The Army Worm Politics

I recently visited atokd.com (Ato Kwamena Dadzie’s blog) and read an article concerning governments handling of the army worm threat in parts of the Volta Region. As usual, the article was anti-government and this is to be expected since the author of this blog has a philosophy of attacking governments hoping that this will change the leadership style in our country.

His concern was that the government should have used civilians rather than the military to kill and prevent the further spread of the army worms. He thought the worms were just butterflies in the making and hence just the use of chemicals could get rid of them.

So I took his concerns up and researched further into the matter. Getting to know more, I realized an ex-NADMO official Ken Nuworsu, in the erstwhile Kuffuor administration had also publicly criticized the government for using the military instead of officials from NADMO, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Ministry of Health (MOH) and some trained foot soldiers.

This revelation stunned me because I couldn’t understand where the criticisms were coming from. We live in a country where our military is not engaged in any war and so they are peace keepers in other countries.

For this reason, our men are readily available for any kind of service in the country. Be it construction works, giving out relief services to disaster victims or anything the commander-in-chief tells them to do. So nothing was wrong with the Ghana Air Force flying helicopters to get the army worms infested areas sprayed.

Could the trained foot soldiers, EPA or workers at the MOH have flown helicopters in a matter of days? Or probably they should have been given months of flight lessons while the indigens of the army worm infested areas continue to suffer from these creatures.

The ex-NADMO official on the contrary cited mass transfers of NADMO officials in the Volta Region to the Ashanti Region. Clearly, this shows in an emergency like this, NADMO was under resourced in terms of personnel to carry out the spraying exercise.

You should also know that, though the army worms are just worms they have killed at least six people in the past in the same areas and also what a soldier can do five civilians cannot.

God Bless Our Homeland Ghana.

Lucky Mensah’s New Song a Message?

Lucky Mensah is the only musician to have publicly supported the then candidate John Evans Atta-Mills in his presidential bid in the 2008 general elections by composing a campaign song for the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

True to Lucky Mensah’s luck John Atta-Mills won the elections by a slim margin and eventually became the President of this great Republic.

Two years gone and it seems the Lucky singer has lost hope in the man he helped win the 2008 elections.

His new album ‘Nkratuor’ has a song titled ‘Enkoyie’ which has gotten much airplay both on TV and the radio/fm stations. This song which is rather controversial has sparked public debate as to whether Lucky Mensah is having a change in mind on whether to continue composing songs for the NDC in future elections.

The song sung in Twi has lyrics with meaning in English as ‘Tawiah, take this letter to your brother Atta and tell him things are not going well’. Though it will be wrong for one to conclude he is referring to Atta our president, aspects of the song shows he may be referring to Uncle Atta (our president).

Scenes in the video of the song show a man been portrayed as a politician with pot-bellied stomach and a bodyguard. Things seem to be going well with the politician whereas the video also shows men laboring to make ends meet.

With a video and lyrics such as this and some public outcries ‘enko yie’ as used in the song, and a 95% confidence interval (as used in statistics), the song could be nothing else than a message to our President John Fiifi Evans Atta-Mills.

However, this musician Lucky Mensah has refuted allegations that the song is intended for President Mills when he was interviewed on the Delay show on TV Africa. He further said he could not have this motive since he was a helper to President Mills’ victory.

Well, it is left for you to come to a decision who the song is intended for.

BBC Betrays President Mills

Two days ago on Joy Evening News it was reported that some people across the continent have reacted rather negatively to President Mills’ statement at the Editor’s Forum held at the Castle on the 7^th of January this year, that he is guided by a popular saying in Fante ‘Dzi wo fie asem’ meaning ‘mind your own business’ in dealing with the political impasse in Ivory Coast.

The reactions came as a result of BBC’s broadcast of President Mills’ stance on the Ivory Coast political crisis. This is not the first broadcast the BBC has done on Mills’ stance after the President publicly made the comments some two weeks ago.

This time around the broadcast did not dwell on the President’s call for a diplomatic peaceful resolution to the crisis instead of the legitimate force proposed by the ECOWAS to get Laurent Gbagbo out but the part of the statement which saw Mills make the ‘Dzi wo fie asem’ remark.

The BBC in my opinion took President Mills’ statement out of context and put it out there.

Clearly, what the President meant is that in dealing with other nations on matters as delicate as this, he is guided to tread cautiously and also he is not to meddle so much into the issue but to mind his own business of ensuring the territorial integrity of his country.

What is worth noting also is that, if President Mills had wanted to mind his own business, he would not have been at the ECOWAS meeting which saw Ouattara declared as the winner of the Ivorian elections. He was at the meetings on the two occasions that the leaders of African states met. He did not delegate anybody to represent him as some African leaders did. He was there in person and signed the communique that recognised Ouattara as the president-elect.

Reacting to BBC Network Africa’s comment of the day (which is mind your own business) Ghana’s Foreign Minister, Alhaji Mohammed Mumuni said “I am shocked at the quotation that was taken completely out of context and put out there. Clearly when you hear what was said out of context, really, the reaction is bound to be what it was”.

As a citizen of Ghana, I am totally against the way BBC put the comment out there. I know the ‘mind your own business’ comment made by the President really got some world leaders who are noted for interference in other nations’ affairs uneasy and this maybe a knee jerk reaction to get the world thinking minding your own business is not an option after all.

If you are a Ghanaian who loves live and complaining of economic hardships then I think your advice to President Mills will be for him to mind his own business in other to save the lives of over a million Ghanaians living in Ivory Coast and also to forestall the consequences of refugees trooping into the country if military force is used.

God bless our homeland Ghana.