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By: Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
In the last couple of weeks, two incidents have occurred that have kept me wondering whether as a nation that claims to be steadily engaged in raising the level of our cultural refinement to that of a cutting-edge civilization, we are likely to come anywhere near such an enviable target and/or goal anytime soon. First was the case of a dead man whose remains were rudely snatched from its casket at a cemetery in the country’s industrial township of Tema, just as the deceased was about to be afforded eternal rest. It was indisputably an act of moral depravity of the highest order.
I had to take a print-out of the picture and the story accompanying it to a couple of classes, to preempt the possibility of being embarrassed with the same by any one of those of my students who have become avid readers and observers of a couple of Ghanaian media websites where my columns regularly appear, ever since I also vaunted to them about the very high level of conscientious cultural refinement among the people of the land of my birth. I don’t know what these young men and women think of me now and Ghanaians at large, now that the proverbial cat is out of the bag.
In this particular instance of the corpse snatch, as I painfully put it to them, the fault squarely lay with the relatives of the desecrated dead man some of whose relatives had savagely conspired to stiff the mortuary attendants of the Tema Government Hospital, who had contractually consented to bathe and prepare the body for burial, only to have it literally stolen from the morgue without the settlement of the financial charge or fees involved. We don’t see this part in the printout, but we are told that a Good Samaritan funeral attendant revolted and horrified by this irredeemably disgusting spectacle promptly reached into his wallet and settled accounts with the mortuary attendants then and there. And then and only then was the dead man granted his eternal peace and quiet. As of this writing, the identity of the dead man was still unknown.
Then there was the equally revolting case of the 27-year-old woman accused of stealing an unspecified amount of money belonging to someone else, in the Asante regional capital of Kumasi, who was brutally visited with instant justice. In other words, rather than effect a citizen’s arrest and have the police, headquartered less than a half-mile away, step in and take charge, a mob of men was alleged to have caused the stripping of the suspect naked, waist down, immediately after which these would-be-assailants and vigilantes resorted to publicly raping the suspect by either rudely and violently inserting their fingers into her vagina, or raping her by poking the pointed tips of their foot-ware or shoes into her pudenda.
As of this writing, Ghana’s Minister for Children, Gender and Social Protection, Ms. Otiko Afisa Djaba, was widely reported to have called for an immediate investigation by the Criminal Investigations Division of the Ghana Police Service. Hopefully, at least those assailants captured on cellphone and video cameras would be promptly identified, arrested and arraigned before a legitimately constituted court of laws and delivered condign justice.
Those of us avid media observers of Ghana’s recent sociopolitical scene are deeply horrified by these aforementioned incidents but, we are, nevertheless, none the least bit shocked or surprised by the same, as such similar incidents seem to have become a daily fare ever since the launching of the so-called Rawlings Revolution some three-and-half decades ago. And with the Rawlings-founded National Democratic Congress’ political machine having dominated the country’s geopolitical and cultural landscape for much of this period, it is hardly any wonder that the moral fabric of Ghanaian society has been frayed beyond recognition and repair.
This is the one critical area of our national existence that the newly elected and installed Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has quite a bit of work to do.
By: Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs