Our attention has been drawn to several unnecessary, infantile, but potentially destabilizing statements that one Asiedu Nketia believed to be the general secretary of the ruling NDC Party. Mr. Asiedu-Nketia has been consistent with pronunciations seemingly designed to stoke the fires of an already passionate and polarized citizenry. With Ghana at the crossroads of a destiny-changing decision that is forth coming from the Supreme Court, we cannot sit by and allow the immaturity of one individual, even if he speaks for a party, to plunge our otherwise peaceful nation into chaos. We thus urge Mr. Asiedu-Nketia to be mindful of the following:
First, if he thinks by ushering his family out of the country to reside in Calgary, Canada, he has insulated them from the conflict that he appears bent on initiating, he would be seriously miscalculating how far such a conflict can reach.
Second, we are departing from our previous stance whereby we ignored his utterances in the belief that no one can be so foolish as to believe them. We are now cognizant of the reality that Mr. Asiedu-Nketia knows his constituency, acts like them, and is as gullible as they are. This means while most Ghanaians view his infantile utterances with the contempt that they deserve, those of similar warped minds may believe and act upon their suggestions. So yes we will henceforth address the folly and correct the misinformation.
Third, Ghana is a serious country and must be represented by serious people. No one knows how a character like him ended up becoming the general secretary of a political party, but he is an embarrassment not only to that party, but also to Ghana as a whole. The sooner he kept his mouth shut, the better it would be for all of us. Leadership is not a joke where you compete with your colleagues in your party on who can best spew a bunch of nonsense so that you can congregate at beer bars and compare notes. Ghana is more serious than that.
Finally we call on television camera operators to institute a minimum handsomeness barometer for politicians whom they photograph for our television screens. Some of us watch the evening news at dinnertime and we would not want to go to bed hungry because they lost their appetites watching certain characters.
Although we threw in the previous paragraph for comic relief, we remain resolute in our determination that anyone whose filthy mouth plunges our dear nation into civil conflict would not be spared, and neither would his or her family members.
Fauzan Hamidu.
Secretary, Global Action To Save Ghana.
fhamid@[email protected]