*By Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, Ph. D.

“Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) bankroller who was
doled out GH¢41,811,480.59 of state money in a dubious court settlement, told a
media briefing in Accra on Monday, that he won the huge amount squarely, because the
Kufuor administration ditched him after winning the contract to execute a job in
connection with the renovation of the two leading stadia in the country, and the
construction of an additional two. Instead, Mrs. Betty Mould-Iddrisu,
Attorney-General and Minister of Justice at the time, entered into a hurriedly
arranged settlement with Woyome, and doled out nearly GH¢42 million of state money
to the NDC financier. In his judgment, Mr. Justice Amadu stated clearly that he
adopted the ‘terms of settlement as the consent judgment of the parties in this
suit.’” (The Chronicle December 14, 2011)

They are worse than armed-robbers
Educated elites of pen-robbers
Whose declarations are toxic
Whose pens are lethal weapons
They kill whole populations
They kill slowly and gently
They live free on their loot

Ah! Tarkwa Atta’s paradox
Courts under NDC have failed
Failed to trial & jail NPP thieves
Courts under NDC have succeeded
Succeeded in enriching NDC thieves

The Woyomes of NDC
The Woyomes of NPP
The twins of thievery
Time for the masses
Masses to rise up
Rise up against the thieves
Woyomes of NPP & NDC
Who don’t build
Who refuse to build
Paid for not building
Flawless thieves
Vultures posing as parrots
Parrots of integrity
Parrots of equity
Parrots of probity
Parrots of honesty
Pen-armed robbers
In the pay of the state

Independence and today
Betwixt
We have jostled
We have struggled
We have toiled
We have moved
Contouring hopelessness
Demarcating static “blackness”
Piloting prophesies of doom
Navigating waves of gloom
Parenting deceitful abloom
We have journeyed all
From sublime to ridiculous
Rivers that flow upstream

Today
Economic nomads
Foraging for survival
Aimlessly
Foraging for sanity
Fawning over thieves
Fawning over pen-robbers

The Woyomes
Who don’t build
Who refuse to build
Get paid for not building
Flawless thieves
Our NDC and NPP
Their alternative bloom
Like shriveled petals
Ah! Their cherished traditions
Of historic postcolonial theft
Their intersections of thievery
Of moments of impossibilities
The weight of the moment
Ah! The tilting precipice
Hmm! Easy substitution of hope
Oh! Oh! Our narrative marginality

Pen-armed robbers
Flawless thieves
Strategic thievery
Seismic thievery
Legislated thievery
Educated thieves
Agents of it all
Of dreams deferred
Tethering on a precipice
Of inexorable decline
Of federated chaos
Of fetishized anomies
Of braided anarchies
Ah! Our Ghana
Our masses who suffer
Ah! Our Ghana
The historical moment
Of deceitful declarations
Of discredited elites
Oh! Traumatized masses
Traumatized masses
Impoverished masses
Benighted masses
Debited with poverty
Debited with depreciations
Debited with sterile moments

*Akadu N. Mensema, Ph. D., is a nationalist Denkyira beauty. She is a trained oral
historian cum sociologist and Professor in the USA. She lives in Pennsylvania with
her great mentor and teaches Africa-area studies at a college in Maryland. In her
pastime, she writes what critics have called “populist hyperbolic, satirical”
poetry. She can be reached at akadumensema@yahoo.com