There are two persons in the Holy Bible who played a very significant role in the lives of mankind but whose real names were not mentioned. This boggles my mind anytime I remember them. One of these persons is the ‘Inn Keeper’. This was a poor man who was managing an inn and when Joseph and Mary knocked at the door, looking for a place to lay their weary body, the man told them that the place was full.
He did not lie because it was a special occasion and so many people had visited Jerusalem to register for the census which Caesar Augustus had decreed. All the Gospel writers failed to mention the name of this poor guy who did not know that the pregnant Mary was carrying the Messiah who would come to save mankind. If he had known that or if God had revealed to him like he did to Isaiah, the man would have given Joseph and Mary his own room for them to sleep so that the Messiah would be born there. That was why the Lord Jesus Christ was born in a manger.
Another one is the guy who recommended Joseph to Pharaoh when Pharaoh could not understand the dream that he dreamt. When all the sorcerers of Egypt had woefully and wrongfully explained the dream to Pharaoh, it took this ex-convict to recommend Joseph to the king. After Joseph had explained the dream to Pharaoh, the king swallowed everything hook, line and sinker. But for Joseph, Egyptians and, in fact, the Israelis would have died of hunger because the famine which ravaged the land of Egypt was so devastating that no one could have survived after the seven years that famine struck the land of Egypt. Again, the Bible did not mention the name of this man who introduced Joseph to Pharaoh. And so Pharaoh ordered that food should be stored for the seven years that Egypt expected abundance of harvest so that when the famine eventually came, the people could get food to eat. And so it was done.
In 1972 to 1974, food and fish became so abundant in Ghana that we had nowhere to store the excess. Fishermen along the coast of Ghana experienced an unprecedented bumper catch of various types of fishes, but sadly we had no place to store them. Instead of building cold stores to store the excess fishes, we chose to eat what we caught and jettisoned the remaining in the high sea. We did not act like the ant who saw the need to save food for the rainy day. As we went along enjoying the bumper harvest of herrings and other types of fishes, another type of fish species called ‘Ewura Efua’ invaded our sea and devoured almost every fish stock. We then resorted to eating ‘Ewura Efua’, which was not as palatable as the other vanished species. In no time, ‘Ewura Efua’ too vanished and has not been the same again.
When General Acheampong took over power, he decreed that Ghana will not pay any debt that we owned any country (‘yentua’). As a result of that reckless statement, no country was prepared to give Ghana any loan, not to talk of grants. The good old general introduced what he called ‘operation feed yourself’ and made sure Ghanaians got involved in the cultivation of staple food to feed the nation. He followed it up with another one called ‘operation backyard gardening’. These caught up so well with Ghanaians that we did not care whether food like rice were imported into the country or not. In fact, we were satisfied with the local rice produced by our farmers. Plantain, cocoyam, yam, maize, beans and other cereals became so abundant that we even forgot that foreign countries refused to give us loans to import food.
Before Professor Busia was overthrown by General Acheampong in a military coup, he had also introduced the ‘go back to the land’ project which targeted the youth who had started trooping to the cities for non-existent menial jobs. Many of the youth who heeded the call went back to their respective village to engage in farming. Some got engaged in cocoa farming and ended up being successful in their endeavours. Today, those who heeded the call and went back home to engage in farming were able to educate their children who are now living good.
Ever since the Ministry of Food & Agriculture introduced the ‘planting for food and jobs’ as one of the flagship programmes of the NPP regime, the dynamics of agriculture have changed. For the past three years, this country has never experienced food shortages. At a point in time, Ghana exported plantain and other foodstuffs to neighbouring countries like Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso Mali and Niger. As at the time of writing this piece, farmers in the Northern, Bono and Ahafo regions are struggling to get buyers to buy their old yams since the new ones are being harvested.
I had cause to write some time ago in this column that it was not for nothing that Dr. Kwame Nkrumah established the University of Science & Technology. The Osagyefo anticipated that a time will come when Ghana would produce scientists to be at the forefront of our industrialization efforts. Many years after the establishment of this particular university, not a single scientist who is a product of this university has invented any machine that could store raw materials like yam and plantains. And so when such food crops become abundant as has been happening every years since the introduction of ‘planting for food and jobs’, we eat what we could eat and leave the rest to rot away. Sad indeed!
I, hereby, challenge our science professors and graduates of the University of Science & Technology to sit up and do something, else generation yet unborn will write their names in bronze. Enough of the ‘long’ Queen’s language and botanical names. Habba!
By Eric Bawah