Achebe said it many years ago, long before my father met my mother. What did he say? The old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb. But in our case, it is not dry bones. It is dry potent powder called cocaine? And who gets uneasy? Not any old woman. But those who have NDC running through their blood veins? Has any NDC card bearer or party executive or member of parliament been arrested or convicted of smuggling cocaine? No. Not that I know of? Then why this trouble with the ruling party and the embarrassing situation where a foreign minister who hardly comments on serious foreign affairs about our nation seemingly acting as a mouthpiece of a drug baron? It is because of our sheer stupidity. The foolishness of politicising crime in Ghana. All of us vote for one party or the other. So in essence, we belong to political parties. When we succeed in a trade, marry, buy a house or car, we succeed as individuals. But when we commit a crime, we are identified with our political parties. An armed robber is a criminal. A wayward young man who sets a house ablaze is a criminal. Under the normal circumstances, every sensible person must treat them as such. But if you butcher someone or set a house ablaze in Tamale, Gushiegu or Bawku, for instance, you are identified as either NDC or NPP, and in some cases, it is extended to your ethnic group. When that happens the criminal is shielded from arrest and prosecution in most cases. In a society of civilised and sensible human beings, Ruby Appiah has done something that has brought the nation into disrepute and she should be seen as such. She has committed a crime and she should be seen as a criminal and the law must be allowed to take its course. But here we are politicising it and allowing it to take all our time when we dont have electricity or water flowing through our taps. My greatest fear is that certain criminal activities will be swept under the carpet and the culprits allowed to walk free just because the government of the day will be associated with the crime if they are made public. I still dont know if anybody would have heard about Ruby if she was stopped at the Kotoka International Airstrip. When it so happens, our society becomes dangerous. If we are to go by the senseless equalisation, we can now conclude that both NDC and NPP are cocaine parties because in both regimes we had incidents of cocaine. And since about 95% of us vote for these parties, none of us is clean. But since we know that this business is illegal and tagging one party or the other with cocaine means tagging ourselves, can we be wise and sensible for once? Can we remove the political cloaks we put on crime and criminals and deal with it in order to make our society work?
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 13:16:50 +0000
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