<<Print>>

Oman FM, a local radio station, recently carried a very interesting but worrisome story on its airwaves. According to the story, a vehicular accident occurred somewhere in the Abetifi area of the Eastern Region involving some members of the Presbyterian Church. The accident resulted in casualties which necessitated that the accident victims be conveyed to the nearest hospital. A Muslim who happened to be visiting a sick patient at the same hospital chanced upon the accident victims. He learnt that the hospital was charging the accident victims fees around GH�135. It was Sunday and the victims pleaded with the hospital authorities to give them up to Monday to pay the fees. When the visiting Muslim heard of the plight of the accident victims, he graciously and promptly paid the fees on behalf of the accident victims. The accident victims profusely thanked the Muslim for his kind gesture. However, great wonders were yet to happen. As the Muslim left the hospital to drive home in his car, he was called back to the hospital. Apparently, the accident victims had been told that the Good Samaritan who had paid their hospital fees was a Muslim. They became disturbed and disheveled in their minds and souls to the extent that that they rejected the Muslim�s kind offer and asked him to take his money away. Apparently, they could not envisage how they could accept money from a Muslim to pay their hospital fees. Those accident victims, despite belonging to the Presbyterian Church, must surely profess to be Christians who must have read on many occasions the Holy Bible passages about the Good Samaritan and the injunction of the Lord Jesus Christ to mankind to love your neighbour as yourself. The action of the accident victims was supported by an elder of their church. However, a reverend minister of the church, in no uncertain terms, described the action of the accident victims as divisive and noted that it would not bring harmony among people of different religious faiths. I was born into a family of Ahmadi Muslims and my parents were Muslims. However I spent all my formal educational upbringing in the Methodist Christian faith. My parents never had any formal education and therefore could not tutor me competently about the Islamic faith. Indeed, my father never forgave his father for not sending him to school. So my father insisted that everybody who came under his tutorage must have formal education sponsored by him up to any level that person�s talent could take him or her, whether the person was a relative or not. Unlike my elder brother I. K. Gyasi, who had his secondary education at T. I. Ahmadiyya Secondary School in Kumasi and was therefore privilege to be educated in the Islamic faith, I never had that opportunity. Despite our Islamic background, my family has produced one Methodist bishop and one Presbyterian bishop. Indeed, the current Presbyterian Bishop in the Kwahu area is my nephew. Once, he told me a very interesting story. One Sunday he took a taxi while on his way to the church to preach. He was fully robed in his evangelical cassock. As he got down from the taxi and attempted to pay the taxi driver, the taxi driver declined to accept the fare. Indeed, the taxi driver told him that it would be wrong to accept a fare from a man of God. My nephew then asked the taxi driver his religious faith. My nephew could hardly believe his ears when the taxi driver told him he was a Muslim. That was the first time he ever had a free taxi ride and it is possible most of the taxis he had taken must have been driven by persons who profess to be Christians. Yet, none had ever given him a free ride before. That day, he changed the theme of his prepared sermon and used his experience with the taxi driver. This country has been invaded by so many criminals and charlatans, who profess to belong to all sorts of religious faiths, and yet their behavior and thinking do not reflect the injunctions of their faiths. These criminals and charlatans occupy all the visible, viable, prominent positions in society. They have used their entrusted positions in politics and administrative positions to form �fly by night companies� which they have used to capture the state. They have captured the executive arm of government, they have captured the legislative arm of government, they have captured the judiciary, they have captured the security service, they have captured the business sector of the nation, they have captured the media, they have captured the priesthood, they have captured the academia, they have captured the leadership of the labour union, they have captured the traditional leadership, they have captured the public service and above all they have captured the conscience of the society. Democracy has been replaced by the autocracy of nepotism, cronyism and tribalism by the current John Dramani Mahama NDC administration. And yet John Dramani Mahama has the effrontery to tell the nation to end acrimony along ethnic and political lines. Today in Ghana under the John Dramani Mahama NDC administration while all the juicy political, administrative and foreign positions which the executive has power over have been reserved for John Dramani Mahama�s political cronies from the Savannah Region, all the juicy positions in the financial sector have been reserved for his NDC political cronies and allies from the Volta Region. Today, a close circuit of bootlickers, bootleggers, sycophants, thieves never ever witnessed in the annals of this nation have formed a cabal and renamed the nation for �For-Thieves�. Instead of these criminals and charlatans enjoying their looted and undeserved wealth in silence with the relish of the gluttony of a male pig, they continue to disturb our tympanic membranes with cacophonic effusions and behave in tandem with the infamous Don Quixote of the famous Spaniard fable. In short, the whole nation has lost its conscience. Almost everybody hold a key position has adopted the fast track lane. Possession of ill-gotten wealth is the measure of societal success and acceptability. It permeates every sector of society and every field of national endeavour. This nation is like the great Titanic on its maiden voyage. This nation is heading towards a giant iceberg which will destroy the guilty and the innocent alike unless Ghanaians wake up to the diabolical and satanic intrigues of the John Dramani Mahama�s corrupt and incompetent NDC administration and boot that �fly by night company� of �For-Thieves� out of existence. Komla Dumor is gone. Like the death of Nelson Mandela, the criminals and charlatans have all suddenly woken up to the fact that the quality of life one leads on this earth is much more precious than the length of time one spends on this earth. Eulogies and tributes have been flowing left and right, front back and centre from the lips and pens of criminals and charlatans who must have contributed to the death of Komla Dumor. Komlar Dumor must have been watching the unholy alliance with great trepidation and heavy heart from far off London in the attempt by a cabal of state sponsored criminals to use state capture to steal the only jewel in the crown of financial institutional investment by the SSNIT left on the horizon. Komlar Dumor took steps to stop SSNIT from its unholy practices of misusing private assets meant for the workers of this nation for private gain. The system in place frustrated him just like Andrew Awuni and Martin Amidu from achieving any success. Who can deny that the actions of �For-Thieves� did not hasten Komlar Dumor to his death? Years back I wrote an article in this column entitled: �the nation that lost its head� in which I took both President Rawlings and President Kufuor to the cleaners. The article captured the attention of Komlar Dumor at the time when he was the host of Joy FM breakfast show. He invited me onto that programme for an interview. It was only time I had a personal interaction with him. The day he died, I was driving home when the BBC announced his death. The BBC provided a whole treatise on Komlar Dumor. In all the treatise, despite all the encomiums the BBC poured on him never anywhere it was stated that he had left a vacuum. My own tribute to Komlar Dumor is to quote a verse in the Methodist Hymn Book: �Now the laborer�s task is o�er; Now the battle day is past; Now upon the farther shore Lands the voyager at last. Father in they gracious keeping Leave we now Thy servant sleeping. There the tears of earth are dried; There its hidden things are clear; There the work of life is tried By juster Judge than here. Komlar RIP.