“London Is Burning, London Is Burning.
Fetch The Engine, Fetch The Engine.
Fire, Fire, Fire, Fire.
Pour On Water, Pour On Water”
I was not born in an era where we had day nurseries, not to talk of crèches. We went straight to class one. No curve, no bend. We were grownups and our parents had to shave our armpits before giving us their pieces of cloth to cover our naked bodies and go to school. Don’t talk of footwear because even our parents walked barefooted.
Here I go again with my circumlocution. I am just about to focus my leans on the storm that is gathering in the National Democratic Congress and forecast on what will come next as the storm continues to batter the walls of the party. I knew it will come to this at the right time and the time is now. The whole scenario was written boldly on the wall but the NDC had no Daniel among them to interpret the meaning of the writing. Elders of the party who should have been the ones to tame the tide have decided to stay afar and let the so-called leaders of the party to swim in their own foolishness. The message is clear: “If you say you can do it without us, do it and let us see!”
The NDC should have looked through their crystal ball to see the storm gathering right from the day Professor Mills died mysteriously. The man went away with the peace that he preached and breathed chaos into the hearts of the party he left behind. His restless ghost unbridled the mouths of the leadership of the party and they started contracting verbal diarrhea.
Respect for elders in the party was thrown to the dogs as upstarts in the party hijacked the party and started misbehaving. If an opportunist like Sammy Gyamfi could take on Rt. Hon, Algban Bagbin and veteran Allotey Jacobs, you can imagine how low respect of elders has sunk in the party.
When I was growing up in the Zongo, we were trained not to insult elders because if we did they will curse us and life will be difficult for us in future. And so if an elderly person insulted us for one reason or the other, we ran from his sight for fear of retaliating and incurring the wrath and curse that may emerge from the mouth of such an elderly person. We even knelt down to thank an elderly person who reprimanded us. All these have gone with the win and the youth have gone haywire. They have the funny feeling that the world is on their shoulders so they can do everything that they want without looking back. The result is what we are seeing today in the party.
The first casualty of insults by the babies with sharp teeth was the late Mr. Rawlings. He incurred the displeasure of these upstarts when he started to criticize the party he founded. He told Ghanaians that about sixty percent of the John Mahama appointees were corrupt and that unless the party toed the line of probity and accountability, which is the bedrock of the revolution that gave birth to the party, they will lose the elections. That was a bitter pill for Mr. Mahama and his selected few to swallow. And so they released their hounds and attack dogs to take the founder of the party to the cleaners and they did that in a grand style. As at the time Mr. Rawlings died, he still had pain embedded in his heart.
He had the pain because he used his teeth to crack palm kennel for people to eat but the same people did not appreciate his efforts. Sad, indeed.
It was Rawlings who plucked Mr. Mahama, Asiedu Nketia and some of those who want women to sing their praises in the party from the gutter and made them who they are today but the same people treated him so shabbily. Na so the world be.
Then the fire started burning after the death of Ogyam. The Mahama team started by suspending Koku Anyidoho (‘Mahama is in a comfortable lead’) for opening his mouth too wide. As for Koku, the fire brand, his trouble with the party started when his boss, Professor Atta Mills died mysteriously. Even before the death of the good old Prof., Mr. Mahama had lost favour with the Professor and blamed Koku for his woes. The death of Professor Mills gave Mr. Mahama the opportunity to settle scores with Koku. To clip his feathers, Mr. Mahama made sure Anyidoho lost his bid to be the General Secretary of the party. Koku the Bull refused to be cowed so he kicked like a wounded bull and when Mahama and his team could not stand it anymore, the only option was to suspend Koku.
The case of Allotey Jacobs, the educated fisherman, is laughable if not interesting. The man saw in President Akufo Adddo and his vice, Dr. Bawumia, leaders who are working tirelessly to bring the country out of the woods and praised them for their efforts. As a Ghanaian who lives in Ghana, he saw no reason why he should not call a spade a spade and rather call it a digging instrument.
It was Allotey Jacobs who first told the world that he had resigned from the NDC for reasons best known to himself and we believed in him. Barely two weeks after his resignation, the NDC wrote to Allotey Jacobs that he had been suspended from the party. How absurd!!!. How can you shave the beards of a man in his absence? The person who signed that so-called letter of suspension might be suffering from madness in his stomach and needs to be sent to the Pantang Psychiatrist Hospital for immediate cure. The man resigned and you say you have suspended him. How stupid!!!
Since it is very difficult if not impossible to mend a broken heart, it will take magic for the NDC to uncoil themselves from the grip of the spider’s net that they have found themselves in. In fact, they have to exorcise the ghost of Professor Fiifi Atta Mills which seems to be restless following his suspicious death and calling for justice. Have I stirred the Hornet’s Nest?
Excuse me while I blow out some smoke from my piece of cigar. After all, life is too short.
By Eric Bawah