Asiedu Nketia
It takes people with ‘spiritual powers’ to see proceedings at a place they are not present.
When the General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia, said the Electoral Commission (EC) Chairperson, Jean Mensa, had brought spiritualists to an IPAC meeting to cast away demons when he was not part of the engagement, many wondered whether he was serious. We, as well as most Ghanaians, knew he was not.
He was only throwing up his stock-in-trade comic relief in a country where too much politics, as played by the NDC especially, often raises the temperature beyond acceptable Celsius or Fahrenheit. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and matters arising thereof, have not helped matters, the fallouts throwing the economies of even the developed world asunder let alone Ghana.
At IPAC meetings, the agendas are on the electoral system and how to better its integrity but strangely, the NDC abhors such discussions. The opposition party has, as a matter of policy, boycotted IPAC meetings in recent times, the only party to do so. Their boycott notwithstanding, IPAC decisions have remained binding anyway.
Maybe the opposition party is longing to be part of the IPAC meetings, failure to get an appropriate means of doing so, the scribe has decided to throw a joke. Perhaps through that, a path would be carved for a return without losing face.
When such jokes are spewed by persons known for their drab humour, we can only smile and say “there he goes again”. We too have joined the Asiedu Nketia fun train.
We do not know whether the man whose political modus operandi is comical, regards the usual prayers at the beginning of most, if not all Ghanaian public events, are for him, the employment of spiritualists.
All the lady in charge of the EC has done before any activity at her end is asking for God’s presence.
With the constitution of some countries commencing with the mention of God Almighty, it stands to reason that for every function, prayers to the Creator should precede the agenda. If that is the spiritualism the scribe is referring to, we can manage a wry smile.
If he intended it as a comic relief, he succeeded but as a serious issue worthy of a conversation, he has failed.
Those who saw the story could not afford not to smile or even jiggle when they went into it. They ended up with remarks like “ah what is this?”. He was not referring to a smoking pot, dried chameleon carcasses and alligator pepper but the prayers to God Most High. That was his worry.