Opinions of Friday, 13 January 2023

Columnist: Iddrisu Abdul Hakeem

Chiana SHS 8 dismissal: When has it become a crime to insult a thief?

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo

One of the most disgusting scenes I have ever encountered in Kumasi while a student at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), was a day a female thief was caught for allegedly stealing 50 pesewas in the heart of Kejetia market. You heard me right: yes, 50 pesewas. This must have been in 2015.

The young lady I believed might have been a head-porter (Kayayo), was mercilessly stripped naked and variety of objects were being pushed into her vagina. Two or more people would forcefully open her legs apart and others would compete to push either plantain or just anything into her private part. While I was fleeing to save my eyes from that filth, I heard screams of the young lady intensify. I thought they were planning to burn her alive as they would have done to a male thief.

But to my surprise, it was a certain market woman who forcefully pushed some pieces of pepper into the female thief's vagina. I was horrified to see other items in there with some of the pepper falling just right at the entrance of her private part where she sat with her legs bisected at about 150°.

The more she wailed and yelled in agony or some sort of gruesome pleasure, the more excited and jubilant the crowd became. Nobody came to her rescue. Instead, the crowd was making all kinds of fun of her.

Even as the world has become so promiscuous with cloudless and half-naked women parading and putting their vaginas for sale on social media and virtually at every nook and cranny of our society, it was unacceptable that the genitalia of the female gender was molested and treated in such a shameful manner at the market square.

You could see several of the young men involved in that pornographic molestation visibly “raised canopies” in their inner wears. Serious erections. Khrr! (Allow me spit).

Why did they treat a human being like this, especially an honorable woman? She was a thief, and that took away all the respect accorded the human being.

The truth is that there's no single regard for a man or woman who takes what doesn't belong to him or her in our society, irrespective of gender, age, Creed, or ethnic stock. It doesn't also matter whether such belongings were entrusted to be kept and suddenly get appropriated or they sneaked their way to accessing what doesn’t belong to them.

Amazingly, while thieves are subjected to the vindictive rigor of mob justice irrespective of age, gender, ethnic background or Creed, it appears the mere bearing of a certain political party’s membership card legitimates the recognition of these categories of social belongings of age, gender, etc.

Thus, it's possible for a thief to use either membership cards of the NDC or NPP to escape the ordeal of the alleged young female thief I witnessed at Kejatia Market if caught stealing. Otherwise, I find it nauseating and completely repugnant that some people really think that people ought to be punished for an insult they hurled at a thief due to the political positions they occupy.

An insult, let’s be reminded, is an expression of desperation and frustration having been ill-treated by someone. It’s to beat or even kill others without breaking sweat or dropping blood.

In our African context, the child is raised to always respect the elderly. But it is also said in our African parlance that, “a frog that runs in the daytime is not for fun”. When children have suddenly forgotten their place and role in society under certain circumstances, it's only appropriate to find out what could have gone wrong.

In the case of the Chiana Senior High School, students who supposedly abused an elder, nothing has been done to find out why students at that basic level suddenly forgot their role and conduct.

To put the record straight, while children of Africa are raised to accept injustices of all kinds by elders, the same African values teach them to humiliate the thief - it doesn't matter their gender, Creed or age.

Indeed, much has been said about the vulgarity of language that characterizes our political ambiance.

Unfortunately, many hardened criminals masquerading as leaders who must have been hanged or stoned to death or painfully crucified for their financial crimes against their citizens and indeed, humanity at large while serving public offices, have really taken advantage of the so-called vulgar language in politics to escape the ventilation of frustration by the masses they torment.

It was Aesop who succinctly put it that, "we hang petty thieves (burn them alive or collectively engage them in masturbation as in the case of the Kejetia female thief) while we appoint or elect the great thieves into public offices."

With unprecedented borrowed funds, revenue collections, and unspeakable corruption under the current NPP government, one can't find the most thieving government beyond the political pale of the current government chaired by Akufo Addo.

As it turns out, governance in Africa, particularly Ghana, means that the more projects a government engages in, the greater their loot through kickbacks. A reason the current administration formulated the slogans for fraudulent projects they initiated and continue to chant them into our ears while busily stealing away the resources allocated to such Godforsaken projects at our wilful blind-side.

Having won the title as a government with the worst borrowing record in Ghana's history with plenty of these bogus projects that saw billions of cedis siphoned and carted away, there's no description for the current government under the stewardship of Akufo Addo than calling it the G.O.A.T of our time (Greatest Of All Thieves).

As the supervisor of such a thieving entity who has no clout and political will to fight broad daylight robbery of this kind as commander-in-chief of official armed robbers, President Akufo Addo can't be left out in conducting a roll call of thieves in this country.

Indeed, the corruption perception index of Ghana has risen up in the last six years. And Ghana has been placed as the 73rd least corrupt country out of 180 countries. What it means is that, if Ghana is in the position of 73rd least corrupt country, we are certainly one of the top most corrupt countries in the world! Thievery. And if Akufo Addo is the Commander-in-chief of this daylight robbery, where do we draw the line between him and the common thief at Kejetia who was grossly disrespected?

And if people disrespect him for being the worst President in the management of corruption because he has the highest stake in political gangsterism, are they wrong? Mind you, respect is earned, especially in a democratic society. No leader dismisses workers or students to earn respect. No “leader” steals to earn respect. The system is garbage in, garbage out – GIGO.

The Ghana Education Service (GES) speaks about its code of conduct in respect of students' conduct. Ah, why must GES interfere when students call their parents "offensive" names for refusing to provide them with feeding? And where lies academic freedom in expressing one's opinion? And must it be tantamount to a breach of the code of conduct if students disrespect a thief irrespective of the position he occupies or his age?

I believe what happened to the poor young lady at Kejetia could have happened to even the wife of his royal highness, the Asantehene himself if she disrespected herself by stealing 50 pesewas in that merciless market. She would have been treated the same way as that lady. Objects including pepper would have been pushed inside her royal private part.

Who even knows, maybe that young lady was also a royal from somewhere. The point is that there's no single regard for a thief, and Akufo-Addo is one of the most dangerous thieves the country has ever witnessed having supervised all this mess in the last six years which has bankrupted Ghana and pushed the country to the brink of Debt Exchange Program. Shame!

Let the president publicly go to the Antoa shrine to disagree with Ghanaians that he is not a thief since the Bible has become as useless and meaningless to him as the Qur’an is to Dr. Bawumia.

Fellow Ghanaians, personally, I think something urgent must be done about our education system in Ghana. Students are trained not only as engineers, medical doctors, lawyers, or social scientists, but also to fight misgovernance and fix the broken, regardless of who's involved at the helm of affairs, or what and where it's broken.

During the Sri Lankan crisis, nobody cares who foisted upon them their corrupt president and other government officials. Every Sri Lankan came out to take back their country. Why do we sit back, fellow Ghanaians, and watch three times the most corrupt president than Sri Lanka’s president mess up our lives like this? And when his big head is insulted out of frustration by students whose lives have been in misery and drudgery due to his thoughtless and savage projects, they are dismissed? How?

No wonder our elders say that when the long mouth of the dog is insulted, the crocodile in the pond is affected. With Akufo Addo’s savage desire to be greater than any institutions in Ghana, he has literally appointed his ass-lickers and puppies to head every institution across the country, and who shiver when he coughs.

You see, one of the reasons for the bad African Conditions is not exclusive to what Ali Mazrui expatiated in his book, The African Condition. The idea in Africa that the child should not chuckle and must accept blame when the elderly people "fart", must be uprooted from the thinking of the African youths; it must be abolished, so that we can confront our future batterers, future bulldozers, our future snatchers and corruptors who hide behind presidential villas and palaces in the name of leadership!

Akufo Addo might be called a leader for occupying that highest seat of the land, but if a common thief, a gangster, a thug, or a cold-blooded murderer infiltrates the Flagstaff House, we don't call him a leader and fold our hands and watch him destroy our country. If Akufo Addo has any of these tendencies after six years of the current nonsense, let citizens take back their country in whichever manner they deem fit.

No man or woman, child or adult, poor or rich, sick or dying should be blamed for verbally abusing a complete thief for infiltrating our seat of presidency reserved for honest, truthful, just, prudent, and well-trimmed leaders.

In Sha Allah, I Shall Return