Ghanaians Are Very Pro-Quality!!!

I read Professor Gordon Newlove Asamoah’s article, titled “Ghanaians Are Too Pro-Foreign” with a lot of amusement (see Ghanaweb.com 6/24/07). The article desperately sought to highlight the quite well-observed and proven fact that, by and large, Ghanaians, particularly those who have acquired some level of Western education, tend to gravitate towards things Western and European.
Part of this problem, obviously, has to do with the very nature of our neo-slavo-colonial academic and cultural orientation, which is aimed at producing alienated and self-hating Africans. And here, I must confess that my first amusement regarded the writer’s name: “Gordon Newlove Asamoah.” And the fact that the writer also happens to be a lecturer and public policy analyst at the University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, pretty much clinched the starkly inescapable fact that the writer is a veritable victim of exactly what it is that he complains about.
For instance, couldn’t the writer have readily translated his first two names, viz., “Gordon” and “Newlove” into Akan, just like his surname of “Asamoah” (at least I remember having an uncle called “Yaw Asamoah” who worked with the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation during the 1970s and ‘80s, I don’t know his whereabouts now), or even select two other names in consonance with his culture or ethnicity, whatever the latter might be? Or is it just that he wants his name to be readily pronounceable to/by Anglophone people or Westerners, for that matter? If so, then Professor Asamoah appears to have promptly, albeit quite sheepishly, answered his own questions regarding whether, indeed, Ghanaians are too pro-foreign.
Interestingly enough, some nit-picky chat-room regulars on Ghanaweb.com have taken issue with yours truly for simply appending “Jr.,” or “Junior” to his name, while simultaneously presuming to impugn the cultural validity of non-foreign parented – fathered or mothered – Ghanaians who, nonetheless, proceed to use European and such pseudo-Eurocentric names as Coomson, Blankson, Yamson, Yawson, Bankuson, Plantainson and Keleweleson. And the list, of course, is interminable.
In my case, the simple explanation has been that I am conveniently multicultural. For how do I, for instance, abbreviate “Kumaa” or “Ketewa,” were I to suffix my name with either of these quite mellifluous descriptive tags? And then, in the case of “Kumaa,” to be readily mistaken for “Mr. Kumah,” no relation, whatsoever, who lives next door?
In essence, the issue that Brother Newlove – if I may take such familial liberty – is attempting to tackle has a lot to do with something called “Inferiority Complex,” which is the veritable product of proto-colonial and neocolonial cultural experiences. For the aim of all forms of geopolitical cannibalization is to make the victim of such cannibalism feel unworthy of his/her humanity and, thus, be eager to aspire to the cultural and moral values of the colonizer. This pretty much accounts for the rampancy of skin-bleaching, for example, in Ghanaian society; and, perhaps, even more poignantly the fact that a half-Scottish Ghanaian with faux-Scottish accent could dominate the postcolonial Ghanaian landscape for twenty years, largely through brazen military brutality, wanton assassination, torture, homicide and outright expropriation. I have even heard it said that quite a remarkable number of Ghanaians voted for Joe-Jato on the dubious grounds that this veritable S-O-B is a handsome guy, by which they largely meant that Joe-Jato comes closest to their much-missed former colonial overlords in looks, mannerism and speech.
Also, has my dear reader observed how almost everything comely or appealing is prefixed with “Whiteness” or “Oburoni” this and that, from peanuts to palm-nuts to coconuts, sheep and goats? And also how bald-necked chickens become known as “Guinea-Fowls” and miniature rabbits, or bunnies, become known as “Guinea-Pigs,” just as jet-black Africans are often lamely – to speak much less of outright stupidity – accused of being “too dark” and invisible as a “starless night”? And also how a light-brown-skinned woman gets to be called “Me Buroni” (My White-woman) and, in the case of my New Jersey male cousin, “Kwame Buroni”?
Indeed, this problem is further complicated by the fact that our leaders themselves tend to be unpardonably Eurocentric, “unpardonably” so because they, by and large, appear not to appreciably appreciate the fact that opting to become a “Black Leader” inevitably comes with the quite unique responsibility of collective role-modeling? Thus did we have a Kwame Nkrumah and his Fathia, a white Arab woman about the same age as the Show Boy’s son? What of, lately, that Nkrumah-leaning former Ghanaian Minister of Public Sector Reform, whose wife, yours truly understands, is whiter than African black? And were the latter evidently star-crossed Nkrumah-wannabe to be elected President of Ghana tomorrow, then just what happens? Another dumb “Fathia Fata Nkrumah” textile symphony? Or would this latter-day-variation be called “Hashimoto Fata Paa Kwesi”?
In other words, while no-one’s right to romantic and conjugal choice could be legitimately impugned, still, being what we have been as an African people these half-thousand years – or half-millennium – makes it bounden that we recognize the esteem and comfort levels of those whom we presume to responsibly lead. Else, the certain and logical outcome becomes “Nkrumaism” – dear reader, pardon me for the much-intended pun.
On Brother Newlove’s question of why Ghanaians fall far short in their patronage of Ghana International Airlines (GIA), my terse answer is that the Ghana Airways Corporation went kaput and pooff!!!...because it was run without common sense, run just like a Kaneshie to Mamprobi Tro-Tro, pretty much like a family cab, owned by all and therefore not entitled to any monetary fare or daily sales.
Besides, what kind of “Ghanaian” airline does not allow itself to serve its Ghanaian passengers Yor-ke-Gari, Joe-Jato’s favorite, FuFuo, Kokonte and Tuo Zaafi? Which is all just a more poetic way of saying that the Ghana Airways “Socialist” Corporation died as natural a death as one expects of a pathological and clinical suicide. As simple and sensible as that!

*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: okoampaahoofe@aol.com.

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