“Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age”
Jonathan Swift
“Our need will be the real creator” (Necessity is the mother invention; mater atrium necessitas)
Plato – Republic
In 1633, Galileo Galilei brazenly stood before the Inquisition and insisted in his belief that the earth orbited the sun instead of vice versa. Galileo had what we would now term; a “crude” telescope, with which he made (at the time) this heretic conclusion.
What! Heresy! Ex-communicate Galileo! And the Grand Duchess Christina of Lorraine, the widow of the Medici Grand Duke Ferdinand I of Tuscany, would have none of that from her “country-man”. What was Galileo teaching Cosimo? Maths? Philosophy? Astronomy?
And in 1632 Galileo had written his famous book, “Dialogue on the Two World Systems – The Polemic and Copernican” that led to his trial. The Catholic Church classified Galileo’s astronomical finding (that the earth orbits the sun) as conflicting with the Church’s.
Heliocentrism was against the Church’s teaching as found in Ecclesiastes 1: “The Sun also riseth and the Sun goeth down and hasteth to his place where he arose.” But Galileo was lucky to have escaped the gallows; he was given a house arrest for eight years for refusing to recant the heresy. (Unlike Giordano Bruno who was sentenced to death for or upholding the theory propounded by Copernicus in his book ‘De Revolutionibus Orbium coelestium’).
That was when Pope Urban VIII had stated, “I know better than all the Cardinals put together; the word of a living Pope is worth more than the sayings of a hundred dead ones.”
In 1687 we had Isaac Newton and his “Newtonian universal gravitation calculus” or “Newton’s laws of motion” or “the theory of relativity”. One may remember, “Every object perseveres in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, except in so far as it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed thereon.”
OR “The change of motion of an object is proportional to the force impressed, and is made in the direction of the straight line in which the force is impressed.” OR “To every action, there is always opposed an equal reaction” OR “The mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary part.”
Who would have dreamt of aeroplanes carting people and cargo from country to country, till the Wright Brothers (Orville Wright and Wilbour Wright), the American aviation pioneers built and flew the world’s first successful airplane in 1903.
Until 1969 man had been researching into the prospects of landing on the moon – till Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first persons to land on the moon in Appollo II although rockets had been orbiting the moon since 1959 with Soviet Union’s Luna 2.
Look at the Suez Canal; the role of the Ottoman Empire in the 1550s especially that of Sokullu Mehmet, trying to connect the Mediterranean with the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez – till November 1869 when Ferdinand de Lesseps built the Seuz Canal.
Libya has an irrigation system that pumps water from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer from down south in Libya to cities in the Libyan northern Mediterranean including Tripoli and Bengazi; this water covers a distance of 1,600 kilometers, providing 70% of all freshwater used in Libya. No wonder, ex-Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi described it as the “Eighth Wonder of the World”. It was, indeed “The Great Man-made River Project”.
Look at the advent of radio. Check the progress of the television and the use of mobile phones. (In the 1970s one had to go to the Post Office to book a call in the morning, and return to the same Post Office at about midnight for the call to friends and relations overseas).
So, if Nana Kwame Bediako, alias Cheddar, a presidential hopeful and Leader of the New Force Movement says he would bring the sea from Accra to Kumasi, why the fuzz?
On Abusua 96.5FM in Kumasi, Kwame Bediako was emphatic: “Why are we still transporting individual containers by road when the sea could offer a faster and more efficient means?” After all, a city like Dubai had been transformed from a dry desert to a coastal city.
Is the claim a mere rhetoric or serious ambition? Does Bediako have to be chided or mocked? Those who know this young man, a businessman turned politician will tell you he is a serious guy: “I will dredge to get the sea to Kumasi so we can bring ships here. It’s 2024, we can’t be dragging containers to Kumasi.”
Joe Kuntani is afraid of sea creatures, so he shouts: “Sea is coming to Kumasi very soon. Maame Water and all sea creatures will be inside. Maxwell mocks; “National Cathedral sef we no fit build, ebe sea Chedder come do for Kumasi, ei.”
But someone chips in, “What a win for the Ashanti Nation.” Sea air is clean with high oxygen levels; sea air enhances the balance of serotonin levels and looking at the blue sea activates opiate receptors in the brain and releases dopamine, giving one pleasure.
“If you had the sea, in one hour, five hundred containers will be here. You can also ship out 500 containers in the same fashion… I want to build power station, energy stations. I want to connect the gas; I want to create industries; bring technology… we must build our own mobile phone and laptops. We have the plastics here. The same lithium we are selling to the Chinese can be harnessed to our own benefit…”
Nana Kwame Bediako was born at Asokwa in Kumasi on February 13, 1980. He attended Accra Academy and then moved on to Apam Secondary School. He studied business at Waltham Forest College in the United Kingdom.
Legend has it that his father gave him and a brother some money. While the brother bought bread and eggs, Kwame used the money to buy two hens, starting a poultry business which sold 200 eggs a month… sold clothes to fellow students; in 1999, he ventured into the telecommunications sector. He sold the company to an Indian investor for £410,000.
He claims that it was God who told him “Go back to Africa” (like Moses in the biblical story: Exodus 9:1-7… Let my people go). Bediako is assessed to possess between $2 billion and $5 billion. He came to Accra and established the Kwarleyz Group, the developer of Wonda World Estate in Accra and a proposed Petronia City. (The Kwarleyz Group has constructed 500 units of residential, commercial and industrial buildings).
On January 7, 2024, Bediako announced that he would run as the candidate for the New Force Movement, after weeks of speculations of the face behind the “masked” picture on huge billboards all over the country. Bediako is committed to philanthropy aimed at uplifting underprivileged communities.
His ‘New African Foundation’ could not hold its convention that date with speakers like PLO Lumumba, Peter Obi, Julius Malema. But he says: “I am a son of the soil, and my mission is to enhance humanity. I came here to contribute value to this world and nature. I won’t depart without making God proud of me.”
PLO Lumumba, Peter Obi and Julius Malema said in one voice: “Africa is suffering due to a lack of leadership; it is failed leadership over the years that has brought Africa where it is.”
AfricanusOwusu-Ansah