Opinions of Friday, 14 June 2019

Columnist: Mawuli Zogbenu

Samini as MP?

Mawuli Zogbenu is a columnist Mawuli Zogbenu is a columnist

Sunday is Father’s Day o. I am waiting to see what my wife will do for me. She is still not on talking terms with me just bcos I lied to her when she saw a receipt on which I had ‘Fiezta’ among some flu medications I bought from the mall last Friday night! This is the same woman who once told me that she knows she is not the ‘only one’ and that she is not bothered bcos in any case, she is the ‘permanent landlord’! What has changed, Madam? Ei! Hmmm!

I know the best she can do for me on Fathers’ Day will be to take me out to Kenpinkis and I will be the one to pay the bill! Why don’t we take fathers too as seriously as we take mothers han? Some mothers always want to present themselves as being the only ones who have the welfare of their children at heart. No wonder some children in celebrating Mothers’ Day keep saying ‘and my mother had to sell her cloth to take me to school’. Some mothers are ‘always selling cloth’; I wonder how many cloths they have! Haaba, weytin!

Every day ‘and my mother had to sell her cloth to take me to school’. Who else should sell cloth? My father also did and sold a lot though I can’t remember, apart from the unnecessary beatings I received anytime he saw me happy or angry just to prove that he is the Boss! Let’s give fathers too small credit. ‘EDUCATION IS NOT TO GET YOU A JOB; IT IS TO MAKE YOU RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR ACTIONS SUCH THAT YOU’D ALWAYS TELL THE TRUTH AND DIE FOR SAYING THE TRUTH RATHER THAN TELL A LIE TO LIVE! Message from my father from Awudome to me!

Happy birthday to you o, Mrs Anne Yayra Sakyi of Tema, Community 72 and greetings o, fathers like Samini. Kpoi!

Do you know that if Samini and I should be in the boxing ring, I can floor him? I used to have 6-packs like him but late eating and lack of exercising has led to all my 6-packs coming together and consolidated themselves into one useless pot belly full of diseases some of which I don’t even know!

I hope you know that it is easier to merge a 6-pack body than to ‘create’ it. If care is not taken, and you develop a pot belly, bringing it down is almost impossible. The only fat thing that is easy to bring down effortlessly is GHC2,000 in your pocket at a funeral in a community where you are well known!

Greetings o, Anthony Joshoa, the 6-pack heavy weight boxer who gave me hope! Who cares about six pack these days! Well done o, my look-alike, Andi Ruiz Jnr. I hope that me too I can make it in spite of my big stomach! Hard luck, Ogah boxer Joshoa! I heard you want a rematch! Again? You want to ‘kill’ yourself? That ‘round-shaped bulldozer’ go kill you o, yooo!

Shway3morbor, we know. Gyaekasa, we know. ‘Don Mine Ur Wife’, we know. But like I keep saying, Dansoman also has so many interesting suburbs that would blow your mind. With some of the most intriguing suburbs near the capital, a typical direction goes like: ‘When you alight from the car at Banana Inn, ask of Mango Down Chopbar. From Mango Down Chopbar, turn left to Wele supermarket and right behind wele supermarket is my house. My house is popularly known as Lemon Grass House!’ Ala! What at all is it again!


Carrying pito from Last Stop to Agege, schooling in St Margaret Mary SHS and then to Canada! Man like Samini, DC unofficial DCE, I greet you o, kpoi! The day you would stand as MP er, you would win manyaaaa! Start campaigning from Akukor photo junction through alokoto junction into bankye fufuo corner and trust me, by the time you get to salmon gate, you would have won hands down!

I just admire Samini’s level of humility, maturity and self-discipline! He did not get the artiste of the decade award even though many people (who didn’t vote at all) knew he deserved it. For some interesting reasons, he wasn’t surprised and took it easy. They should have tried that on ‘Shatter’! Ala! everyone would have been ‘congratulated’! If you don’t fear anything at all, must you play with the eye lashes of an ‘Indian Tiger’? Kai!

In a pre-event radio interview Samini moments before the ‘shattered’ awards night, buoy! Samini is intelligent. He was asked about the number of cars he owns and in his response, he said he could not remember but all the cars he’d acquired since he attained stardom are still there and many of them currently have no use. He further advised the youth to invest more in landed property since that is what is keeping him going now and not those vehicles which are just a liability! True o!

Handsome paddy with self-respect as his trademark, keep it up, Kpoi! As for the ‘other two’, if only they knew how big they were, they would have taken it easy on each other especially ‘Bra Kpakpo’!

I know Samini won’t worry his head over awards much; we have rewarded him in our hearts already! He was ‘denied’ the same for 2004 just bcos he was very honest and admitted that the lyrical contents in his LINDA hit song were a bit eyi and stood by it while another artiste used personal PR to explain himself out and got the award. That’s okay. Life goes on!

Samini probably has no idea how much Ghanaians revere him in spite of his love for the ‘hole’. I witnessed this strange thing with a lady in my car some time in 2008 or so. We spotted Samini in his Fortuner 4x4=16 car at Osu and suddenly something started doing the lady; she had seen the man of her dreams and her ‘god’ for the first time and wished she could just touch his chest hair; she momentarily lost concentration whiles with me! I got down to buy something at Koala and by the time I returned, the lady was nowhere to be found. Unknown to me, she went round looking for Samini to take his contact and by the time she got to his car in front of Stears, Samini had driven off and that explained why she was crying! Really? So you see, he doesn’t look for ‘holes’ o; ‘holes’ look for him and he doesn’t like ‘entering’ by ‘hat’. I trust him for that! Ajeeeeeiii! I am sure he himself would disagree with me on this untruth and issue a rejoinder soon! Don’t worry about that; all men like ‘it’ including my father! After all, why are we working? Abeg, make I hear something o! Hahaaa!

We need more guys in showbiz as politicians; people who would say it as it is, and Samini comes across as one of those to start pushing as the MP for either Banana Inn through to Mango Down area or a constituency in Wa! Which other fruit can we find at DC? Ahaan, I heard there is also a place called ‘Yoryi tree washing base’! Ei DC!

So far there is no musician who has become a legislator in Ghana o. You see Bobi Wyne of Uganda? Go INDEPENDENT o. If you go on the tickets of any of those twins (Akwetey and Aku3t3) as an MP, that is when you can be sure that ‘a thousand will love you and a thousand will hate you’ no matter what. If your party is in power, your spectacles change; you don’t see anything wrong with anything; if your party is in opposition, you see everything wrong with everything’ and the cycle continues as they run the ‘shift’ system. I don’t know how the politicians do it o but the moment the table turns….ha! Boss Samini, when you are campaigning too don’t promise development to the electorate o bcos your constituents through some ‘academic surveyors’ will hold you accountable some day for your ‘development’ promises! Do that and see if they will vote for you. You are supposed to make only laws and not build roads and schools and be attending funerals for them to see that you care. Just tell them what they want to hear and as Kierkegaard wrote, captured in Robert Greene’s 3rd Law of his 48 Laws of Power published in 1998 (Viking Press), “The world wants to be deceived”! Oh yes!

When you get to Gbegbeyise and see the women around, stop and help them pound fufu during the campaign and when they wonder how, let them understand that fufu pounding has been your hobby since. After all, it is their vote you want. After winning, don’t vanish o, after each day’s sitting, go back and pound fufu and if possible, fetch water for their children to bath with. DC may be too hot an area to contest so you can try anywhere in Upper West, where Dagati pito abounds! Nasooo! Haahaaa!

Politics is the name of the game and make sure you get people to contest you bcos as Dr Rafique Daudi would say: “if you want to be made a King and no one is contesting the stool or skin with you, please withdraw from the race’! Don’t think about it; just go ahead!

But please continue to sing songs when you get there and when there is tension in the House, just shout ‘kpoi’! and everyone will take it easy bcos music is food for the soul! Bambili wooo Nanna…Biliwooo Nanna…..hahahaaa!

This is ‘My Own’ to you, Samini; you can do it! Kpoi!