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Going To Town With A NitWit Called Murtala �Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit� - Proverbs Chapter 26 Vrs 5 When I say I am going to town I mean I am going to go down the gutter and make myself dirty with somebody. In fact anytime I go to town I make sure I don my armour of confrontational discourse, brash and abrasive in tone, scathing and caustic in taste. I go to town only when I am provoked by people who suffer from infantile disorders. This is not the time for niceties, sweet nothings or misguided politeness and I do not suffer fools too gladly. You can attack me for vulgarizing journalism beyond toleration, the principal charge may stem from mainly my acerbic observation and scrutiny of the conduct of people like Murtala Mohamed, the Deputy Director of the National Youth Employment Programme. Somebody out there should tell the man to begin wearing crash helmets and stop waking up at dawn because the dew of dawn will surely soak him if he does so. For more than a decade, I have been writing this column in this paper because I see the DAILY GUIDE as a credible newspaper which is loved by all well-meaning Ghanaians and patronized by intellectuals of international repute. If anyone therefore tries to treat the paper with contempt, I see it as trying to treat me with the same contempt. Murtala has stepped into chameleon faeces and if he tries to clean, it will not go. Soon, very soon, this man who is benefiting from one of the success stories of the Kufuor administration will find out that attacking the DAILY GUIDE is like throwing a stone at an elephant. I have followed all his pronouncements anytime he appears on TV to debate with fine brains like Kwaku Baako Jr. and I see him as uncultured, uncouth and a man who lacks courtesy. His body language tells you that this man needs some training in elementary decency. If that is the only language he understands then he must speak it elsewhere but surely not in this land of decent citizens. This man should not think that he can easily bring the ungentlemanly behaviour he portrayed when he was a serial caller in Tamale, to Accra. The issue is very simple. NDC goons took to the streets of Odododiodio, brandishing cutlasses, pickaxes, shovels, broken bottles and other sharp implements to cause mayhem. They were threatening the peace under the influence of alcohol and hard drugs. Unknown to them, Linda Tenyah and Gifty Lawson, a reporter and a photographer from the DAILY GUIDE were around and the two ladies took pictures of the scene. DAILY GUIDE published the pictures for Ghanaians to see and those who live in Odododiodio could easily see that the action took place in the area. Even those who do not live in Odododiodio but know Accra very well easily identified the skyline. When the pictures came out, a Deputy Minister of Mis-information, Agyenim Boateng, shamelessly told the world that what was published by DAILY GUIDE was a scene in Rwanda. When other newspapers published similar pictures with the skyline dotted with the flags of the NDC, Agyenim, the master liar, recoiled into his shell and bowed down his head in shame. Then the man from Tamale took over. Murtala tried on so many occasions to rubbish the publication, and referred to those of us at the DAILY GUIDE as gutter journalists among other unprintable words. I heard him on Metro TV trying to make listeners see the DAILY GUIDE as a paper not worth reading, and by implication calling for the Media Commission to sanction the paper. The man, who undoubtedly was not brought up in Accra, was so optimistic about his belief that the pictures were not taken at Odododiodio. I don�t blame this square peg in a round hole because since he landed this job, he has acquired such a rebarbative colour of pomposity. I blame President John Evans Mills, who appointed him to that position simply because he was making noise in Tamale in the run-up to the 2008 general elections. This is the price we collectively pay when upstarts like Murtala land a job through his participation in politics of lies. Other than that, why should we allow such a seemingly inane, insipid character to take over the airwaves, spewing nothing but insults and nonsense. I want to serve notice and notice is hereby served that if Mills fails to rein in this rash and brash hireling and he continues with this nonsense, we will all descend into the gutter and besmear ourselves with dirt after administering the most appropriate verbal punishment. The Akans have an adage which says that when a person who has never bought meat before gets money to buy a liver, he shouts from the rooftop, asking people to help him with an axe to cut the liver. Murtala was an unknown person in Ghana until he landed this job so he wants Ghanaians to �see him too as a person�. Anytime he appears on Metro TV, this mediocre opportunist tries to intimidate his fellow panel members just to prove to his paymasters that he is a tough guy. He always goofs like a linguist in the palace of a village chief. His level of reasoning is almost tantamount to a declaration of war on logic or even common sense. His speculations are always presented with categorical self-assurance as if it were an objective. He respects no one in the NPP including even the flag-bearer, who is a self-made man. He is seeking to enter parliament for the first time in his miserable life, when Nana Akufo-Addo had entered the august house many years ago and worked his way to become the Minister of Justice and Attorney General, a Foreign Minister par excellence and Chairman of the Security Council of the United Nations. Murtala can decide to pitch his tent at the backyard of Mills but if he goes wayward and enters the gutter, he will come and meet some of us in there. President Mills has sown dragon teeth in the body politics of Ghana. In his attempt to give the younger generation a chance, he ended up producing undisciplined and snobbish young men and women who did not crawl before learning how to walk. That is why their knees wobble anytime they try to take a step forward. Some of these youngsters who never landed any job before they found themselves in the corridors of power are behaving like spoilt children. They open their mouth too wide and take everybody who did not move in sympathy with the ruling party to the cleaners. They lack mild reasoning and refinement of language. To this overzealous brat who goes by the name Murtala Mohamed, someone should tell him to stop his prodigal verbal showmanship because some of us hold a doctorate degree in the art. But if he forces us to go into our arsenal of the queen�s language, the kitchen will be too hot for him to stay. And if he thinks he can survive the torrents when the rains start to fall, he should as well go for an umbrella made of tarpaulin to avoid being soaked midway. Guys like Murtala give us the license to prance away with professorial obscenity and bombast. After all, when the sea is rough, the fishes don�t mind. A word to the wise is in the north, where Murtala comes from. Excuse me while I light my Havana cigar!!!