Features
The wahala of Sikaman MPs (2)
Some Members of Parliament at a funeral
When the honourable Member of Parliament returns home after the visit to his hometown, he can breathe easily now. He could have died from financial strangulation or from Common Fund disease. He must give thanks on Sunday at the church service for being alive.
As for the next visit, unless the second coming of Jesus Christ. Meanwhile, he must reflect and reckon whether the visit to the constituency was a successful one, after all. It will then hit him hard that what he had wanted to do during the visit was quite forgotten immediately he landed.
The natives completely distracted him. For example, there was this man who said he had contributed to his castration, sorry circumcision. The man later added that he was his uncle called Koli Badu, although he has no such uncle.
IMPRESSION
He was also forced to chair a funeral gathering where he had donated heavily to impress the folks and to glorify the size of his briefcase. He had given money to others to pay school fees, communal labour default penalties, free palmwine and tobacco snuff, court fines, whatever.
What he had gone to do, however, was not to cure poverty or alleviate it. He was not a doctor and therefore could not vaccinate the folks against the poverty disease, Africa’s most widespread epidemic.
He had gone there to meet the constituents to tell them about how the government was faring, what had been discussed in Parliament and his personal contributions to the debates; government’s infrastructural programmes and how they relate to his constituency and allied matters.
However, when he got that the natives would not be in the mood for official briefs. It was not their immediate concern if government’s infrastructural ideas were growing or ‘slimming.
That was a secondary matter and could not be entertained now, May be, it could be looked at during the next visit.
What was exigent was the palaver of the stomach and the issue bordering on the back- pocket economy of the men and the financial health of the white handkerchiefs of the women.
That, was certainly more important than parliamentary news and the state of the Yamoransa or Aflao road or the Keta Sea Defence project.
The folks needed new funeral cloths, second-hand church clothes, new tobacco snuff containers and Charlie Wote, The MP must be able to address such pertinent issues first. If he couldn’t, then what was the use of the MPs Common Fund, they would reason?
So the petrol he had wasted brought no benefit in terms of his work as a parliamentarian.
EDUCATION
The people of Sikaman would have to be educated on the need for them to stop seeing MPs as their financial messiahs. MPs are legislators and are supposed to be making laws and debating them. They are not operators of charity homes and neither are they philanthropists.
The laws they make are not only for their constituencies but also for the entire territory of Sikaman. Their salaries are really not enough to finance school fees and frothing palmwine.
Because of the pressures on them, they cannot do their jobs the proper way.
They cannot even stay overnight in the hometowns. The Common Fund is not for palmwine and tobacco. It is to enable them to initiate constituency projects and fund them. They are not meant for poverty alleviation. The Poverty Alleviation Fund is got through the assemblies.
HARASSMENT
Ghanaians must also stop the habit of travelling from their hometowns to Accra to base at the homes of their MPs to look for jobs. It is worse than harassment. It is almost criminal.
Sometimes MPs host about six people at a time. They have to feed them three times a day, and they must eat what the MP eats lest they go back home and say the MP discriminates in terms of stomach matters. That could cost him votes at the next elections.
You can find that where the MP’s accommodation isn’t big, his hosts sleep in the living room, some with their heads under a coffee table, one leg in the kitchen, the other in the bathroom,
What is worse is that they can snore heavily and the MP can hardly have a sound sleep. Sometimes the building vibrates due to the combined forces of the snorers. The house dog is compelled to bark because it is not used to such resonance. It might cause an earthquake.
The wahala of MPs is not cheap. People think it is all glory being an MP. It can also mean sweat, discomfort and even the temptation to resign and be in a less stress-free vacation.
But at the next election, you’ll see all of them standing to be elected again. Such is politics.
This article was first published on Saturday, July 13, 2001
Features
New family head for Nii Otu we/Kweifio We
A 56-year-old driver, Ibrahim Nii Darku Amponsah, was last Saturday installed as the 6th family head of the Kweifio/Nii Otu We at Ayikai Doboro in the Ga East Municipality.
He succeeds the late Ibrahim Alhaji Adjah, who performed that duty from 1998 until his demise in August 2024.
Ibrahim Nii Darku Amponsah’s installation was performed by Nii Ashittey Tetteh, head of the Okortshoshiehsie families at James Town and Amamole.
He admonished Nii Darku Amponsah to be a good family head, and resolve family issues with justice.
Nii Ashittey Tetteh, who poured libation and slaughtered animals to pacify the ancestors, said there was nothing fetish about this millennia-old traditions.
Nii Darku Amponsah expressed his profound happiness for the confidence reposed in him, and promised to work diligently to promote the interest of family members.
He called on the youth to avoid violence and negative behaviour during the December 7, polls.
Nii Darku Amponsah paid homage to the five previous family heads and extolled the good works they performed to keep the family interest and unity over the years.
The previous family heads were Nii Oblenteng, Kwaku Amponsah, Kweitse Nii Otu, Nuumo Otinkorang, and Ibrahim Alhaji Adjah.
Caption: Nii Ashittey Tetteh congratulating Nii Darku Amponsah through handshake
A family member pouring powder on NIi Darku Amponsah’s head, while Nii Ashittey Tetteh (left) and other family members look on
By Francis Xah
Features
Ghana, Seychelles deepen bilateral cooperation
The recent state visit by the President of the Republic of Seychelles, Mr Wavel Ramkalawan, has deepened and taken to higher notch, the bilateral relations between the two countries, says Mr Kwame Acquah, the Consul of the Republic of Seychelles in Accra.
Mr Acquah told The Spectator that Ghana and Seychelles have signed seven Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in sectors including culture, trade air service agreement, tourism, aquaculture, and education for the mutual benefit of both countries.
He said there were Ghanaians living and working in Seychelles with about 500 of them working in the fisheries sector in Seychelles with a sister Tuna Company in Tema.
Seychelles is a tiny Archipelago Island in the Indian Ocean, off East Africa with a population of a little over 100, 000. It achieved Independence from British colonial rule in 1976.
The Archipelago Island has a historic relations with Ghana dating back to 1896 when Nana Agyeman Prempeh I, the 13th King of Ashanti Empire, and others were exiled to the Seychelles Island during the colonial rule where he spent 27 years, before the British colonial administrators allowed him to return to Ashanti.
By Alhaji Salifu Abdul-Rahaman
