The Un-Apotheosis of Holders of MA, PhD, LLM, MSc, et al

Giving credence to the truism of giving credit where it is due, I will endeavour to state that the self-acclaimed professors and our learned folks who flaunt their knowledge in general, and on the Queen’s English on various Ghanaian websites are prolific writers. The subtly humorous way of expressing the aforesaid adage is its Ghanaian rendition of praising the skunk for its formidable speed despite its repulsive odour! Following various opinions and contributions on our cherished websites, I must acknowledge that I am really envious of our learned fellows with their ideas and wealth of diction together with the lengthy suffixes of university degrees which follow their chosen pseudonyms and right names. However, in this piece, I will grapple with the abhorrent consensus that holders of the highest university degrees represent the crust of astute custodians of wisdom.

This write-up is dedicated to our most learned man who writes on Ghanaweb and Myjoyonline. I am somewhat exhilarated that the learned men are refuting the assertion that the educated few are cultured and custodian of sagacity due to the pernicious placards they have been posting on Ghanaian websites! It is a fact that Professor Okoampa-Ahoofe has come under incessant assaults both on his ideology and on his style of writing. A lady commenting on an article written by the Professor writes: “Please, write simple English”. With his ideas, it is clearly obvious that everyone has an opinion; but, nowhere is this saying prominent and truer than in Ghana and among Ghanaians! Then, his style of writing has been scrutinised by both the learned and the dubitably learned. As to why the ridiculously dumb mischievously pretend to be scholarly and flummox their brains with grammar against the compelling advice of Tony Lumpkin in Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer, I am yet to unravel the mystery! But in spite of the flaws in humans and hence Alexander Pope’s (1688-1744) “… to err is human…” Professor Okoampa-Ahoofe has yet to find empathy with most readers. This blatant neglect of Alexander Pope’s philosophy by many Ghanaians stems from Professor Okoampa-Ahoofe not being just any commonplace person but a fully-fledged university lecturer of the English Language!

As humans, we may not essentially sanction everything we read; most people may not essentially share our views and opinions, but this must not prevent us from respecting people in general. I do regard my superiors without fail because I am foremost an African and I believe that the best tradition must always go on unlike the barbaric human sacrifice, the nauseous decapitation of people to escort a king to the other world and an equally inhumane facial scarifications. Professor Okoampa-Ahoofe is really being mistreated by many readers on Ghanaian websites. The fact that he still writes about Ghana for Ghanaian readers makes me think that he is indeed a brave man! This remark stems from the aggression he has been sustaining and enduring (some people have even delved into the etymology of the first of his compound name and maintain that it is not Akan). Since many people are incisive in their own eyes, anybody who writes and expresses an opinion is bound, in one way or the other, to receive this sort of treatment. I am not into politics but if a political subject is worth commenting on for the general benefit of society, then I will not waver to do so. But the verbal injury on this man perhaps ought to teach him to examine his life. I know he may not intend to please anyone but he wants to be read which is why he writes on public forums and so behaving like the ostrich when tirades are rained on his person and his qualifications everyday is pathetic.

For Professor Okoampa-Ahoofe, what is disturbing is the fact that he is incessantly being attacked by both sympathisers of the NDC and the NPP—the two dominant political parties in Ghana. In a country which is ideologically entrenched and divided politically; where every incident is dissected along NDC and NPP lines, it becomes equally disconcerting when one is continuously maligned by members of his own party as if a divided house can stand! He recently had a slanging match with an NPP sympathiser and a regular contributor to Ghanaweb and Myjoyonline known by the name of Akilu Sayibu. Professor Okoampa-Ahoofe is loathed by Nkrumaists as he seizes the least opportunity to write derogatory articles about the enigmatic Dr Kwame Nkrumah; he is detested by the NDC due to his detestation of JJ Rawlings and is accumulating enemies even within his beloved NPP. But with his persistent diatribes on prominent members of a political party whose ideologies he claims to share leaves a sour taste in the mouth of most followers of the NPP. I always thought there existed a civil way of resolving misunderstandings with friends and opponents instead of resorting to articles loaded to the muzzle with vitriolic bombs. By criminally engaging in vilified name-calling of Dr Osei-Akoto and others to the extent of calling the other four potential flagbearers of the NPP the “Rascal Four” is a bit sickening to say the least.

However in all this, my whinge against Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, PhD, is his impenitent and perpetual fomenting and rekindling of ethnic debasement of some tribes in Ghana. It is extremely appalling that Professor-of-English Okoampa-Ahoofe has encouraged AGersis, Laryeah, Sarpong, etc, to rekindle and feed the flames of ethnicity which would have been clinically construed for racism in the West by these same writers who live in Europe and the US. It is quite horrendous that these people, who domicile in London, New York, Texas, and so on do not care a hoot about the repercussions of the articles they post on Myjoyonline and Ghanaweb; that the divisive ideas propounded in their write-ups can result in an ethnically-motivated rumpus whereas they live in peace and comfort in the US and the UK. I mean to ask my brothers and sisters who are always eager to play the tribal card to recoil from this mentality of earlier centuries. As a country which is struggling in these modern times with very dwindling fortunes, the last thing we need is the inflaming of ethnocentric passions by consistently debasing other tribes with prejudicial comments with impunity.

Africans have been fighting first as a united country and then as a united continent but we have become the Ghanaian adage of the forest. Far away, one could be deceived that all the trees are united until they get closer to realise that every tree is on its own. It does not amount to any Utopian view to request for a United Ghana—a United Africa is rather dreamlike and elusive! Many Ghanaians clamour for a United Ghana where all Ghanaians will speak with the same voice, respect each other as one people with the same fortune and destiny and fight for the progress of one another. If we are able to achieve this daunting but possible aim, we will be the best country in Africa if not in the world. Ghana was once compared to South Korea and Malaysia in terms of wealth; we will be peerless this time when it comes to unity—this is feasible and not Utopian! But how can we do this when our so-called enlightened men come together, not for progress and unity but for an inexplicable longing for retrogression and disarray? Professor Okoampa-Ahoofe and his likes—I have read a few on Ghanaweb and elsewhere—are destroying the morale of Ghanaians including punching gratuitous holes in the fabric which should bind us together.

I call on every right-thinking individual to condemn people like Professor Okoampa-Ahoofe, A Gersis, Laryeah, Lonto Boy, Justice Sarpong, etc and their practice of sowing seeds of disunity among Ghanaians without any reserve. The fact that such people hold PhDs, MAs, MScs, and so on should not hold us to sway. They may be enlightened but if they are not showing any good value for years of pursuance of higher education, then we should avoid them, their company and their venomous writings. Due to our peaceful nature, a lot of people have become complacent and are downplaying the Rwandan Genocide and the Liberian War as unfathomable events as far as Ghana is concerned. That is wanton optimism! We will be very wary were we all pessimists thinking that any impossible calamity can happen in our country. That way, we will definitely ensure that any cracks that have got the propensity to sink the country will be mended instantaneously.

I have already questioned our education system. Ghana seems to be producing so-called intellectuals whose logic is nicely expressed on paper but quite contradictory in reality. Else how can we allow the Okoampa-Ahoofes and people of their mentality to be debasing other tribes, displaying insolence towards people in authority and treating them like articles of repugnance?! And these are the learned men; the men full of knowledge that they should be empowered to pass it on to ostensibly empty heads! Must our education—an edification we are proud to brag about—not teach us to be tolerant, understanding, loving and at least rational? I call upon everyone that we should foremost see ourselves as Ghanaians and think along the following line: my brother is wrong in stealing; should I say stealing is a virtue because it is committed by my brother? If this simple contemplation is accurate, then what do we say about the rampant propagating of tribal hatred and demeaning of other ethnic groups by people from our various tribes as if there is anything to be gained from doing so?

It is about time we told those discordant elements within and without Ghana the truth about the deleterious effects of their ill-defined actions. It is high time we forged ahead in unity as a country so that voting along tribal lines, discriminating and stereotyping of other people can be a thing of the past. The time is right for our MSc, PhD, MA, LLM and DPhil holders whom we believe have attained a state of apotheosis to show us that education, being the key to success and inner liberation, has transformed them into gods. And if people who are meant to help us see the light (enlightened people) decide to conduct us into the very abyss of blinding darkness through a disobliging and disgusting mischief, then we should snub them! If anyone writes anything with a negative ethnocentric tone, we should all come out and condemn that person; we should not seek to do a pointless retaliatory exercise which will only exacerbate the situation in the long run.

To sum up, I should like all of us to ponder on the lyrics of Lucky Dube’s “Trinity” song. Deducing from that immortal song with its reconciliatory and gospel-like message, I will also say that our forefathers may have fought one another for domination, supremacy and wealth acquisition. In so doing, many may have been enslaved with minion tribes relegated to the background. The wounds of the past atrocities were not allowed to heal when the obnoxious slavery and inhuman colonial rule took over with its indelible effect of divide-and-rule. Fifty-three years after Independence, divide-and-rule which should have been thrown into the sea is still alive to our detriment as a country! Our generation should prove to the old one that we were wrong about each other just as Lucky Dube highlights the mistaken prejudices of both blacks and whites in his song. We have allowed the intellectuals in our society to attain the level of apotheosis by paying them the highest homage in the land. These few learned people with their litany of college certificates and degrees should desist from taking us back to the pre-colonial days. What is the worth of our edification if it only trains us to master a foreign language to the damage of ours and forces us to perpetuate ethnocentrism and ethnic cleansing?