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id you notice a peculiar phenomenon during the just-ended AFCON in Equatorial Guinea and Gabon? The male state officials of both countries and some coaches were in suit in a weather that was so sultry, the sun burning so oppressively hot that one of the commentators suggested that the stadiums should have been air-conditioned. Yet, to those African state officials, the suits were unavoidable. How else were they going to prove their importance! Did I tell you how, in 1992, I woke up in my hotel room in Berlin, Germany, around 5am, parted the thick curtains only to behold white German labourers sweeping the street across from the hotel? They were in suit! Throughout the weeks I was in Berlin, sirens rented the air, as ambulances rushed in response to urgent calls to go pick up drunken white Germans. I saw a number of the drunks at the railway station. They were stuporous, lying in and covered by their vomit. They were in suit. Even their thieves and common criminals are in suit. Why? Because of the long cold icy winters. Suits are not evil� I learned that from two of the greatest Africans of all time- Kwame Nkrumah and Ephraim Amu. The latter, who was fired from the training college where he was teaching in the colonial era, for refusing to wear western clothes, travelled years later to the UK (in the 1980s) in suit. Why? At the time of his departure, it was icy cold winter in Europe. Back home later, in the sweltering heat of tropical Ghana, however, he returned to his jumper! Back to soccer. I say shame to Ghanaians. After Didier Drogba, master penalty and free-kick taker, world class striker, missed the penalty kick last Sunday, what sayeth we to Asamoah Gyan now? I think we have done great harm to the poor lad�s self-worth. How did we forget what the old lady told us, that the child whose daily chore is to fetch water from the stream, well or public standpipe is the one who is most likely to break the water pot? Shame, Ghanaians. Now a little politics. I am a Ghanaian. I never end a conversation without a piece of my mind about mostly NPP-NDC politics. Thanks to the red hot enmity between Samia Nkrumah and Kwesi Nduom, however, the scope of political discourse has been widened this year to include the CPP. But not all publicity is worth it. The historians will write: if ever there was one election year in which the Convention People�s Party (CPP) stood the greatest chance of shooting from one percent to 50+1, it was 2012. This epilogue will definitely be written after January 2013 because unless a miracle happens, the party will have committed one of the shameless suicides in political history, the type that kills not only the body but also the soul. Why am I going on like this? Take the Volta Region. It is currently an angry region. For the first time since 1992, there were people in this region who, as at February 1, 2012, could not swear that they were ready to cast their votes for the NDC come next December 7. My survey was not scientific especially because of the smallness of my sample size, but I am prepared to share the result. A significant five (5) out of 20 Voltarians in Accra, and seven (9) out of 50 in Ho, Keta and Kpando said they would not vote for the NDC if elections were held on that day. Of course, the darling party would win in its World Bank alright, but those landslides which have been won to hit the NPP in the pit of its stomach as polling results are announced on radio every December since 1992, would suffer a slight anaemia this year. Unfortunately, the NPP will not be the beneficiary of the resultant windfall. Why? Because the protest votes are not the result of the voters� love for this party; indeed, the NPP is blamed by people in the region for being the architect of the Woyome judgment debt saga, one of the issues being hoisted on the placards of the disaffected Voltarian protest-voters. If only the CPP were not so fragmented or were a little more attractive� Go to the Northern Region. With the murderer(s) of the late Ya Na still walking free, Yendi (along with its sympathiser constituencies in the region) is still seething with rage, bitterly disappointed by the NDC which, in the run-up to the 2008 election, swore and vowed to arrest, try and jail perpetrators of the unforgivable deed. On this issue, the NPP, in the people�s opinion, is no less guilty. If only the CPP were not fighting so hard � By nature, strong macho males are known to have a soft spot for ladies who look fragile. Many may not agree with me but that is how Samia Nkrumah looks and sounds to me: like an egg held by a drunkard with trembling hands. When she speaks, especially when she is frustrated, she sounds and looks like a threatened orphan making a heart-wrenching appeal for protection. You feel like extending a hand, diving to catch the falling egg, even at the peril of your own life. Then she dropped the eight-letter word! To the majority of Ghanaians, �nonsense� is a taboo word, unlike westerners whose children can tell their parents not to be silly. Escaping her lips twice in her verbal attack on Kwesi Nduom late last year, the word has cost her much of the goodwill she used to enjoy. This is not so much the result of any special love Ghanaians have suddenly discovered for the Edwumawura (check the last Presidential poll results) but because the people are, by nature, a tame and �God-fearing� lot to whom respect for the elderly is a virtue. In the Volta Region and in Yendi, the CPP would have stood the chance of being seen as the �clean�, sinless option, whose chairperson is none other than Kwame Nkrumah�s own daughter and in whose ranks is the hotel chain and bank owner who is endowed with the gift of articulation. Is there no-one in this country who can broker the peace between these two personalities and cause the return of Kwesi Nduom to the CPP? Unlike heaven, one person�s return may not cause a miracle: of greater consideration is the return to the CPP of the hundreds whom he carried away with him. The last time I sat through a lecture, the other name for politics was still �Numbers�. Does Nduom, running alone, have the numbers to garner even 0.007%? Does the CPP, alone, going without Nduom�s defectors, have the numbers to better its 1%? Both of them are on a suicide path if they persist on going their separate ways- unless, of course, there is another reason for their being in politics, other than winning power. You know what? There are times I suspect so. To this list, add the PNC!!