From tiny acorns grow mighty oaks
Ghana is like the parent who is so busy struggling to eke out a living that the child is left to learn morality from the street.
Worse, this parent is themselves morally empty, if not totally depraved. Many years down the line, they are chasing prophets, mallams and witchdoctors to find out why the child has grown up an irredeemable drug addict and gangster.
To borrow a word that is in currency under John Mahama’s Presidency, Ghana is “re-setting” everything except the morality of the population, though the seeds were sown long before his second tenure.
What happened this week at the Swedru School of Business, where a student from the Obrachire SHS was assaulted, is only the latest. Though three student suspects have been handed over to the Swedru Divisional Police Command, it is worth noting that this is not the most sordid case.
Last year, a student was caught “caning” a junior with a cutlass!
On August 24, 2021, teachers of the Three-town Senior High School in the Ketu South Municipality of the Volta Region swore not to continue invigilating that year’s ongoing West African Senior School Certificate Examinations (WASSCE), following incessant attacks and threats on their lives by some final year students for not being allowed to cheat in the WASSCE.
In the 1980s, one of Ghana’s guitar band musicians, Senior Eddie Donkor, in a song lamenting Ghana’s declining morality, wondered aloud, “Na who cause am?”
Punishments meted out to these student-criminals and the publicity accompanying the punishments have not been deterrent enough.
In the Fourth Republic, Parliament has become a crime scene where offending MPs go unpunished.
The only recorded exception is the Ayariga Allegation Probe.
For the first time, a Parliamentary Disciplinary Committee not only sat in public but also found the MP guilty of lying and publicly sanctioned the MP.
This was the allegation by Mahama Ayariga in February 2017 that a ministerial nominee had offered him and some other MPs on Parliament's Appointment Committee a bribe of GH¢3,000 to facilitate his approval.
The Joe Ghartey Committee subsequently stated that it found no evidence to support the allegations and, therefore, recommended that Ayariga be sanctioned.
In living memory, this was the first time a sitting MP had been so sanctioned for unacceptable conduct. But I was not impressed.
My conclusion was that it was only because the allegation soiled the image of another MP.
Even then, when Speaker Mike Ocquaye invited Ayariga “to the bar”, by which the latter would have to come to the front of the sitting to render the apology, Alban Bagbin, the then Second Deputy Speaker and MP for Nawdowli Kaleo and Haruna Iddrisu, then Minority Leader, intervened, urging that the offending MP had not been known for unparliamentary behaviour and pleaded for him to stand by his seat to render the apology.
Now, dear reader, do you remember the apology? Ayariga rendered a conditional apology, saying, “Mr Speaker, if you say I should apologise, I apologise.”
The Speaker deferred his ruling on the matter to Friday and adjourned the sitting.
Chaos
Last year (January 30, 2025), chaos erupted during a sitting of the Parliament Appointments Committee, which was vetting ministerial nominees.
The brawl erupted over a dispute regarding the number of nominees to be vetted. MPs broke microphones, tables and causedextensive damage. Police had to be called to the scene.
Speaker Alban Bagbin condemned the vandalism variously as “shameful”, "unacceptable" and "unbefitting of a 21st-century Parliament" and called for an investigation.
The damaged furniture and equipment were subsequently replaced to allow the vetting process to continue.
The speaker threatened to bill the culprits for the damage.
What was the punishment? Four MPs — Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor (South Dayi), Frank Annoh-Dompreh (Nsawam-Adoagyiri), Alhassan Tampuli (Gushegu) and Jerry Ahmed Shaib (Weija-Gbawe) were suspended for two weeks as a result.
But they did not serve out the full suspension. Speaker Alban Bagbin lifted the sanctions just a few days later, on February 4, 2025, “after reviewing the incident and its aftermath.”
The media reported that during the suspension period, tensions in Parliament escalated. Minority MPs staged a walkout in protest, leaving the Majority side to continue vetting ministerial nominees on its own.
The matter died.
January 7, 2021: the then MP for Tema West, Carlos Ahenkorah, snatched uncounted ballot papers in the Speaker of Parliament elections and attempted to bolt with them.
The youth were watching.
They are still watching and forming their own conclusions.
One of their conclusions is — or they are being compelled to conclude — that in desperation, one can steal; that violence is an acceptable behaviour in human society; that in one’s anger, it is alright to destroy public property and that crime becomes a crime and is only punishable when it is committed by a small fry.
Worse still, the youth are learning that in anger, one does not need to respect authority.
Musician Obuor has a song whose lyrics observe that a tiny tadpole will grow to become a big frog.
The writer is the Executive Director, Centre for Communication and Culture.
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