MUSINGS OF A BYSTANDER-RE: IN RESPONSE TO BHOMANJO BLIND, UNQUESTIONING OBEDIENCE IS THE LAW OF TYRANTS AND OF SLAVES: IT DOES NOT YET FLOURISH ON……………GHANAIAN SOIL (Lord Simmonds) I was minding my business elsewhere, when my attention was drawn to an article with my name as the heading. The person who drew my attention said I should ignore the post with all the contempt it deserves, but I said that would amount to hasty conclusion since I have not personally read the article, and whether it is worth responding to or not. So after my hectic engagement, I decided to find out what at all this article about me with my sacred name as the heading for publication on no less a platform but on Facebook was all about. I think at this point we all do agree that facebook is an interactive and idea sharing platform. I checked the author and saw the byline of my own senior brother, senior bro Nnabali Iddrisu Kokohare, who has totally forgotten about himself and his placement in our society and descended to the gutters and indeed to the gutters he really went. My senior brother Kokohare bathed himself with nothing but emotions and completely lost control in addressing the issues raised in my earlier publications and in fact, started calling me names as well as describing me in a very subtle manner as a ‘complete stranger’ to the very society I find myself in. Senior Bro Kokohare cooked in what local parlance is called Npontonportor.It is indeed amazing to read that a senior brother like Nnabali Iddrisu Kokohare will descend so low in public discourse since Facebook, as I pointed out earlier, is a special platform meant for addressing each other and sharing ideas. But if the seniors who are leading the juniors will not behave themselves and will choose to reduce themselves to nothing, the juniors will have none of it. I will not in my life time insult or denigrate anybody who is ahead of me in life, more so if the age of the fellow is more than the number of days and years I have spent in this sinful world of ours. I will not do anything untoward like what my senior brother Kokohare has done, but I want to delve into his current write up and expose a character who some few months ago came chasing for the office of Municipal Chief Executive of the Wa Municipal Assembly and his hypocritical stands on regional development. I wonder whether with this kind of pettiness, self seeking and self righteousness approach, whether or not Nnabali Iddrisu Kokohare would have survived a day in the most respected office of MCE for the Wa municipal assembly. Leaders are supposed to be tolerant with high sense of purpose, leaders must be accommodating and above all, leaders must have total patience to deal with all manner of people around them, whether friends or foes. You see, what makes the case of senior bro Nnabali Iddrisu Kokohare quite unfortunate and which deserves condemnation is the fact that he left cosmopolitan London to come and vied for the position of MCE like I said earlier, that is fine and well and may be a well deserved position for him. But for such a person to exhibit this culture of intolerance and be descending to the gutters with vituperative comments, thinking that because at National Service level he was writing speeches for people like Naa Seidu Braimah(who then was the district chief executive), nobody should question his activities, truly begs the question. Listen to Kokohare “I shall ask the Honorable Naa Seidu Braimah for whom I wrote speeches as a national serviceman”. This is what I refer to as intellectual arrogance! Now to the point: Listen or read the writings of our current ‘intellectual hero’ “My objection to Bhomanjo MISSING IN ACTION post stemmed from my finding the post to be objectionable and the subsequent attempt to justify it pathetic”. This was the genesis of our disagreement which has degenerated into this current ugly situation. Senior bro Kokohare ordered me to remove the a picture I posted on fb.Hear him” In a comment I asked Bhomanjo to remove the photo……….On a social media like Facebook how do you go about ordering people to remove pictures according to him he finds very objectionable? I found that behavior quite strange, autocratic and totally out of place in our modern times. Senior bro Kokohare suffers from what I term ‘generation gap’. He left town for ‘donkey years’ and so all those he knew before as children must ‘kowtow and prostrate’ to him because he is the ‘orga Kpatakpata’. Senior bro Kokohare says that my reference to him as ‘a voice from afar’ amounts to “discrimination and xenophobia”. This is hitting below the belt. The very Wala tribe senior bro Kokohare and I belong to have an attitude for those who stay outside for long and have not been coming home. Senior bro Kokohare knows that and for sure. The term ‘Morkpiera’ (literally those who go into the bush) refers to those who must have left their community and stayed outside it. Even those who left the Upper West Region and headed towards the southern half of the country are termed as ‘’Morkpieriba”; meaning those who have gone to the bush. It is not a derogatory term. It is a term all and sundry must be aware and accept as the folk’s way of the people here. Senior bro Kokohare lives six thousand miles away from Ghana, and so my reference to him as the ‘voice from afar’, is nothing short of a proper description of his current situation and abode. I want to believe that the truth and the reality of the situation struck senior bro Kokohare to the marrow and so for my description simply means: “when Bhomanjo persistently calls me the voice from afar guy (whatever that really means), he is being as tribalist as they come. In fact, he is practising the worst form of tribalism there is, in my view: he is whipping up sentiments against a perceived outsider; but worse, what he is really doing is deliberately representing me falsely in order to whip up sentiments. He is appealing to his friends and others to put me in my place as the ALIEN from metropolitan London who I am. That affinity to alienate, to quarantine a person or people - because they did not sit in the same school or madrasat classroom with you, because they do not pray in your mosque or do not share the same great-grandfather with you or are not under Favourites in your Smartphone contact list or simply because of what you perceive them to be - is dangerous and must be discouraged by all of us. It is division. It is discrimination. It is prejudice of the worst order. Is calling me voice from afar a coded invitation of hostility to what I have to say on Facebook simply for the reason that I lived abroad and, consequently, lost my right to speak about Wa and the Upper West? Should there be in Wa a phobia of men and women who lived abroad? (Perhaps, there is; perhaps, there should be. If there must be, then I suggest it must not be selective. It must be applied across board to all and sundry who have lived abroad, not to the man from Jengbeyiri who lived in urban London only.) So what if I lived abroad? So what if I was indeed an alien? Wa was always welcoming of ALL: that is why we have the diversity there is today as seen in the Ewes, the Akans, the Gonjas, the Moshis and all the other peoples of Wa. Since when did Wa develop cainophobia? When did xenophobia creep into my hometown? The world is truly a global village now. We must not cocoon ourselves in Wa and call other people names”. Folks have you seen how our senior brother Kokohare allows emotions to cloud his judgment to the extent that the term ‘Morkpieriba’, for me ‘voice from afar’ as it is being used for natives who stayed outside their home region is according to Kokohare a xenophobic term? The entire Upper West community must then be condemned because according to senior bro Kokohare that description founded by the people of the Upper West Region is discrimination with intent to play up people against each other. Senior bro Kokohare, come again on this matter. Listen to the words of senior bro Kokohare who sits six thousand miles away from his home region: “Bhomanjo should try this for size: silence me with the strength of his argument and the logicalness of his assertions. He will not silence me with insult. And, perhaps, whilst trying force of argument he may learn Voltaires tolerance that I detest what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. His intolerance of alternative views should have no place in Wa society. His unprovoked disrespect for seniority is uncharacteristic of Waala manhood - and even I, Bhomanjos metropolitan Londoner, have not lost that Wali common sense”. How can I silence my dear senior bro who stands ‘tall’ among his peers and wants the entire world through facebook to know that? I bi small boy self,i no go fit do that at all. This is storm in a tea cup situation. I truly pity big bro Kokohare for allowing emotions to take the better part of him. Aristotle will say that such people like big bro Kokohare need the therapy of “purgation of emotions”. Senior bro Kokohare would have chewed me up in this civilizing moments if I were before him, I guess so? Phew,the senior bro with proper ‘blofo’, now the word ‘voice from afar’ is discriminatory and xenophobic according senior bro Kokohare. Again I want to believe that the word ‘Morkpiera’ is akin to ‘voice from afar’, so senior bro Kokohare what is your problem? That ‘Morkpiera’ is now an insult to you and your like minds? In the wale language, part of the greetings for those who stayed outside their communities is: ‘Ke kpiering taa morkpieriba’- to wit how are you and your colleagues who have gone the bush way?(literally speaking) These are words often said to the hearing of those affected and it’s an acceptable way of saying same as ‘voice from afar’.Or because of political advantage you are afraid to be labeled as ‘a voice from afar’? Senior bro Kokohare accused me and said with an unfounded authority that “I found Bhomanjo to be pompous and full of self-righteousness and arrogating to himself a status he does not hold”. My senior brother Kokohare said I have insulted him by the use of the words “Voice from afar”, simply because he lives six thousand miles away from home. Kokohare my senior brother has never under the sun seen me in person I believe so. We are only friends on Facebook, simplicita. The closest that I can say big bro Kokohare has come to knowing me may be through his brothers who were my juniors at the secondary school level. Probably, he must have heard some ‘tales’ about me. Senior Bro Kokohare NEVER met me.It was one day in Wa township when he came to ‘steal’ his way into the office of the MCE that somebody pointed him out to me, I saw him only once. He has no idea about me at all and while addressing me like a ghost, he says I am pompous and arrogating to myself a status I do not hold in society. I have been with the ordinary people in the Upper West society without any status and shall continue to dine and wine with the ordinary people forever. As a social worker I have been with them knowing and seeking possible solutions to their problems. Senior bro Kokohare who wants the position of MCE for Wa, and he now has a strata of society that people must belong to before they can associate with him and so I have no status at all so far he is concerned. I am a very humble person and will NEVER NEVER arrogate to myself a nonexistent status. For the religion senior bro Kokohare and myself profess, which is Islam (I guess so) says that “all are equal before Allah, the most respected in the sight of Allah is he that is pious”. So senior bro Kokohare, you are living in cosmopolitan London and therefore can’t create class society for our people back home. Your belief about status and social strata in the Upper West Region is nothing but a phantom situation and a figment of your own dangerous ideas and imaginations. May Allah save us from the claws of your leadership should you be successful one day as MCE for Wa. Exactly what do you mean by that, senior bro? Because I have seen you once from afar and you have NEVER seen me before ;( I guess so) so where is this idea about my unclaimed status is coming from? That I arrogate myself to place in society I do not belong to. So if you were appointed as the MCE these would have been the sort of things you would have been engaging yourself into? Creating a class society? May Allah save us from your ambition,AMEN. Listen to the high apostle of ‘respect’, referring to me thus- “His unprovoked disrespect for seniority is uncharacteristic of Waala manhood - and even I, Bhomanjos metropolitan Londoner, have not lost that Wali common sense”. You see senior bro, respect is not sold in the open market, and it is properly earned by those who deserve it. And listen to the advice given to senior bro Kokohare by another person on facebook on the same issue-Yussif Mahama “Nabali , try to always get yourself well composed before reacting to issues anywhere and anytime or else you end up missing the point completely. If you disagree with someone, you can always make or state your disagreement(s) without necessarily descending into the gutter. The beauty of Democracy is to accept or allow dissenting views. We can always disagree to agree. Cease fire my brother”. The views of an independent observer. It speaks volume about the character of the very person who is gunning to become our Municipal Chief Executive for Wa. May the Good Lord save us from this ‘high apostles’ of society. I will not return fire for fire but what I will tell senior bro Kokohare is that, time heals and since he is gunning for societal leadership, we are waiting to see the kind of leader he will be should he in any unlikely event mount the rostrum to lead the people in the Wa municipal area. I have maintained that senior bro suffers from intellectual arrogance and it is a position I am restating here and now. This position has been reinforced by his recent emotional outbursts: “I am neither ashamed of what knowledge I have nor should I be apologizing to Bhomanjo for it. If Bhomanjo has a chip on his shoulder about how well I write - my high sounding language with perfect grammar was how he first referred to it - that should be a problem for him to resolve; long may the chip remain on his shoulder”. This is senior bro writing to his junior brother. My description was an acknowledgement of senior bro who can excite with his write ups made up of flowery and refined language with good grammar, pure and simple. Nothing short of that. Today senior bro says it’s a cross I must carry on my shoulders. Well, senior bro Kokohare, I have no problem with you because I have seen you from afar once, and but for Facebook, maybe we will never have met in this life. All you need to succeed in life is humility. It is particularly dangerous for you as a would be politician to always allow emotion to steal the show from you when simple reasoning with your junior brother would have solved the problem. Let us allow our heads to work and stop being emotional, big bro. But you see, what I want to drum home for you to realize is that nobody played any part in your departure in your search for greener pastures six thousand miles away from home. If all were to abandon the ship like you did when you started ‘blossoming’ within the rank and file of the Ghana Civil Service, this opportunity you now have to run commentary about the very society you abandoned would not have existed. You left and those who stayed behind to mind the ship must be allowed to run around as required without any let or hindrance. You cannot hide behind your write ups to bamboozle us in trying to have your way. So if you were successful as MCE, is this the kind of mediocrity you would have exhibited? Your assertion that “we planted the roots of the PNDC when most of those prancing around now were in their nappies;” is quite unfortunate and an insult to your person. This is because if one plants a tree, the person will not run away and allow the tree to grow. Even the rain water, our people say, is seasonal. You better humble yourself and stop this unnecessary exposure of your hatred and dislike for your society and its people. When I accused you of intellectual arrogance you said you will have none of it. You have found yourself in a pick and choose situation and listen to your very good self: “I will speak to my uncle Alhaji Damani Jamatutu who was a minister under NDC1 or I will speak to my uncle Alhaji Seidu Jamatutu; hell, I will speak to my brother Alhaji Yussif Mohammed who was there at the outset of the NDC as scribe registering members to the new party in a room in my grandfathers storeybuilding in Jengbeyiri, a room which would house the party for years. If I want the best advice on the nuances in local politics or and the Machiavellian nature of Wa politics, I will drink from the experience and wisdom of my cousin Alhaji Short”. What is more tribalistic and xenophobic than this senior bro? All these people you have mentioned are blood relations and nothing short of that. What is more tribalistic and xenophobic than what you have just mentioned, I am asking you again? What it means that NEPOTISM is your lot since you will not speak to anybody on NDC matters but only your blood relations. So this would have been your method of building Wa municipal? In matters of politics do we consult blood relations alone? Or in building the Wa Municipality is this the time tested approach you would have adopted to the exclusion of the masses? Think about these things big bro. Senior bro Kokohare you are a danger to our society. You see your problem as mentioned earlier is due to the fact that you suffer from generation gap. You have remained detached from the main for long and so you think you hold the final authority and all must listen to you. The ‘intellectual’ that you, you deliberately deviated from the issue of the nature of a life a politician must lead after leaving office; whether he is a private person or still a public one, and rather chose your own path and that path must be crossed. And so senior bro you and I will let the chips fall where they may. This is the cause of all this needless brouhaha between you and me. It is indeed a pity when seniority fails to function and take its pride of place. Senior bro with all due respect, YOU ARE A COWARD. You will wonder why I am saying that you are a coward. Your cowardice stems from the fact that your contemporaries such as Khalid Mahmoud, Honorable Bagbin and others with whom you went to Libya with government agreement, have all returned home and helped in various capacities to build their respective societies for many years running. You, senior bro, the coward that you are and a self seeking man, you never came back, and you broke government to government agreement and went to cool off in London. And today you shamelessly want to come home, even then you were bundled back home to come and pick the office of MCE just like the common ‘masa’ or ‘kose’ that is being sold in the open market. You erroneously thought that some have done it and so it’s the time for senior bro Kokohare to also do same. You are behind time man. In sharp contrast, your mum served our community with all her heart and the humility that is associated with it. Your mum represents all the virtues in womanhood. Last year I paid her a visit together with some friends. All other siblings in the family are great brothers and friends. What do you do apart from engaging in diatribe to satisfy a paranoiac needless need and selfish ego? If you are truly interested in helping to push the Upper West Region forward, leave your metropolitan London and come home for us to engage in useful debate. There are plethora of radio stations in the capital Wa, come and debate me and stop this act cowardice which will not take us anywhere. While in Wa, you never went to stay at Jenggbeyiri you feel so ‘proud’ about, rejecting your own people from the onset, sleeping in hotels and government residence speaks volume about you and the kind person you are big bro. These are my rebuttals never an insult to my senior bro.You already said I have no respect for seniority. I still maintain that respect is earned for those who truly deserve it. I left my father at a very tender age in Accra and came to the Upper West Region. All my secondary education to the point of nationals service was done in the Upper West Region and senior bro, I have never looked back, I have made the Upper West Region my number one home(don’t forget I am a true son of the soil of the Wala extraction)My wife from the Upper West Region and so if you describe me as a complete stranger, between the two of us I am the better because I am in town building the very society you have rejected because of your self-seeking interests. You only come home surreptitiously only and only if there are vacant of political posts. And so you totally missed the point and failed to be just to yourself when I call you ‘a voice from afar’, you took offence and started thinking on tribal and xenophobic terms its unfortunate and sad for our intellectual hero. You said you are open to scholarship since you do not write with spelling mistakes, this time you have totally missed the point, because as a demi-god you are able to read my Greek language, thanks to goodness. We are not in the Holy land of Mecca. Stop the circumambulations like people on a pilgrimage do and face the reality. LUTA CONTINUA.Abi you get what I dey talk senior bro? I rest my case!
Posted on: Sun, 19 Jan 2014 10:31:42 +0000
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