Ghana08: Notes from Accra

By Femi Adesina

I had passed through Accra a number of times as I journeyed to or from other African countries. But this was my first proper visit to the land of the famed Asantes and their king called Asantehene, which we studied in elementary history. The land of the Black Stars, who gave our Super Eagles a 4-1 drubbing in London in a friendly match last year.

The land of Kwame Nkrumah, of J.J Rawlings, of John Kufuor, and of my old school teacher, Bernard Ohene Addai. Where is Mr Addai now, on the face of this vast world? Only God knows. As a secondary school boy, he used to tell me of his dreams of having limousines, Cadillacs, big houses. He was in his late 20s then. But he left Nigeria, and we lost contact. Hope his dreams came to pass.

Yes, Accra, the land of soccer, which would be hosting the rest of the continent as the Cup of Nations tournament opens a few days hence. I had escaped to Ghana the day after Christmas, with my family, for a much needed holiday. I needed to put Olusegun Obasanjo and the havoc he did to our nation in April 2007 behind me. I needed to forget Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and his purloined mandate. To get away from incessant holding of power by the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), and many others things which now constitute the typical Nigerian malaise.

Accra. Sane, sedate, serene. You can’t beat the sense of order. It is not crazy like most Nigerian cities. Here, you can let down your guard, let your hairs down, and really relax. Unlike in Lagos, where you must see with both your eyes and feathers like the aparo bird. Otherwise, the city gets the better of you. The lady at the Immigration post at the Kotoka International Airport saw that you were a family of four, and asked for your passports. She flipped through, and asked for your profession. After she got an answer, she stamped the passports and declared: “Big man journalist from Nigeria. Have a good holiday in Ghana. Don’t write that I said anything O, because I don’t want trouble.”

Why do they all fear journalists? I was still trying to answer the question when something else caught my attention. Football, football everywhere. All over the airport walls, on the vehicles, billboards, everywhere. As you read the greeting, Akwaba, which means welcome, you also see that soccer is in the air. The Cup of Nations, holding between January 20 and February 10 is like a fever. Ghana fever.

When I taunted Alex, who would be our tour guide for the next five days, that Nigeria would beat Ghana and lift the trophy, he shook his head mournfully and said he could not boast of the Black Stars, because their main star and skipper, Stephen Appiah was going to be out of action. The Fenerbache midfielder had copped a knee injury recently and would be out for two months. It threw the entire Ghana nation into mourning.

The La Palms Beach Hotel in Accra is like paradise. An African paradise, right beside the Atlantic Ocean. This was the same ocean my father used to talk about. In the mid 1950s, he had sailed to Freetown, Sierra-Leone, to study Economics at the Fourah Bay College. And he used to talk about the stop-over at Accra, Ghana. Now, I was in the same place which my father like a troubadour had traversed in search of the golden fleece. Quite moving. Good old Bar Beach in Lagos. Build such a hotel there, and one of two things may happen. Area Boys would mug you and rob you blind before daybreak, or the sea could well sweep you away overnight, and you wake up either in Haiti, or in Dominican Islands. Or worse still, in the belly of a whale or shark, like the biblical Jonah.

Can you believe that for five days in Ghana, there was no power outage, not for even one second? In the 1980s, at the peak of the country’s economic travails, they had power supply only every other day. Now, they have put that dark age behind them. Nigeria, after trillions of Naira and basketful of boasts by former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, is still marooned in darkness. Just a few days to Christmas, a carol service had been held in the emperor’s Abeokuta home, and midway into it, power was seized and darkness covered the entire landscape. The ceremony was concluded by moonlight. The shame of a nation. I attended a three-hour concert at the National Theatre in Accra on December 26, and I’m sure the organizers did not have to bother their heads about power. When you go to our own National Theatre in Lagos, you go along with your candle.

The Ghanaian economy is small, but it seems quite steady. Last July I, their currency, the Cedi, was redenominated. That was the same thing Charles Soludo attempted with the Naira, and it ended in fiasco. The Ghanaian currency now exchanges for 85 pesewas (the coins) to a dollar. One hundred dollars is now between 8,500 and 9,000 cedis.

This was the same amount that fetched you almost a million cedis before. We wait to see the long-term effect, but I couldn’t help but recall that due to economic hardship, Ghanaian ladies flocked Nigeria in the 1980s, and became women of easy virtue, charging their customers N2 per session of sex. Most of them could not pronounce naira well, so they ended up being dubbed ‘two lala’ How did I know this, if I wasn’t part of the monkey tricks? Well, a journalist should know everything. Now, the dignity of the Ghanaian woman has been restored, with the restoration of the nation’s political and economic life.

We travelled wide in Ghana, from Accra to Cape Coast (about three hours drive) and to other neighouring towns. Yet, security was not an issue. Crime is not an epidemic like we have in Nigeria. Quite alright while there, the Kumasi Central Branch of SG-SSB Bank was broken into, and 22, 124, 600 Ghana Cedis (1, 246, 000, 000 in old currency) was stolen, and this caused a lot of consternation and generated wide media attention. But we know that in Nigeria, bank robbery is now more of a picnic.

Politics in Ghana. Oh, what lesson for Nigeria. Three days before we got in, political parties had held primaries in readiness for general elections holding in December this year. Twelve clear months ahead. Now, the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) has a presidential candidate in Nana Akuffo Addo, former Minister of Foreign Affairs. He beat 16 other candidates to clinch the ticket. And it is rumoured that President Kufuor’s preferred candidate did not even win. Could such happen in Nigeria? Never. Remember how Obasanjo employed a combination of threat, blackmail and intimidation to clobber other presidential aspirants in PDP into stepping down for Umaru Yar’Adua. And here was gentleman Kufuor in Ghana, allowing a level play field. I could only exclaim, “Oh Nigeria, Nigeria, o ti j’ego (Yon don chop bottle). You have suffered in the hands of the emperor.”

What will I say of the tour of Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park. There you see the life and times of Ghana’s first president displayed before you in bold relief. All his memorabilia as student, freedom fighter, the table he used as president, and even the iron casket in which his corpse was brought home from Conakry, in Guinea, are preserved for posterity. And you see his final resting place, with his Egyptian wife, Fatima, resting beside him, all in marble. I have been to Tafawa Balewa’s tomb in Bauchi, and it is nowhere near what Ghanaians have done for Nkrumah.

The Coconut Grove at Cape Coast, also beside the ocean. What will I write and a whole newspaper will not be full? Or the Elmina castle, which brings the horror of slave trade graphically to you as the guide takes you round the edifice? And then, the Kakum National Park, where you behold the wonders of nature. I had visited the Jos Wildlife Park in the 1990s, that was before Joshua Dariye and Ibrahim Mantu dismantled the peace of that state with their rivalry. Now, you can’t even travel confidently in your own country again, without the fear of being caught in the middle of an ethnic or religious conflagration. There is this gangway at Kakum National Park made with very strong ropes, but which the fainthearted dare not climb. My wife and children were adventurous enough to join the climbing party. Well, they are young.

And when they got to the middle of the rocking structure, and they saw the ground hundreds of metres below, my 12-year-old daughter began to scream for daddy. But trust daddy, he knew what senior citizens should not do. He was enjoying the cool breeze below, ensconced in a rocking chair. However good a carpenter is, he dare not remove nail from a wooden frame with his teeth. I was in Ghana for vacation, not to scare myself to death on a rocking gangway. Call me a coward if you like, I don’t mind.

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