ONE SMALL STEP FOR MAAZI OKORO, A WAVELENGTH OF CIVILIZATION TO THE YOUTH OF NIMA AND BEYOND.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter”…….Martin Luther king Jr.

Whenever a society is faced with a myriad of problems, whenever a society is sunk into the bottomless pit of underdevelopment, whenever a society finds itself in the doldrums of absolute despondency, whenever a society has no clear cut policy and direction, the only salvation to this society is its new generation. The youth of such a society must make the painstaking effort to take its destiny in their own hands.

A classic example to this effect is when our beloved nation was plunged into the bondage of colonialism and imprisoned in the shackles of imperialism, several efforts to save it and give it a taste of freedom and independence proved downright futile. It took a man with fresh ideas to bring the long awaited dream (freedom) into reality. And this quest was highly successful due to the strong support and concerted effort of the youth to help him. The man was Kwame Nkrumah and the youth was galvanized into the Committee on Youth Organization, CYO.  The rest they say “is history”.

We live in a community where we are still been hoodwinked into thinking abnormally. This abnormal thinking has to do with the frivolous and backward   conventions and norms that certain positions are meant for the “elders.”

It is baffling and sometimes irritating to find an ignoramus portraying himself as the know-it-all just because he is a man of age.
It is high time we (youth) broke away from this untruthful, vacuous, empty and backward thinking. At least the proverbial case of Solomon (the wisest man ever) and Methuselah (the oldest man ever) is a fountain we can draw inspiration from because “the wisdom of Solomon had nothing to do with the age of Methuselah.”

If we fail to take up the mantle of leadership in our communities, then that will be the very bane of our existence.  For too long we have vested power into our so called “elders” and they have failed us woefully.

I find it difficult to comprehend, do we as a community lack competent people in our midst who can represent us at the higher level? We have given enough chance to “foreigners” and their cumulative performance is appalling and nothing to write home about. We the people of Nima have vested our confidence into the hands two DOCTORS as our Members of Parliament and without any modicum of doubt, I will say they have failed us.  Why are we failing to think us a community?  It’s time we started voting wisely and prudently. We have allowed these people to take us for a ride. Don’t we have people from this community competent enough and conscious of the plight of the community to agitate and champion our cause?

 My fellow youth lets wake up from our slumber and fight for this community. It is at this point that I lift my hands up for Inusah Mohammed (Maazi Okoro} for such a bold step in contesting for the Assemblyman.

 Let us as youth take a great cue from the confidence   of this young, hardworking and educated youth.

It’s time we sat and make the right decision by giving our support to the youth.

Barring all unforeseen circumstances, we will sooner than later be going to the polls to elect our assemblymen for the various electoral areas.

I am not trying to be a political chauvinist. Neither am I not been politically jingoistic, but I think it’s time we vested the destiny of this community into the subtle hands of the youth, for I believe the destiny of any community rests on the shoulders of the youth. Let’s vote wisely. Let’s support the youth and we shall see ourselves raised from the nadir to the zenith of prosperity and development.

Alhassan Ahmed

NB: The writer is a student of Tafsiliyya School for Training and Education and the University of Ghana.

TEN TAKEAWAYS FROM THE SHATTA MOVEMENT FAMILY'S SHOW IN ALAJO

It’s now 2:50 am in the morning. I am now entering home after the Lord answered my prayer to make my deeply-slept sister Ruwaida pick my call and help me with the locked gate. That prevented me from using the burglar approach of jumping the wall which I usually do. With my Quran chapter 12 on replay and my Zesta Plantation Fresh Strawberry tea in my jug, I decide to make my observations from the Shatta Movement Family show staged in Alajo dance to Rudeboy Ranking’s “Dan Banza” on my monitor.

1.     I hate a duicker called Shatta Wale. On the other hand, our elders say we should never fail to acknowledge its swiftness no matter how much we hate it. Never will I forget how his presence helped in unearthing musical talents in Nima-Maamobi and its environs. He has succeeded in awakening the giants in the youth albeit some of the noisemakers who claim they are also doing Dancehall.

2.     Rudeboy Ranking is a man from another planet. His performance at the show was the tour de force of the entire programme. He has succeeded in winning the hearts and souls of the Dancehall aficionados in town. I was left wondering whether I was not in town since I found myself numb when everyone was singing along when he was on stage. A consistent diligence will see him ripping off the musical charts and placing him on a high musical pedestal in few months to come.

3.     The 2011 VGMA Reggae-Dancehall artist of the year, IWAN,  has suffered a real dip in his hitherto fine run in form. On a different angular look, IWAN could just be facing the music of life which is full of vicissitudes. He is still cutting out positive and conscious-minded lyrical songs which show his class as a force to reckon with the Reggae-Dancehall industry.  After all is said and done, IWAN will bounce back. That I believe. If you are in doubt, be reminded that there was a Bandana now Shatta Wale as a reference point.

4.     Mr. Logic and his Shatta Movement Family are doing well. However, they could be more effective in their ambitions if they cast themselves off the insults and calumnies they heap on Shatta Wale each time they grab the microphone. I don’t see the youth kowtowing to their hackneyed story of bringing Shatta Wale to the lime-light and he usurping their Shatta Movement from them and bla bla bla bum bum bum.  And so what? They should just concentrate and move on. The youth have their ears clogged when it comes to bad-mouthing Shatta Wale. They won’t listen to anything save his good music and positive side.

5.     Vibrant Faya should do a thorough self-introspection to find out if music is really what he can do.  With all the money and resources being lavished on him by the Shatta Movement Family, all he could come out with is the “Mampi” tune that he has continuously tried to push down through our olfactory lobes? The guy should be serious if he wants to go far.

6.     And if there’s anyone one whom the organizers must get on the knees and thank fervently, then it is the New-Town boy Bastero. That guy’s performance was a terrible mystery on the night. He brought the show back to a heightened sense of vitality after a couple of clowns mounted the stage to give us gibberish noises. Bastero is full of energy and should work very hard.

7.     Our people from the Zongo should exercise restraint and learn how to settle issues patiently.  The fighting and belligerence will not take us anywhere. And the Juede guy should be mindful of the fact no matter what there will be misunderstanding in such enterprises and never should he bring out a gun no matter the atmosphere.

8.     For once I thought I was in a furnace considering the cloud of ganja smoke that was hovering around the whole place. The youth smoke beyond reason in modern day Ghana.  A serious step must be taken to stem these iniquitous acts. The nation cannot have its youth engage in wanton smoking bouts.

9.     Ras Kuku should move past the eccentricity he wants to be known with and come out of the cemetery he is noted to be living in. His is too talented to be lagging behind. Puom must also be seen and heard more massively.

10.                        Dancehall is still having its field day in Ghana music. If you don’t know  what Dancehall is, you surely know Reggae. Well, “Dancehall is a rough , immensely scratchy  ‘street’ style of Reggae.”

Inusah Mohammed.

NB: The writer is a National Service Person with the Graphic Communications Group Ltd.

BEYOND THE HORIZON OF FRIENDSHIP LIES BROTHERHOOD

Today, 8^th December, 2014 is a very special day to me.  It is an august day because it coincides with the anniversary of birth of a very great friend of mine. And he has this to say about friendship which I will let out when I talk about the power of friendship. I crave your indulgence to begin like this;

In the Holy Quran, friendship was chronicled in a chapter that is 110 verses long. The Chronicle basically highlights how seven friends, the eighth of which was a dog left town to distance themselves from the iniquities of their people. They therefore sought refuge in a cave in order not incur the wrath of their wicked king and his subjects whose indescribable debauchery and ignoble deeds have reached a fever pitch high. This bond led them to their miraculous martyrdom in the cave. A company formed for service to Allah. That is the power of friendship.

My short stint with Christianity in the early nineties has imbued in me a strong sense of this weak and fragile in skin yet strong and formidable in spirit thing called friendship. My Sunday schools at Bishop Charles Agyin Asare’s Word Miracle Church now known as Perez Chapel led me to the story of David and Jonathan. Their story captured in the Book of Samuel of the Hebrew Bible is a story in which some medieval and Renaissance theorists described as Romantic love and a true representation of homosociality; same-sex relationships that are far from sexual activities. A story filled with heightening sense of suspense.

Friendship over the centuries has proven to be a very vibrant and viable force, a defier of all odds, a harbinger of hope and a purveyor of a gale of love that is more powerful that all hurricanes that have caused massive destructions to the world lumped together.

To see how powerful this thing called friendship is, let’s consider some statements made about it.

 Imam Ali (as) stated: "Two true friends are a single soul in different bodies." The same Imam Ali also stated “Friendship transfers a stranger in to a relative."

In his book “Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian life”, Henri J.M. Nouwen said this “When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”
Of all the statements made about this great abstract noun, I love the one made by a friend the most. Before I unleash this poignant statement made by him, I’ll love to first make him known to the world.
This friend was born in the early nineties. We met last two decades and the bond kept increasing as the days unfolded. He is named Hamza Ayub. Presently there is a third name added to it to make it Hamza Hajj Ayub. In the school in which we met, I was then in class two when he was in class one. We had a special interest in him due to the fact he rode a bicycle and as young as we were, fascination was an understatement of how we felt when he rode past us. Another reason was that he is the son of one of the foremost scholars we have in Nima. As fate will have it, we found ourselves in the same class because I had to repeat the class due to the severity of my truancy by then. And that’s where the spirit of comradeship started till today as I make the letters on my keyboard dance on the monitor.

Now to the beef of all this needless description, this friend has the cardinal aspect of what friendship entails; brotherhood. He is kind. He is generous to the point of negligence. He never loses touch of a friend in need or a friend in despondence.

All friends will attest to the fact that he has what it takes to also offer his thoughts on the subject matter of discussion. And he has offered it aptly and rightly.
After considering the bond that led the seven friends to the cave and the same bond that kept David and Jonathan together and other references in the dim recesses of history, he came to a very powerful conclusion. And this is it:

“Beyond the horizon of friendship lies brotherhood.”

Happy earthday Hamza Hajj Ayub. I wish you more birthdays because “Statistics show that those who have more birthdays live longer.”

NB: The writer is a National Service Person at the Graphic Communications Group Limited.

THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. GABBAS AND MR. BUGGERY

Those who shrug off fictional literature may not have appreciated the fact that it is the produce of the human brain. They may not have realized that the most efficacious organ in our Adams body is the small, miraculous meat-like structure in our skulls. One of the most striking descriptions ever given to the brain was by Benjamin Carson, the famous Pediatric neurosurgeon who led the team of doctors who separated twins joined in the head successfully in 1986.

In an interview, he was asked why he wanted to be a neurosurgeon and he answered “the brain is a miracle……… Imagine Hendel! How could he compose something like The Messiah in three weeks”? Solid!

How could Chinua Achebe write from head ‘Things fall apart’ in response to a book cleverly written to conceal the inherent racism against Blacks in it, ‘In the Heart of Darkness’ by Joseph Conrad?   More surprisingly, how could Jules Verne produce from the same brain in the year 1865 the book ‘From the earth to the moon’ which was truly actualized in the year 1969 (a century and more later) by Neil Armstrong and his colleague Buzz Aldrin when they spent two hours, thirty one minutes exploring on lunar surface? That is the power of Jules Verne’s brain.

 Now to the crux of this piece, how on earth did the Scottish writer, Robert Louis Stevenson envisage that a medical doctor at Effia Nkwanta Hospital will be a reference point in diligence and philanthropy and simultaneously be a merciless sodomite and anal-consuming Homo sapien?

In 1886, the book ‘The strange case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ was published. In the said book, a man who commanded much respect as a medical doctor in his town doubled as the most loathed harbinger of wickedness in that same town. The books highlight was its association with the mental imbalance that was rare, known as Split personality which psychiatrists term “dissociative identity disorder” which shows how a person can exhibit vastly different moral character from one situation to another. Dr.Sulley Ali-Gabbas seriously epitomizes this mental disorder.

 The Jekyll side of Dr. Sulley Ali Gabbas

When Saeed Jallo, the representative of the Muslim Community on the Western Regional Peace Council spoke to Accra-based Joy FM about Dr. Sulley Ali Gabbas, I nearly cried a gallon full of tears. He stated: “When you go to the Muslim communities, you will see that every place is quiet because Dr Sulley Gabbas is one person who has helped the religion of Islam. The youth and student body of Ghana Muslim Students Association have been supported by Dr Sulley Ali-Gabbas both physically and financially.”  The Staff at the Effia Nkwanta Hospital have also attested to the hardworking character of the man. He was a man who was far from being indolent. He was always diligent in his work.
Interestingly, when the Executive Secretary of Narcotics Control Board, Mr. Akrasi Sarpong earlier this year hinted that marijuana should be legalized, Dr.Sulley Ali-Gabbas spoke vehemently against it. He raised the fears that the youth will use the NACOB boss statement as a safe haven to smoke with untold impunity. He therefore appealed to the government not to legalize it since it is malignant to the human health. This was Dr.Sulley Ali Gabbas good side. Genteel, demure, calm, cool and collected man of repute and much reverence. No wonder mentorship was the bait he used in trapping the young victim when they struck an acquaintance on Facebook.

 The Hyde side of Sulley Ali-Gabbas 

On the flip-side, a sixteen year old boy finds himself despondent and forever adrift in pain in his anal cavity due to five painful, unlawful and inhuman bouts of sex with a sodomite called Dr.Sulley Ali-Gabbas as alleged. The boy is also suffering from the dreadful HIV/AIDS; a disease the doctor denied infecting him with. For the boy to look up to the Doctor for a mentor-mentee relationship only to end up being mentored in his anus shows how wicked, vicious and unforgiving Dr. Sulley could be. It was shocking to the marrow when he stated that it was the boy who pestered him. It was reported that he even refused to give the boy money to fend for himself when he started having complications in his anus. This action of Dr.Sulley Ali Gabbas is repugnant and condemnable by all standards. It is sour to taste and unpleasant to the ear.

 The nation must come out clear                                 

I read with disgust, the article written by Dr.Sodzi Sodzi-Tettey in the Daily Graphic of Saturday,25th October, 2014 titled “Sodomizing them young” about a young boy called Lexis who was also sodomized to despondency by his class teacher. With these actions occurring frequently, I believe the nation must come out clear on Homosexuality. The nation cannot continue to be ambivalent over its stance on this dreadful, barbaric sexual orientation. If the nation does not come out clear on this, we will continue to have more of such cases. Over the years, a lot of quack scientists have tempted to scientifically justify homosexuality but all fall flat like a pack of cards. No scientific theory can explain homosexuality. It is simply inexplicable! 

When Blakk Rasta of Hitz fm fame hinted that Sigmund Freud, the father of Psychoanalysis, had described homosexuality as a mental disorder, the ignoble proponents of this bad act came out to say it could be as a result of the genetic make-up. Blakk Rasta therefore couched it in a way I like the most:

“Homosexuality is therefore, a mental and genetic disorder.”

NB: The writer is a National Service Person at the Graphic Communications Group Ltd.