Perennial flood and the lamentations of presidents
Posted by By Akogun Akomolafe at 9 June, at 16 : 54 PM Print
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“In nature, there are neither rewards nor punishment, only consequences.” – Robert Ingersoll
Last year in Amsterdam, I attended a lecture by the great Caribbean scholar, Sir Hilary Beckles, on reparations and the state of the Black World.
It was a very interesting lecture by the renowned academic and author of “Britain Black Debt.”
Professor Beckles used a term which I think best describe us in Africa – Recovering People.
Rather than continue to call ourselves developing, I think we should rather stick with Professor Beckles’ apt terminology: RECOVERING PEOPLE.
Professor Beckles took us through memory lane and recounted the psychic and the psychological traumas wrought on us by slavery. He showed us impressive figures of on how our unrequited labour contributed to building the economies the West flaunt in our faces today.
He also elucidated on how slavery contributed directly to our current state. He told us the battle he and his colleagues in the Caribbean are fighting to get the West to pay us reparations. He explained to us the different types of reparations being asked by the victims of the greatest holocaust to befall a people.
He concluded the lecture by saying that the aberrant behaviours we witness in the Global Black Community today is symptomatic of victims of great traumas.
Unlike the victims of other traumas, Professor Beckles explained, there have been no collective effort to help the victims of the Trans-Atlantic Slavery.
We have simply been left alone to continue as though nothing happened. No compensation. No apology and no psychological help whatever to help us heal the deep psychological wounds inflicted upon us.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a psychological term used to describe the type of malady people go through after a particularly traumatizing experience.
No honest analyst will look at us in Africa today and not conclude that something is seriously wrong with us.
The honest truth is that, to a rational mind, few of the things we do as a people make any sense at all.
Some of our behaviour are the exact opposite of what is expected of thinking, rational human beings.
Let’s us take the case of the perennial flood that destroy lives and properties in our dear republic.
I clearly remember every president from JJ Rawlings through JAK Kufuor through Atta Mills lamenting and appealing to us to change our bad environmental practices.
All to no avail.
I remember the flaks President Rawlings received just because he dare to tell us some bitter truth that some of our habits are below those of animals.
Of course, like the bloody hypocrites that we are, we didn’t see the sense in what our then leader was telling us.
We love praises, especially the unearned and totally undeserved ones.
Rather than pause to make sense of what our no-nonsense, straight-shooting President was saying, many of us decided to heap insults on him.
It is no brainer that rains will fall. It is equally a given that rains will lead to heavy download, that will lead to flood, that will require unobstructed passage-ways.
All these are known, immutable factors.
But like the mindless simpletons that we are, we continue to behave as though nature will somehow change its ways to accommodate our wayward ways.
We continue to hope that praying, rubbing olive oil on bodies, burning candles, tying talisman around waists will somehow sway nature.
Like demented idiots, we continue to believe that speaking in tongues will persuade nature in our behalf.
In 1953, a flood occurred in the Netherlands that resulted in some death.
The Dutch told themselves: Never Again.
They sat down, planned and engineered the awesome Delta Project in the Zeeland province in the south of their country.
I visited the project some years ago and spent whole day marveling at the sheer elegance, beauty, vastness and the awesomeness of the engineering feat.
The Delta Project not only stopped flood from destroying lives in the Netherlands, today the Dutch earn good money from the technologies they developed to stop flood from invading their country.
What do we do in Ghana after flood destroyed properties and livess?
Nothing.
We make no plan whatever; we only continue to hope that natural accidents will spare us if we pray hard enough.
Like a bad script written by an idiot, we see the president come with all protocol, pontificate loudly, and receive wild ovations. He goes back to his office and forget all about it. Of course, his fawning entourage will make a show of doing something. The cameras are switched off. Everyone forgets about it. After all, the rains has stop.
Wayward and totally amoral chiefs will sell land earmarked for waterways. Their machomen will ensure that developers build where they are not supposed to. Our police officers swill collect their bribes and look the other way, and allow miscreants to flout our laws. City officials will also collect their own envelopes, and ensure that they see less than they usually see. Citizens who complain are lambasted as troublemakers, beaten up and occasionally killed.
In the meantime, the rest of us, like the good Ghanaian citizens we are, will continue to throw garbage anywhere and everywhere.
After all, our country’s motto is: Freedom and Justice.
We are constitutionally-licensed to do anything, especially the most irrational things.
They forget to add Responsibility to our motto, to make us know that freedom without responsibilities leads only to chaos and anarchy.
We continue to use our drains for garbage dumps. We block drains, built at great expense, with our household refuse, and they become choked.
City officials receive their paychecks, drink akpeteshi in their offices, play lotto gossip the whole day and do nothing.
The Mayor of Accra would rather take his populous beard to go direct traffic than sit down and formulate policies necessaries to run a modern city.
President and his Ministers meet in their Cabinet, and come out with more appeals for prayers and fasting for the nation.
Our presidents feels more comfortable parlaying with parasitical priests than with city engineers or architects.
Rains come, and we die needlessly. We cry loudly and appeal for government intervention. We roll on the ground and shamelessly appeal for foreign assistance.
Oh, we love to grovel and appeal for interventional assistance. The Agency we set up to deal with emergency, the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), is ill-equipped and badly-funded to deal with any emergency. Its head was in the news this week telling us that his outfit lack even a single tent.
Go figure!
When do we develop some sense of shame and start to behave like normal human beings?
When, when, when?
Here are some pictures from recent flood in Kasoa.
About the Author
Femi Akomolafe is a passionate Pan-Africanist. A columnist for the Accra-based Daily Dispatch newspaper and Correspondent for the New African magazine. Femi lives in both Europe and Africa, and writes regularly on Africa-related issues for various newspapers and magazines.
Femi was the producer of the FOCUS ON AFRICANS TV Interview programme for the MultiTV Station.
He is also the CEO of Alaye Dot Biz Limited Dot Biz, a Kasoa-based Multimedia organisation that specialises in Audio and Video Production. He loves to shoot and edit video documentaries.
His highly-acclaimed books (“Africa: Destroyed by the gods,” “Africa: It shall be well,” “18 African Fables & Moonlight Stories” and “Ghana: Basic Facts + More”) are now available for sales at the following bookshops/offices:
- Freedom Bookshop, near Apollo Theatre, Accra.
- The Daily Dispatch Office, Labone – Accra
- WEB Dubois Pan-African Centre, Accra
- Ghana Writers Association office, PAWA House, Roman Ridge, Accra.
- African Kitchen in Amsterdam Bijlmer
Where to buy them online:
On Lulu Books:
18 African Fables & Moonlight Stories https://goo.gl/Skohtn
Ghana: Basic Facts + More: https://goo.gl/73ni99
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Africa: It shall be well: https://goo.gl/KIMcIm
Africa: it shall be well
on Kindle books: https://www.createspace.com/4820404
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Africa: Destroyed by the gods
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on Lulu Books: http://goo.gl/KIMcIm
My Lulu Books page: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/FemiAkomolafe
Get free promotional materials here:
- Africa: it shall be well: http://alaye.biz/africa-it-shall-be-well-introduction-in-pdf/
A FREE Chapter of ‘Africa: It shall be well’ could be downloaded here: http://alaye.biz/africa-it-shall-be-well-a-free-chapter/
- Africa: Destroyed by the gods (How religiosity destroyed Africa) http://alaye.biz/africa-destroyed-by-the-gods-introduction/
A FREE Chapter of ‘Africa: Destroyed by the gods’ could be downloaded here: http://alaye.biz/africa-destroyed-by-the-gods-free-chapter/
Contact Femi:
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Kindly help me share the books’ links with your friends and, grin, please purchase your copies.
Comradely,
Femi Akomolafe
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