Palaver goes mathematical on Ocquaye

MIKE OCQUAYE?S ?BILLION CEDI? ROYALTIES

As part of his panic reaction to "The Ghana Palaver" expose of his greedy acquisitions and in his attempted explanation of his alleged ownership of 7 houses in one year, Professor Mike Ocquaye, political scientist, lawyer, author, politician, diplomat, Revered Minister and Minister of State (Energy) of the NPP Government, disclosed to our sister paper which took on the role of doing the ?damage control? for him that ?he (Professor Ocquaye) earned over a billion cedis annually on the sale of his book entitled ?Politics in Ghana?.

We made contact with an official of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) who confirmed to us that the Service has also taken note of the publication, but jovially told our reporter to ?go and do some mathematics with the figure?.

Well, we did. And the results are astounding.

Mike Ocquaye?s book, ?Politics in Ghana 1972-1979? came out in 1980. At that time, it was selling for ?10,000.

Royalties are normally about 20% of the selling price. To make ?1 billion in royalties in 1980, therefore, means that Mike Ocquaye?s book must have sold 100,000,000 (one hundred million) copies.

Since according to the paper, the Professor was earning the ?1 billion royalties ?annually?, if the book sold at ?10,000 per copy for 10 years, it means that Professor Ocquaye?s book must have sold one billion copies in 10 years! Surely that must be in the ?Guinness Book of Records!?

In the 1990s, Professor Ocquaye?s book sold for ?25,000 a copy. To earn ?1 billion annually in royalties, the Professor?s book must have told 40,000,000 (forty million) copies. For the period 1991-2000 therefore, Professor Ocquaye?s book must have sold 400 million copies. Between 1980 and 2000 therefore, Professor Ocquaye must have sold 1,400,000,000 copies of his book for him to have earned ?1 billion annually, which would be equal to about ?20 billion.

With these calculations, not only must Mike Ocquaye be a billionaire, but his publishers, Tornado Publications of P.O. Box 01185, Christiansburg, Accra, must be billionaires as well.

And as for his printers, the state-owned Ghana Publishing Corporation (Printing Division), they must be the richest and the wealthiest state-owned enterprise in the world.

We checked with a smiling official of the Ghana Publishing Corporation whether they have ever printed that quantity of books. He declined comment but simply described the publication as ?political talk.?

NOTE (from GHP): The word "billion" and its equivalents refer to one of two different numbers, depending on whether the writer/sayer is using the long or short scale.

• Short Scale: Billion = 1 000 000 000 = 10⁹ (one thousand million, or 1 000 000 000),
• Long Scale: Billion = "a million of a million" (1,000,000², hence the name billion), or 10¹² = 1 000 000 000 000.