “Most of our men are proud and aren’t able to cope with a situation where women have some rights”. In other words, “Dude, just suck up to the bitch until you get your immigration papers!”
My dear friends and countrymen, how can we move ahead in our countries with attitudes like this? Things like these bring curses oo!! When you go and get some woman or man to fall in love with you, marry you, even have kids with you, you’re giving them the impression that you want to spend a life with them. Do you see the monumental deception that is involved in this whole scheme when all that you want is a piece of paper? And when they find out that they’ve been deceived, you’re naive enough to think that they don’t pronounce all manner of curses on you and your country?
I know some people do this thing as business; totally transactional. The two of you come together in an explicitly stated arrangement to get married solely for the purposes of regularising your immigration status. I find this morally unacceptable, but hey, who am I to judge? I’ve also done some things, and still do others, happily of course, which you might not find distasteful or not nice. But why, in the name of God, would you want to trick someone into MARRYING YOU!!??
Anyway, so what I’m saying is that when you do these things, your victims surely pronounce curses on you. And they don’t curse you alone. They curse you, and curse your family, and curse your village. And as the Gas say, “kɛ eyi lɛ, esaa naanɔ he”, which, to explain to the uninitiated, simply means that when the food in the pot is full, the lid is not left untouched. The whole country suffers as a result of your selfish actions!
So instead of going round blaming John Mahama and Goodluck Jonathan, people should rather be fasting and praying to break these curses. Contrary to popular perception, the trouble has not been caused by corruption or mismanagement. And, as you can see, I’ve employed the most rigorous standards of scientific deduction to prove this point that our woes are the results of curses.
Mahama is a very smart man, but some you don’t know. I think he’s also been trying to do this analysis, although his own is not complete. Did you hear him recently saying that he cannot solve the current economic “challenges” we’re facing? He has realised that the true cause of the trouble lies somewhere else entirely. Of course, he didn’t use those exact words. He said that the problem is the structure of our economy; we don’t manufacture. And so, until we start producing computers, airplanes, spaceships and the iPads that he loves so much, we shouldn’t expect any substantial change for the better. In effect, he’s also saying that the thing is not his fault, since he wasn’t the one who designed the structure of the economy.
So you see what I just said: the president is a very wise man! And to the extent that he’s saying that the thing is not his fault, I agree entirely with him. But like I said, he only did an incomplete analysis; otherwise he’d have known that the true culprit is not the structure of the economy. Afterall, the economy hasn’t gone to marry anybody in Europe and America for papers. The true culprits are the borgas. But the president is on the right track, and I’m sure that with much practice, he’ll gain a better handle on these kinds of analysis. Soon, he’ll be getting the right diagnosis of the problem.
As for the economy thing he said, I’m sure it was Felix Kwakye Ofosu who advised him to say it. Either him, or Okudzeto Ablakwa, because I think Dr Nii Moi Thompson would have said something better than that. Those two young ministers are dripping with the adrenaline of sophomore enthusiasm. But in this day and age, who talks about “import substitution”? It’s so embarrassing. Someone needs to stop them from advising the president. The great economist Dr Nii Moi Thompson would have offered the president a far sounder advice. But these days, you really cannot tell, so I won’t stick out my neck too much for the good Dr either. For all you know, I’m here blaming poor Ablakwa and Kwakye Ofosu when it might actually have been the Dr who brought the idea up in the first place….
So anyway, I guess what I’m saying is that don’t blame the president. Blame the borgas. They are the ones who brought a curse on us!
mpakoo: 'curiously compounded' 