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I cannot wait for the official report on the arson investigations commissioned by the President of the Republic of Ghana. I am told that the man and woman team, flown in from Uncle Sam on the invitation of President Mahama and his Government, will present its official report in two weeks time. The prospect of the release of the official report is already exciting some members of the community. Even before it began, the Government of Ghana had long concluded that a number of Ghanaians, apparently opposed to the regime, were deliberately setting fires to some leading markets in the country to cause dis-affection for this moribund regime. Like punch-drunk boxers, the President and his team of bungling men and women went on a wild goose chase for the enemy. First, the statement was emphatically made that arsonists were responsible for the fires in our markets, when every Ghanaian, with a bit of history of fire outbreaks in our markets, knew that faulty electrical wiring systems, the unconventional system of turning our markets into dwelling places, no access for fire engines, and the absence of fire tenders among others, added to a regime of power outages, could account for the many fires afflicting our markets, offices and many dwelling places in this Land of our birth. In his desire to nail imaginary arsonists, the Head of State directed the security agencies to step up their investigations into the recent fire outbreaks. Interestingly, the statement added that the Government of President Mahama suspected arson in the outbreaks. �The President, we are told, has also directed an immediate investigation into the fire outbreak at the Achimota sub-station of the Ghana Grid Company, which resulted in a blackout in parts of Accra. �We are having too many fires, and the intelligence agencies have been asked to intensify their intelligence gathering and surveillance, because there are indications that some of these fires go beyond the ordinary,� President Mahama was quoted as saying. �I have directed that immediate investigation into the recent fire outbreaks be raised a notch higher to ensure that any person or group of persons suspected in any act of arson be arrested and punished,� the Presidential decree added. In other words, the prime goal of the investigation was not to establish the cause of the fire outbreaks as a means of minimising their occurrences. The arsonists� case, I dare state, is a play-back of the stance taken by deceased President John Evans Atta Mills when Woyome�s GH�51 million scandal hit the newsstands. Instead of establishing the circumstances under which the financier of the National Democratic Congress was doled out that whooping amount of state cash for no work done, the late Head of State was more concerned with identifying members of the opposition, who, in his narrow tunnel vision, had abrogated the non-existent contract Woyome claimed to have established with the Government at the time when the New Patriotic Party was in power. As it turned out, it was a wild goose chase. Rather, members of Mills� own administration aided the loot with their actions and inactions. Needless to state, all of them, including First Deputy Speaker Mr. Ebo Barton-Odro, are sitting pretty on various top government jobs. Within a week of President Mahama�s directive, a two-member team, comprising of a man and a woman, described in government circles as experts, arrived from the United States, charged to find those arsonists to be punished. I have tried very hard to identify the woman. But I can report on authority that the man in the delegation is Mr. John Allen, an electrical engineer with the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Fire-Arms and Explosives. I am told that the official report, compiled by the man and woman act, would be ready within the next two weeks. There has been no official confirmation of what the report may entail. But snippets of information gathered by The Chronicle from sources close to the team indicate that the so-called American experts are likely to finger causes already known to the Ghanaian. The report is likely to make a number of recommendations on how to avoid such catastrophes in the future. The American team will blame engineering lapses and mal-functioning fire hydrants at our markets for the major causes of the fire outbreaks. Unless something dramatic happens between now and the submission of the report, President John Mahama and his administration are not going to get their arson suspects to be �punished,� which might disappoint Jubilee House. When the arson story first broke, Deputy Minister of Information and Media Relations Muhammed Murtala addressed the media at the Jubilee House, and announced that more Americans would arrive in the country on arson assignments. Murtala, from my personal observations of his performance so far in his new job, appears set to outdo Baba Jamal�s �goat is a cow theory.� His pronouncements on affairs of governance sound more of propaganda stuff, rather than the generator of genuine information that the media could rely on. It is instructive to learn that immediately after the arson theory was floated about, state security, led by politically-inclined Colonel Larry Gbevlo-Lartey (rtd), moved into full gear. Instead of one notch higher, evidence is emerging that National Security decided to kill a fly with a sledgehammer. The assignment resonated a political deal in the minds of those who wield the power on the security of the state. Security capos decided to kill two birds with one stone. I dare state that the search for the arsonists went with an enthusiasm to cow down noisy members of the opposition as well. The sudden increase in helicopter surveillance over the Nima residence of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party in the disputed 2012 election, might not have been accidental. I do not believe either that the all-night hovering of a helicopter above the official residence of loud-mouthed Ken Agyapong, NPP Member of Parliament for Assin Central, was only aimed at looking for arsonists. With an idea about how this system operates, these could be well-planned and orchestrated moves to use the arsonists� theory to get at perceived enemies of this fumbling administration. We are all in very interesting times. According to a report in an Accra private daily newspaper, unusual helicopter surveillance on the residence of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, near the Nima Police Station in Accra, as well as the dwelling place of Kennedy Agyapong in a location in Accra, have prompted questions about whether or not the arsonists� search had entered the political realm. The newspaper reported last week that the chopper directed a very bright light at the compound of the residences of these political heavyweights. I do not for a moment believe the two locations were accidentally covered in the exercise. One thing is certain, both politicians do not live in any of our markets, prompting Gabby Okyere Darko, Executive Director of the Danquah Institute, to question the motives of the helicopter operations. �It appears that there is a new form of threat which, maybe, we should be looking at,� he stated. �Earlier last week, Kennedy Agyapong said that there was a helicopter that came to his house and threw lights in for a long time.� He complained that two nights prior to his statement, �around 9:00 p.m., the security people in Nana Addo�s house also mentioned a similar thing. It threw the light in Nana�s house,� while hovering over the building. The chopper show was confirmed by a top official of the military, who was quoted as saying that it was not aimed at any politician. �The helicopter is on a mission to support the �Operation Calm Life� security operation, which is intended to track down criminals who have been setting markets on fire.� �The helicopter ride,� he said ominously, �would not stop soon.� At the time the military officer made that pronouncement, four people had been already been grabbed, ostensibly for setting fires on our markets. They are Shaibu Bashar, a university graduate, who just completed his national service at the Ministry of Defence at Burma Camp in Accra, Yakubu Tahiru, aka Rasta, a 28 year-old bicycle repairer, Mustapha Adamu, a self-employed phone repairer, who was trained on government-sponsored Rlg programme, and Fatau Dauda, 26, a part-time motorbike operator and apprentice repairer. One interesting development about these arrests is that all the four hail from Bawku on both sides of the political divide. We are told that Shaibu was released on the prompting of a top political appointee in Bawku. So far, not much has been said about the other three, identified as followers of the opposition NPP. The general perception is that these arrests could be a hasty reaction by a fumbling administration clutching at straw. The whole arsonists� theory, and its attended helicopter ride, do not address the real issue that power outages are harming industry and the life of the ordinary person in the country. In this paper, the Electricity Company of Ghana has announced fresh outages for the attention of consumers of electricity in Southern Ghana. It is one problem that appears not to go away. Instead of applying themselves to the problem, and finding solutions to it, the Mahama administration is rather blaming imaginary enemies for the woes of the nation. In circumstances such as these, I am tempted to borrow the words of Bill Marshall, who used to write a witty and hilarious column in the now defunct Echo newspaper. �Man Goes for Bad Lagos.� I shall return.