AN INTERLOCUTION WITH MAHMOUD JAJAH

Maazi Okoro: Salaam Alaykum

Mahmoud Jajah: Wa Alaykum Salaam

Maazi Okoro: I must confess that your website serves as a treasure of knowledge and ideas for me every day, massive write-up there. We need more!   

Mahmoud Jajah : Insha Allah this time I want to write more. At least every week. We need to lift our youth. We have a lot of work to do.  So in our own small ways, we've got to fire the youth up.

Maazi Okoro: Onerous task indeed.  I have never had the opportunity to ask   you this. What inspires you?

Mahmoud Jajah : Wow! Can I really answer that question?

Maazi Okoro : Yh

Mahmoud Jajah: I guess I was born to make some significant impact in my society. And to make the statement that no matter where u come from u can still achieve greatness! I have some huge dreams I want to achieve. I've not even started yet.

Maazi Okoro : Not started yet?

Mahmoud Jajah:  May be I'm just about starting out but I’m not sure I've started. I want every young boy or girl from the ghettoes and the slums to look at me and say “if this guy has done it, then I can also do it”! That’s all!

Maazi Okoro:  Massive! What inspires you to read and what inspires you to read more?

Mahmoud Jajah:  It's simple; ignorance can never defeat knowledge.  And u gain knowledge by reading. So the more u read, the more confident you become in your abilities. You become fearless. Because whenever u see fear, then it means someone didn't do his homework well. And long ago, I made a promise to become one of the most well informed people in the world. So I make sure that I read things that about 90% of the people will not read.  It makes me stay ahead always. And people respect u for your opinions on issues. So basically that is it.

Maazi Okoro: Massive! Have u ever had any fear?

Mahmoud Jajah:  I used to have fears until I started reading wide. I still have some fears, but not serious ones. But when it comes to big things, I'm fearless. I'm ready to make mistakes and to learn from my mistakes. I've studied how people have overcome their fears, and learned from that

Maazi Okoro:  Which particular fear have you ever had that it turned out not have materialized?

Mahmoud Jajah: I've to think about this. I'm sorry for now I can't think of one. May be later when I remember I will let u know. And that is one lesson I've learnt in life: if you don't know something or cannot remember something, please own up!

Maazi Okoro: How will you describe yourself in terms of profession?

Mahmoud Jajah:  In terms of profession I will say I'm an administrator because
of what I'm currently doing in Riyadh.
But my ambition in life is to become a BILLIONAIRE BUSINESSMAN

Maazi Okoro: Any failures in life?

Mahmoud Jajah: I call them lessons...and I've made a lot. The biggest regret, unfortunately, is a personal one. I would like to keep it classified, for some reasons. I've not had any huge public failure in life...yet. But I know it's coming soon because of the size of what I'm planning to do next. But for now it's a personal failure. Perhaps another failure which I think it's ok to say is the fact that I couldn't go far with my Islamic education. I should have gone far but for some reasons I dropped out. But I'm coming back strongly, insha Allah.

Maazi Okoro: I love that! You formed how many organizations?

Mahmoud Jajah: I formed six organizations. Four non-profit. Two profit. Two are currently defunct. Three are currently active. One inactive. And In sha Allah I hope to establish more profit making organizations
Maazi Okoro: What are the names of the various organizations, the defunct, active and inactive one?

Mahmoud Jajah:  Active: Fortune Investment Club, Amanah Energy Limited. Inactive: AVERT Youth Foundation, Initiative for Youth Development
Defunct: Success Book Club, Mahlid Communications.

Maazi Okoro:  What do you see as the problem with the youth of Nima/Maamobi And for that matter Ghana as a whole?

Mahmoud Jajah: We have many problems and challenges. For the youth of Nima & Maamobi, our main problem is the fact that our community leaders over the years have failed to develop for us a comprehensive development program where young people will receive some form of mentoring and counselling about our career choices. Most of the youth who have gone wayward in Nima should not be entirely blamed. The light you see is the light you appreciate. If young people are raised in the kind of environment we have in Nima, then we will continue to get what we've been getting out of Nima.
Maazi Okoro:  That is an interesting perspective.
Mahmoud Jajah: Very few young people in Nima do have some form of direction because of a relative who has seen some bright light. Majority do not have that privilege. So the youth will do anything and everything to live. That is my view.
Maazi Okoro: By community leaders, who do you mean?
Mahmoud Jajah: All our duty bearers, but especially our Imams, Chiefs, and politicians (the MPs and the Assembly members). You can add youth leaders and parents as well.
Maazi Okoro: You wrote an article" If we are not careful, Nima and Maamobi will collapse" long before the current 'insanity' of youth making graffiti on our streets, fighting between well-entrenched groups with deep-seated enmity all clamouring for their various Dancehall artistes with specific reference to Ruddest Movement  and Platinum Minds  in Maamobi. Do you think Nima- Maamobi is beyond redemption now?
Mahmoud Jajah: I wrote in that piece "the inability of our leaders and duty bearers to address these issues facing the youth of these communities is troubling. Our leaders are yet to come together in any forum whatsoever to discuss how to address and tackle these challenges of our future leaders. The best that has been done is to talk about it, and nothing more. One would have expected that our chiefs and religious leaders especially, will take on these issues and begin to address them. For now, those of us concerned can only draw the attention of our duty bearers to act and act quickly before things get out of hands." Basically what it means is that unless you have an action plan and programme, things will continue to get worse. No civilized society anywhere in the world has been able to develop by accident. Development is a conscious process through planning. Currently we don’t have any plan in place. So I'm sorry things will only continue to get worse. http://mahmoudjajah.com/2014/05/24/if-we-are-not-careful-nima-maamobi-will-collapse/

Maazi Okoro: Are the educated ones also to be blamed?
Mahmoud Jajah: To a large extent, yes! To all intents and purposes, our society is yet to feel the impact and the benefits of our education. We've not transformed anything yet.
Maazi Okoro: Which personalities have influenced your life massively?
Mahmoud Jajah: I have a tall list because I pick lessons from quite a number of personalities. But first things first, there was a guy in Maamobi called Labaran Toure (who is now a PhD student in the UK). He opened my eyes. I got my first copy of  The Magic of Thinking Big from him when I was sweeping his room for him as far back as the year 2003.
Maazi Okoro: I will love to meet him.
Mahmoud Jajah: It was him who introduced me to that book that made me to review my life goals.  He owns Imlabs Communications Centre at Maamobi opposite Bama photocopies. He is like a blood brother to me. It was the book that made me develop confidence. So he has influenced my life. Another personality is Lawyer Buabeng Asamoah of the NPP. He is my boss. When i told him i wanted to become a lawyer one day, he told me to go out and read EVERYTHING that i come across! I will never forget that ever. I started developing the habit of reading since that time, in 2003/2004
Maazi Okoro: Okay! Anymore?
Mahmoud Jajah: I think the rest are most individuals that i have read about, or meet in my life.  So for now I will mention just the two. They where my springboard!
Maazi Okoro: Which books will you always mention?
Mahmoud Jajah: Aside the Noble Quran, I will mention the following books;

1.The Magic of Thinking Big
2. All books written by Robin Sharma
3. All books written by John C. Maxwell
4. All books written by Donald Trump
5. Bloomberg by Bloomberg written by the former billionaire mayor of NYC
6. The Snowball; biography of Warren Buffett:
The books are many but these ones will do for now.

Maazi Okoro : How do you feel when you put down a book after reading it?
Mahmoud Jajah:  It depends on the book. There are books that I read at least twice every year. Those books, I feel renewed each time i read them. Some make me feel disappointed because I have not practicalized the ideas from those books.
Maazi Okoro: Any example of such books?
Mahmoud Jajah:
1. The Magic of Thinking Big
2. Greatness Guide 1 & 2
3. Leadership Wisdom from the Monk who sold his Ferrari
4. The monk who sold his Ferrari
5. Rich Dad Poor Dad
6. Trump 101 by Donald Trump

You know the other authors that i didn’t mentioned above

Maazi Okoro:  What is your view on level of education among our students? Considering the Award winning article you wrote in 2009?                                                        
Mahmoud Jajah: I believe our youth are poorly educated, whether they've been to school or not. Even those with University qualifications are nothing to write home about. Education must make sense. In other words, it must transform you and your environment. If you are highly educated, and by that I mean if you have a university degree, and you still cannot find your way into the world, then it means there is a problem with your education. Most of our so-called educated youth cannot even fill a common passport form or a company registration form. I am not surprised that Ghana has been ranked lowest in the just released global educational index. Wait for my piece on that. What we receive in our schools which we call education is pathetic. I learn more outside the classroom than inside the classroom. Most of our youth only learn for exams. And you cannot be highly educated if your goal is to just pass an exams. So, all in all, we still have a long way to go. We need radical transformation and disruption of the status quo! From top to bottom!
Maazi Okoro: Thank you boss!

NB: Mahmoud Jajah is the Founder and the Executive Director of Initiative for Youth Development (IYD), an NGO that works with youth from deprived and marginalized communities in Ghana, the Founder & CEO of Amanah Energy Limited, a renewable energy start-up in Ghana, and currently working at the Ghana Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Born in Tema and raised in Maamobi (all in Accra), Mahmoud obtained his Bachelor of Science degree in Management Studies from the Central University in Accra, and recently completed a Master of Science degree program in International Oil and Gas Management at the Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy (CEPLMP) at the University of Dundee, Scotland United Kingdom.

Mahmoud Jajah is the Founder and Co-Founder of at least five active youth groups including the AVERT Youth Foundation and Fortune Investment Club. In 2005, the British Council in Accra selected him as one of only two (the other being a female) young participants who represented Ghana at the Pan-African Youth Conference in Cape Town, South Africa. And in 2007, whilst at the university pursuing his first degree, he co-founded and became the publisher and editor of a student newspaper called “The Student Observer.”

In 2009, Mahmoud Jajah entered and won the first place prize, under the Entrepreneurship & Employment category of an international youth essay competition organized by the United States based Think Tank, the Centre for International Private Enterprise (CIPE).

Mahmoud Jajah is married to a very beautiful & intelligent lady called Maimuna Alhassan Dkeny. He likes reading, swimming, traveling and watching football.

Inusah Mohammed

The interviewer is a National Service Person with the Graphic Communications Group Limited.

UP YOU WOMEN, YOU CAN ACHIEVE WHAT YOU WILL!

I read with profound interest and fervid admiration the piece published in the Daily Graphic of Wednesday, 11th March, 2015 with the caption With women, we flatter to deceive written by Elizabeth Ohene, a woman that has marvelled this country with the heights she had risen to. 

My understanding of the piece is that our setting of the world is designed in such a way that a woman rising to a position of repute is treated as one of the rarities and oddities of life. 

The piece stroke a chord within me because of all the explanations given to hardwork and diligence of women who brave all odds to “make a dent” in the universe in our part of the world, adultery and favour from pleasure of flesh is the most used.

In the early nineties, we saw how a woman who fought hard for the liberation of Mandela and  an end to  the ignoble Apartheid system, Winnie Madikizela Mandela, was vilified and accused of going out  with men as young as her age as the lawyer  Dali Mpofu. This scathing accusation made her marriage  fall like a pack of cards despite the travails she went through after waiting  a score and seven years  for an incarcerated Mandela.

 In a like manner, a spurious and complete falsehood was canalized through the media that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first woman President in Africa, was being laid by her young ministers.

On our local scene, this phenomenon showed its ugly face in a significant style and fashion. It was significant because it proved that “the only way to silence your critic is through your performance.” Madam Patricia Appiagyei was appointed by President Kufuor to replace Maxwell Kofi Jumah as the mayor of Kumasi.

He later became the Member of Parliament for Asokwa Constituency in the Ashanti Region. In 2012, Madam Appiagyei expressed her desire to contest him in the primaries. When he was interviewed on that, he made a statement that not only put the woman in a bad light, but   ignited the flame in women in that region to the extent that they threatened a naked demonstration if he did not retract and apologize. 

He stated that if she got the position of mayor from sexual favours, she should not think she could unseat him now. That indeed was an extreme form of verbal barbarity. Madam Appiagyei won him and further sunk his name into the darkest bowls of history. Women therefore should take a cue from Madam Patricia.

No one can empower you than your very self. All over the world, women have proven times without number that when given a ground devoid of any prejudice, they could also change the cause of history just as men. 

It was a woman who braved all the odds and started preparing the grounds for the liberation of blacks from the clutches and manacles of slavery.  Harriet Tubman as she was called later came to be known as the “Moses of slavery” due to the significant strides she made in the emancipation of a considerable number of slaves.

No one can talk about the civil rights struggle of America without mentioning Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks defied that odious order to vacate her seat for a white person on the bus just because she was black. This singular act culminated in the Montgomery Bus Boycott which set off a chain reaction that led to the current level of sanity in the United States of America.

 Susan B. Anthony led the campaign on woman’s right to suffrage when it was a crime for a woman to give her conviction in choosing of leaders through the ballot.

The glade then is well-screened for women to rise from the bowliness and unleash the glory of the Lord in them. The subjugation of women must stop. And this stoppage must begin from women themselves. Self-empowerment is key and vital to the survival of womanhood, one of the finest creation of God.

A woman that is shaking the foundation of democracy in Africa is the South African Speaker of Parliament who doubles as the Chairperson of the oldest and most powerful political party in Africa, African National Congress, Baleka Mbete.  She really brings a fit of tranquillity in a chaotic parliament as that of South Africa. Women have the knack to see where trouble looms and how to curb it. It is therefore not surprising when she stated;

“There’s a list that ought to be going to the Pan-African Parliament so that the leaders of our continent can see the issues that continue to be a big blot on progress. We shouldn’t fool ourselves because many of the leaders don’t want that. They are about having an easy ride and continuing to enjoy themselves.”

Up you women, you can achieve what you will!

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

THE ARROGANCE OF THE CATHOLIC BISHOPS AND THE FREEDOM OF MUSLIM STUDENTS

Of all the reactions of the human repertoire given to the arrogance of the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference’s statement last week, surprise was not part of mine. I was never surprised because it is an emblem of their intolerance towards dissent to their faith, doctrines, decisions and held beliefs. It is deeply entrenched in their belief that everything must conform to the teachings of the Catholic Church. Pope Leo XIII (1903) stated succinctly  in Libertas:  "It is not lawful to demand, to defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought or speech, or writing, or religion, as if these were so many rights given by nature to man."     And it has run through from the dim recesses of history.  This intolerance of theirs mostly was towards an entrenched truth which they were vehemently against.

In the year 1517, Martin Luther, A German Friar and Professor of Theology came out with his Ninety-five theses to protest against the established abuses in the Catholic Church which included nepotism, usury, sale of church offices and roles (also known as Simony), pluralism and the sale of indulgences (practice of making sinners purchase the freedom from God’s punishment with money). This incurred the wrath of the Catholic Church and in a characteristic style and fashion he was excommunicated by the Pope and condemned as an outlaw by the emperor.

Notable among such cases was the case of the man who had to spend the last nine years of his life under house arrest after being handed life imprisonment just because he stated a truth denied by the Catholic Church. In the year 1614, Galileo Galilee was vilified, insulted and all sorts of vituperations heaped on him by the Catholic Church which later led to his condemnation as a heretic  because he argued in favor of the Copernicus Heliocentric theory that the sun was at the center of the universe. The illogical notion held at that time was that the earth was rather at the center of the universe (a notion that is as backward as the minds that held it).

Parnili was killed for stating that blood run through the veins. A truth that took the Catholic Church centuries to accept.

Rebecca A. Sexton, a member of a group known as Former Catholics for Christ writes, “Anyone who opposes Roman Catholicism is immediately labeled as a bigot, intolerant of other religions or a hate-monger.” And that is the absolute truth and nothing else.

In the not too distant past, Hans Kung, a Catholic Theologian, had to go through untold suffering because his works went against the teachings of the Catholic Church. He had his works catching dust on the shelves of libraries and silenced stemming from his rejection of the doctrine of the infallibility of the pope.

This intolerance reared its head strongly on our local scene last week when the Catholic Bishops issued a statement threatening the President of the land whose ‘offence’ was his reiteration of what the laws of our land state.  The Preamble of their acerbic statement reads:

       “We, the members of the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference have followed with grave concern the recent developments in our dear nation with respect to calls for unregulated religious practices in our schools. We note in particular, the unwarranted threats of sanction coming from Government circles. Needless, we are stating that no citizen in Ghana should allow him/herself to be cowed down by any intimidation or threat of sanction from any individuals.”  The statement is if not foolish, stupid. If not disturbing, infantile and must be condemned as such. As part of the Catholic DNA, they just do not understand why others should be given their constitutional freedom.

 We Muslims are citizens of the land also and will not allow ourselves to be cowed or wavered by any intimidation from any misguided group   such as the Bishops’ conference. The call by the President in his State of the Nation Address is not something absurd or weird. Neither is it a call to anything illegal or unconstitutional. Rather, it is a call to sanity, a call to parity and a call to equity which will make all citizens uphold the spirit and letter of the 1992 constitution, a call to peaceful and harmonious living and a massive wavelength of civility.  Muslims in this country have been tolerant enough. We have stomached all sorts of illegal discrimination and undemocratic oppression in our schools for too long.  

I attended O’Reilly Senior High School. During my three years stay on campus, I had to compulsorily sing hymns I do not believe in at every morning assembly and sometimes made to jump to catch a spirit I never caught.  Sometimes, it was the then headmistress, Miss Janet Chinebuah who came down to lead in the hymnals under the scorching sun. I had to endure my freedom whittle away just because a group of people have blinded their eye to the constitutional provision that no one should be subjected to a faith he does not subscribe to. 

I remember the unfortunate day the headmistress in a derogatory manner said during a school gathering “I was calling them and they were still washing their noses” in reference to an ablution exercise she witnessed. This sent the whole school into a state of hilarity.  I wished the earth swallowed me up that day.

 There is this particular insensitive teacher called Rev. Kathleen Parker Allotey. This woman had on countless number of times showed her strong antipathy towards Muslims in the full glare of the public. Once upon a time, she asked a class why they allowed the Class Prefect and his assistant to be Muslims. She asked non-challantly “How”?

In another instance, a former Assistant headmaster of the school, Mr. Danquah, once came into the Science class when the class was in total disarray. The first statement he made was “I know it is the Muslims in you that are making the noise. Because if they are praying, you can never tell who is speaking and who is quiet.”  And this was a class of about 60 students with about six Muslims. What warrants this if not the intolerance and insensitivity towards the rights and feelings of Muslim students?

The most grueling one I will never forget is one that had to do with prayers. We used to pray where the pipes that drain the fecal and urinal substances of teachers were connected and we had to cope with that because our hands were tied. There was this day when a wicked Christian teacher came ordering us to stop praying. Steadfastness was a cardinal aspect of the Muslim prayer so we did not heed to her call.  Surprisingly, she came with a cane and started lashing the Imam and the congregants. These were just a fraction of the unjust practices we had to go through.

You just cannot fault Muslims if we have woken up after a long slumber of negligence. To continue with the status quo in our schools is a violation of the supreme law of the land. With that the blessings of liberty are forever withheld from Muslims. The current practice is undemocratic; it is an odious system of theocratic tendencies and a deliberate, corporate strangulation of Muslims in educational institutions.

The Constitution of the land states unequivocally in Article 21, “(1)   All persons shall have the right to- (a)   freedom of speech and expression, which shall include freedom of the press and other media; (b)   freedom of thought, conscience and belief, which shall include academic freedom;
(c)   freedom to practice any religion and to manifest such practice; (d)   freedom of assembly including freedom to take part in processions and demonstrations.  (e)   freedom of association, which shall include freedom to form or join trade unions or other associations, national and international, for the protection of their interest; ……….  “

Therefore, we must not place the freedom of Muslims beneath heel of religious bullies.

It is of consequence that this issue came up in the run up to our 58 Independence anniversary celebration.  In  1957, Martin Luther King Jnr, the civil rights activist delivered a sermon at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church after he witnessed the Declaration of Independence in Ghana. The speech was titled. “The Birth of a New Nation.”  He stated:

   “There seems to be a throbbing desire, there seems to be an internal desire for freedom within the soul of every man. And it’s there—it might not break forth in the beginning, but eventually it breaks out Men realize that freedom is something basic, and to rob a man of his freedom is to take from him the essential basis of his manhood. To take from him his freedom is to rob him of something of God’s image. To paraphrase the words of Shakespeare’s Othello: Who steals my purse steals trash; ‘tis something, nothing; twas mine, ‘tis his, has been the slave of thousands; but he who filches from me my freedom robs me of that which not enriches him, but makes me poor indeed.”

Inusah Mohammed

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

A TRIBUTE TO THE MUSICAL LEGEND, BOB MARLEY

If there is any particular saying that rubbishes the statement that “Life begins at 40” then it is the short wise-saying in Ola Rotimi’s The gods are not to blame that “The struggle of man begins at birth.” If there is any real life negation of the “Life begins at 40” notion, then it is the life of this tiny man who grew up in a tiny corner of the world yet shook the very foundation of human existence and achievement to the core that long after his death, the mention of his name increases with energized momentum as the days unfold.
For his album Legend released in 1984 to remain the bestselling Reggae album ever (10 times platinum in the US) with sales of more than 20 Million Copies, and Exodus album voted album of the century by the times magazine , his One Love song voted as the Song of the Millennium by the BBC,  Jamaica's third highest honor, the Jamaican Order of Merit and other awards, accolades and recognition that continue to rise with increasing crescendo with each passing day, show the unquantifiable amount of life in the short and transient thirty-six years he lived on mother earth.
This tiny man was born in the wee hours of the night at around 2 am on Wednesday, 6 February, 1945 in Nine Mile, Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica, to Norval Sinclair Marley, a Sexagenarian  White Jamaican  and a then seventeen-year old ‘foolish’ girl named  Cedella Booker.  Named Robert Nesta Marley, weighing 7 pounds and 4 ounces with his afterbirth buried at the foot of one of his grandfather’s coconut trees, he became the person that projected and made popular the image of the Caribbean (a region that consists of about  700 islands, reefs and cays), became a global icon of peace to the world, a symbolic demi-god to some people of West Africa, a Redeemer to the Maoris of New Zealand a figure that completes the Rastafarian triumvirate with Emperor Haile Selassie and Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jnr, the man who preached Black Consciousness to the world earlier. To other nations of Asiatic origin, Bob Marley is next to God.

If music is supposed to carry a message, then Bob Marley is the greatest musician the world has ever seen.  Greater than the prolific Mozart, legendary Bob Dylan and the visually-impaired yet musically super-gifted Stevie Wonder. He remains the most quoted musician ever in history and even surpasses most of the famous philosophers and academics of legendary status. With a musical theme that transcended every topic of social relevance profoundly highlighting Biblical themes that permeates down the consciousness of the listener.

As a Pan Africanist, he reechoed what Africa needs by asking in a Biblical style and fashion “How good and how pleasant it will be before God and Man, to see the unification of all Africans. As it’s been said already, let it be done.”
In a humanistic style and fashion, he touched on the subject of weapons of destruction that have caught the world in frenzy with nations embroiled in the manufacturing of it. “In this age of technological humanity, scientific atrocity Atomic mis-philosophy, nuclear mis-energy, it’s a world that forces lifelong insecurity.”

Politically, he was a unifier who identified with the ‘sufferahs’ which included the homeless, destitute, marginalized, poor and other categories of people viewed as the flotsam and jetsam of his society. He exhibited that profoundly when he succeeded in making two politically-sworn enemies join him on stage to shake hands together with him. The proceeds of the concert were meant for the provision of sanitary facilities to ‘sufferahs.’ That was a very small fraction of what this Legend stood for.

On that fateful day of his internment, the then Jamaican Prime Minister, Edward Seaga, delivered a perfect eulogy. He did not mince words when he hinted
"His message was a protest against injustice, a comfort for the oppressed. He stood there, performed there, his message reached there and everywhere. Today's funeral service is an international right of a native son. He was born in a humble cottage nine miles from Alexandria in the parish of St. Ann. He lived in the western section of Kingston as a boy where he joined in the struggle of the ghetto. He learned the message of survival in his boyhood days in Kingston's west end. But it was his raw talent, unswerving discipline and sheer perseverance that transported him from just another victim of the ghetto to the top ranking superstar in the entertainment industry of the third world."

As we celebrate Bob Marley’s 70^th birth Anniversary today, I have no other option than to reecho what the  I’ Threes, the three women that backed Marley with their fruity and stentorian voices said concerning Bob Birhaani Selassie Kwabena Marley.

“We recognize Bob as David. Just as, how David had his harp, Bob had his guitar.  The songs of Bob are Psalms now put to music.” Rita Marley

“We should all try to live the life he sang about and I am hoping that entertainers like myself will maintain the standard that he has left, so that Bob in his spiritual realms will see that his work was not in vain.”  Judy Mowart.

“He came for a purpose and set a foundation for all of us and we can only use that to make ourselves better.” Marcia Griffiths.

Inusah Mohammed

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