[A Satire]
Intrigued by the now-famous United Nations performance of His Excellency, John Dramani Mahama, I decided to find out more about what makes the man tick.
It was an epic battle to penetrate Ghana’s presidential bureaucracy, but I somehow found my way into the engine room of a modern African governance system, the Public Relations Department.
A beautiful Ghanaian lady beamed a knockout smile at me and beckoned me I follow her. I followed her, or rather her vibrating rear engines (Lawd have mercy). She took me into an inner office whose opulence took my breath away. Behind a huge desk rose a giant – the President’s Communications Director, a man, I was to discover, of impressive vocabulary and elastic conscience. A tag on his desk declared him as Kweku Panyim with intimidating titles.
[I am F. He is P.]
F: Mr. Panyim, let me congratulate you. That UN speech – reparations, justice, history, moral outrage, it had everything. I almost wept.
P: Thank you. The President is deeply committed to Pan-African justice.
F: Pan-African justice? Splendid. I love that. Now let’s try to descend from poetry to arithmetic. Your government collects roughly 5% royalties on gold, oil, lithium, practically everything that glitters beneath our soil. Is that also part of the justice package?
P: You must understand the complexities of global investment frameworks.
F: No, it’s you who must understand the simplicity of exploitation, five percent. Even colonial concession companies had the decency to pretend. Let me attempt to clarify your doctrine. You go to New York to demand reparations for past theft. Meanwhile, at home, your government supervises ongoing theft at discounted rates. You are giving Ghanaian wealth away at thieving prices. Is that not correct?
P: That is a gross mischaracterization. On whose side are you? Are you not among those pontificating on Pan-Africanism? And here you are trying to demerit the president’s widely acclaimed speech.
F: I am sorry that you feel that way, Sir. Then, try to characterize it correctly, Sir. I’m listening.
P: We are creating an enabling environment for foreign direct investment.
F: Ah, yes, the same famous “enabling environment,” where Africans enable, and others collect. We have been doing that for close to five decades with nothing to show for it. While your President was performing moral outrage at the UN, your vice president was busy signing a security agreement with the European Union. Tell me, does Pan-Africanism now come with a European user manual?
P: International partnerships are essential for regional stability.
F: Stability for whom? Because the average Ghanaian is remarkably unstable, economically speaking.
P: Security cooperation benefits all parties.
F: Of course it does. Especially the party writing the terms. Let’s talk about this reparations crusade. Suppose the West agrees, out of guilt, boredom, or public relations fatigue, and sends a cheque. A large one. What happens next?
P: The funds will be deployed for national development.
F: Deployed? Like all the previous funds and budgetary allocations?
P: Even our worst critics agree that we have improved transparency mechanisms in the governance system.
F: Transparency? So now we will see the money disappear into money heaven in high definition? You see, Mr. Panyim, I have a modest intellectual difficulty. You demand justice for crimes committed centuries ago, yet preside over a system that daily impoverishes your own people. How do you maintain the moral balance required for such verbal gymnastics?
P: Governance involves navigating complex historical and current economic realities.
F: No. Governance involves choices. Your government has chosen verbal eloquence over rectifying the dastardly historic crime of foreign exploitation. Let me introduce an inconvenient ancestor into this conversation, Kwame Nkrumah. He spoke of economic sovereignty. Do you consider accepting 5% royalties as an economic sovereign?
P: We are working towards obtaining better terms.
F: Slowly, I presume. This has been going on since we ostensibly gained independence. At this rate, full sovereignty should arrive shortly after the sun burns out.
Why are African leaders so addicted to speeches? It’s like governance has been replaced by oratory. Roads collapse, hospitals decay, but the rhetoric continues to flourish. In place of service provision, citizens are dazzled with magnificent, world-class rhetoric.
P: There is absolutely nothing ostensible in our independence. The Republic of Ghana is fully independent. By the way, and for your information, Communication is a critical tool of leadership.
F: Agreed. However, it’s not a substitute for leadership. A starving man cannot eat a speech, no matter how well delivered. The problem here is that the President sounded like a Pan-African revolutionary in New York. For which he was adequately compensated with loud ovation and all that. But, at home, however, his policies resemble those of a plantation foreman, efficient extraction of Ghan’s resources by foreign corporations, minimal redistribution of the insulting percentages collected. Is this a dual personality disorder or a strategic deception?
P: That is an offensive analogy.
F: Offense, they say, is the natural reaction when truth removes its gloves. Let’s examine outcomes. Ghanaian citizens endure high unemployment, currency instability, and failing infrastructure. Yet they see their government finds time and energy to litigate a crime from the 18th century on a global stage.
P: We must address both past and present injustices.
F: But, you are addressing neither. You are rather narrating them. Some might say this is all theatre, a carefully staged performance designed to impress international audiences while domestic realities remain unchanged.
P: That is a very cynical view.
F: No, it is a forensic one. I am examining evidence. Although the speeches grow grander. The conditions of the common citizens remain stubbornly abysmal. Final question, Mr. Spin. Do you genuinely believe Africa will be redeemed by this strategy, nice speeches abroad, concessions at home, agreements that mortgage sovereignty in polite language?
P: Africa’s future depends on global cooperation and visionary leadership.
F: Translation: more speeches, more partnerships, more carefully worded surrender of economic sovereignty.
P: I reject that characterization.
F: Sorry, again, but reality does not require your acceptance.
Thus concluded the interview. The President continues his tour of global platforms, thundering against the injustices of history while tiptoeing around the injustices of the present. The PR man returned to his natural habitat – issuing statements, polishing narratives, and manufacturing sovereign dignity out of adjectives.
And the Ghanaian people? They remain where they have always been – trapped between memory and mismanagement, between the poetry of liberation and the prose of exploitation.
The unvarnished truth is that specifying has never saved a people, and it will not redeem Africa.
Africa will not be rescued by applause in foreign halls.
It will not be liberated by those who demand justice abroad while discounting it at home.
Africa will rise through the hard, disciplined, uncompromising work of patriots willing to do what Kwame Nkrumah demanded: seize economic sovereignty, assert real independence, and dismantle the plantation logic masquerading as governance.
Until then, the current plantation managers will continue their performance, and their PR people will continue to sell it.
And the world, ever amused by the antics of the picanninies (as Boris Johnson called us), will continue to applaud.
©️ Fẹ̀mi Akọ̀mọ̀làfẹ̀ (1st Dan)
(Farmer, Writer, Published Author, Essayist, Satirist, Social Commentator, Geopolitical Analyst.)
My Mission: Ignorantia et stultitia delendae sunt / Ignorance and stupidity must be destroyed.
I am an unapologetic Pan-Africanist who is unconditionally opposed to any form or manifestation of racism, fascism, and discrimination.
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