A couple of weeks ago when I was busy celebrating Winneba Aboakyer, the Electoral Commission was registering new voters. My daughter, Abena Annan, was nearly prevented from registering. Some party agents, for some strange reasons, challenged her to prove that she is from Winneba.
This is the weirdest and deliberately annoying party activism I have ever witnessed. Otherwise how could anyone challenge Abena’s eligibility when in fact one of the polling centers in question is cited right on my own school, Challenging Heights school.
My daughter is a widely known person in Winneba. She follows me around to most places, so much so that at one point she was referred to as my hand bag.
Well Abena tells me she took a cue from the problems Zenator is currently facing. Who knows, she may decide to contest one of the dead Unit Committee seats.
Anyway Zenator Rawlings registered as a voter, gaining her first eligibility to vote in Ghana. She recently also won round one of her title challenge when the Supreme Court ruled that the High Court has no jurisdiction over the instant case “Zenator Rawlings versus Nii Armah Ashietey”.
Regardless of the outcome of the substantive court case, I think our friend, Nii Armah Ashiety should allow Zenator to represent their party for the primaries in the Klotey Korle constituency. She won the NDC Parliamentary primaries.
Having or not having a voter’s card did not matter to the delegates. The will of the people can be likened to a flowing water. It takes its own course, no matter how hard you try to stop it.
Of course Zenator may have questions to answer in court, but remember whatever the decision of the court, she is now more than qualified to contest again, and I fear that she may defeat her opponent more resoundingly should there be a re-run.
But the questions to answer are not only in the courts. It is also to Zenator herself. One of the pillars of achieving success is taking personal responsibility for our own success.
Oftentimes people of privilege miss out on taking their future in their own hands. They become too protected, to the extent that they see their future in the shadows of their parents.
A few years ago I mistakenly knocked on a wrong door while I was selling books on campus. This lady whose door I knocked became extremely angry, yelled at me, and actually told me her piece of mind. A friend of hers tried to calm her down, but she was super furious.
When her friend tried to warn her that it was a mistake, and that she should know that she is a student, and that she might one day need my help for a job, this lady responded thus: “as for me I don’t need anyone’s help.
My father is there to do everything I want for me, so I don’t need anyone’s help after school”. I stood calmly while this young lady spewed rot on me, and I walked away.
Three years later I met this same lady at the premises of an advertising company in Accra, with her application letters looking for a job. When she saw me she thought I worked in the company so she became nervous. I had a very brief chat and wished her well as I walked upstairs for my meetings.
It so turned out that the Chief Executive Officer of the company was my friend from Legon Hall. The Chief Operating Officer was also my friend from Legon Hall. The HR Director was one of my closest friends from Volta Hall.
This “my father will do everything for me” lady later took my number upon realizing that I knew most of the top directors of the company. That evening she called me, to apologies for her behavior a few years ago, and that she was desperate so I should help her to secure that job. I asked of her dad, and it turned out that he had passed a couple of years back.
You see, such privileged children may not be able to learn the challenges of street life. They will not go out on their own to play with other children. She will have access to all required books, so she does not have to struggle to learn how to search for non existing books.
Sometimes the temptation is for such privileged children to think that life will be the same all the time, that, they will continue to be the most privileged amongst their friends, that their parents will be there for them all the time.
Going out there to queue, to register, and to be eligible to vote must be a personal civic responsibility that must go beyond the shells of privileged glass houses. Knowing how to fill passport and university application forms should be one of the personal responsibilities to do for one’s self.
Looking for a job must, and should, be a personal responsibility, not to be delegated. Serious employers would insist that would-be employees write their own application letters, scout their own jobs, secure their own interviews, and earn their own jobs.
No one will be truly successful in achieving your full potentials if all the above were been done by your house helps, and you only played games and watched television.
If you have not acquired the basic disciplines of life, you cannot begin from the top. You will only end up trying to cheat the system, and that will bring you back to where you should have started from, registering to vote at 40.
In 2006 when I had planned to quit my job at Barclays Bank, I rented a small store around Awudome Estates, near TV Africa, where I started Challenging Heights (the NGO), and Challenging Steps (the printing press) offices. I then recruited a young university graduate as my first employee, to tend the office while I still worked in the bank.
As at 12 noon the following day when I checked, this young employee had not reported for work. When I called his phone, he told me (and I quote his exact words) “I’m not interested in that stupid work”.
Apparently when I offered him the job he was expecting to be working from a giant nice storey office space with air conditions, where he would be proud to direct his friends to come for visits. He told me he was not a fool to go through all these difficult university courses only to end up working in a kiosk.
Four years later when Challenging Heights had gained huge international recognition, and was filled with several graduates working in various departments, I met this young man again. He was teaching in a school at Bubiashie, still looking for his dream job. Today Challenging Heights employs over 100 staff, including Masters and PhD holders.
This guy was obviously ambitious of his future, and he saw the realization of his ambitions in the degrees he had acquired. He was therefore not interested in starting small. Remember no matter how big your destiny is, you will need to be born, you need to cry, you need to pee, and you need to diaper before your first smile.
Somewhere in 1995 while working as a clerk with Ekem Art Pottery Limited, I discovered that the company had two old abandoned typewriters in the office. As a clerk my busiest days were the beginning and the endings of the month.
Without thinking of the benefits of having typing skills, I dusted these typewriters, bought a typing manual, and educated myself on how to type. Within six months I could challenge any typist in Ghana with my typing skills, and that skill has stayed with me till today.
As an employer I have come across so many university graduates who can be described as illiterate. They have solid certificates. They may have obtained first class or more.
And they think highly of themselves. If that person employing you is not doing you a favor for a favor, if that person is not adding you to the crowds of idle corrupt public servants, then he will not employ your certificate, he will employ what is in you.
Your history, of parentage and of education, of richness or of poverty, none matter unless you have allowed that history to give you ample critical like skills, and unless it has allowed you to acquire critical values for life. Then it is no longer your parent’s heritage. It is now your own route to life.
Whether we are poor or rich, powerful or less powerful, we must learn how to queue. We must learn how to be poor. We must learn how to wait in line to register, and to vote, then we can contest for votes.
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