‘Easter 2025 passeth-by!’
“How time flies,” the saying goes! So soon, with the arrival/passing of Easter 2025, it is 16 years since my ‘Manager’ and I spent Easter 2009 in the home of Brig. Gen Ahmed Mohammed (Rtd) in Nairobi, Kenya.
In 2002, Gen Mohammed, then a Colonel, was Kenya’s Military Adviser (MILAD) at the Permanent Mission of Kenya to the UN when I arrived in New York to set up the Office of the Military Adviser at the Permanent Mission of Ghana to the UN.
With the instant chemistry between us, Ahmed became my teacher as I was Ghana’s first MILAD with no predecessor to learn from.
He taught me the rudiments of a Military Adviser’s responsibilities both at the Permanent Mission, and at the UN.
Destruction
Before I continue, on my early morning walk on Wednesday, April 15, 2025, a Joy FM presenter said he was “shell-shocked” to learn that 4000 hectares of forest reserve, the equivalent of 4100 football pitches the size of the Accra Sports Stadium, had been destroyed in the Western Region by “galamseyers.”
The previous night, a government official had stated on TV the existence of a township of 10,000 people in the Subri Forest Reserve, Western Region.
This “ECOWAS den of iniquity” comprising nationals of Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Niger, Ivory coast, Togo, Benin and the host Ghana, had all the negative “ancillary services” of prostitution, drug-peddling/use, gambling, child-trafficking, currency-trafficking etc to support the armed “galamseyers.”
East Africa
In 2008, duty took me to Uganda as the UN’s Senior Military Adviser to former President of Mozambique Joaquim Chissano. He was Kofi Annan’s Special Envoy for the Lord’s Resistance Army’s-Affected-Areas of Northern Uganda, South Sudan, DRC and Central African Republic.
It was while in Uganda in 2009 that Gen. Mohammed invited us for Easter in Kenya.
Our one-week stay in Kenya was not only exciting, it was educational. The highlight of our stay was a visit to the Nairobi National Park, a huge fenced game reserve in the city of Nairobi.
There, unlike the situation in zoos where they are caged, animals at the Park including lions, giraffes, crocodiles and zebras live in their natural habitat and move about freely, and hunt as they do in the wild.
2009: Nairobi National Park
Gen. Mohammed wanted us to enter the park immediately it was opened at 6 am.
The objective was for us to see as many animals as possible before they withdrew into the bush with the rising of the sun.
As intended, we were the first to enter the park.
After a few minutes’ drive, a spectacle I had never beheld burst on my sight!
I saw the frightening spectacle of two lions, the male and his wife.
As my host drove closer to them, my protests increased!
My protests notwithstanding, he drove to within six feet of the lions and asked me to take pictures of them.
Still protesting, I took some quick shots and ordered him to move away! It was at this stage that my amused friend said something which has stayed with me.
He said: “Dan, unlike us humans, animals are not greedy!”
Recalling why he made us enter the park at 6 am, he explained that, carnivorous animals like lions spend the night hunting.
By dawn, they would have eaten to their fill.
Thereafter, all they want is a shady place to rest once day breaks.
Until the food digests and is excreted some days later, the satiated lion harms no one except in self-defence.
Antelope or Zebra
He added that a lion would hunt an antelope because it knows that would be enough for it.
However, a pride of lions would go after a bigger animal eg a zebra so the family can feast on it.
He concluded that since hunger is the instinct which makes carnivores such as lions hunt, once that need is satisfied, they are harmless.
For us humans, however, once a need is satisfied, we graduate to wants, which we don’t need.
So humans will kill just to satisfy their greed.
We want to own six cars when all we need is one.
Animals are not greedy!
Ahmed’s education reminded me of a play I watched in school in the mid-1960s.
The Pardoner’s Tale in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales was titled Radix malorum est cupiditas (greed/the love of money is the root of all evil).
Greed
In the play, three friends chanced upon a vault of gold in the countryside.
After the initial excitement, they decided to guard the gold till nightfall when they would carry their booty home without any interference.
While two guarded the gold the third was sent to go to the nearest village to buy food.
As soon as the food-buyer left, the two guards plotted to kill him on arrival so they would share the gold. As he went, he thought of having all the gold to himself. He decided to kill his two friends.
Having bought the food, he ate his and laced the rest with poison.
Although I watched this play about 60 years ago, I still have a vivid mental picture of all three friends “dead” on the stage.
The three little boys who acted so professionally are now Dr KB Maison (Nana Kobina Nketsia V, Omanhene of Essikadu Traditional Area), Dr JAM Cobbah and Appoh Nartey, a pharmacist of blessed memory.
Conclusion
During the Passion/Easter week, the Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCo) made a discovery of a hotel in Tamale which had made illegal connections underground, to tap directly into power. With over twenty air-conditioners, the hotel paid only one cedi a month for electricity.
This, together with the “ECOWAS den of iniquity” deep in the Subri Forest Reserve makes one wonder if there is a genuine commitment for fighting crime/galamsey by successive governments.
To quote a Joy FM presenter’s question, “what is wrong with us Ghanaians?”
Greed has been the bane of many societies including ours.
It is the foundation on which corruption is built with the evil fruits of despicable language, stealing, bribery and corruption, violence and murders.
The accompanying arrogance is amazing.
To our leaders and also the led, remember Chaucer’s quote that “greed is the root of all evil.”
Perhaps, we must also learn from animals, as Gen. Mohammed taught me that “animals are not greedy!” Remember, we are ordinary mortals whose finite lives will end someday. So, why the greed?
To develop as a nation, we must exorcise greed and be content with what we work hard for legitimately.
The law must be made to work!
During Easter Sunday service on April 20, 2025 at the Garrison-Methodist-Presbyterian-Church, Burma Camp, the chaplain announced the death that morning of Wing-Commander Robert Owoo (Rtd), a former Senior Elder of the church.
The following day on Easter Monday, Pope Francis died. How transient life is!
So, why all the greed in wickedly destroying our very existence of water/food/forest/soil through “galamsey?” For those who arrogantly/glibly justify their greed in wanting everything under the sun, remember that, even Methuselah died at 969 years!
May the souls of the Pope and Wing Commander Owoo (Rtd) rest in peace!
Leaders, lead with Integrity! Fellow Ghanaians, wake up!
The writer is Former CEO, African Peace Support Trainers Association,
Nairobi, Kenya/Council Chairman, Family Health University,
Accra.
E-mail: dkfrimpong@yahoo.com
