Permanent tug-of-war?
Veteran writer Enimil Ashon has a reputation for saying it as it is.
He does not hold back and does not shy away from speaking truth to power.
His Friday, July 18, 2025 article in the Daily Graphic titled “It’s simple: ‘Macho’ has married political greed” is the latest example.
In it, he states as follows:
“Machoism and politics are not twins. In Ghana, the two are not even from the same womb.
Their marriage is only fortuitously symbiotic: two different evils attracted to each other to the mutual benefit of both.
Party politics, the way it is practised in Ghana, has always begat violence. When a man dying of hunger sees a well-fed man wolfing down a sumptuous meal, it is violence knocking on the door.
Take it from me, no matter how many amendments we introduce into the 1992 Constitution, elections will always be marked by blood when the winner takes all, to the total exclusion of the losing party.
The latest violence that erupted at St Peter’s Society Methodist Church polling station in the Ablekuma North parliamentary rerun last week will not be the last, even if 10 popes and 10 chief imams pray over every election, and no matter how many National Days of Repentance/National Days of Thanksgiving services we hold in this country.”
Mr Ashon’s article took me to mine of August 3, 2020 in the Daily Graphic titled ‘Tug of war results?’ quoted below. ******
In recent times, a picture, which has been making the rounds, shows two smiling 86-year-olds; former Nigerian Head of State General Yakubu Gowon and 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Professor Wole Soyinka.
Under normal circumstances, this picture would not have made news. However, what makes it significant is that these two gentlemen were once upon a time in their thirties, enemies who were described as being at the opposite ends of a tug of war rope between July 1967 and January 1970.
Nigerian civil war
The tug of war then was the Nigerian civil war which had Gen Gowon on the Federal side, and Prof Wole Soyinka on the other side with Biafran sympathies. They fought a bitter 30 month-war during which Gen Gowon had Prof Soyinka imprisoned for about two years.
Even though the war ended with the surrender of Biafra to then Colonel Olushegun Obasanjo (later President), it resulted in a weakened Nigeria state which still suffers from the scars of the war.
Significantly, Gen Gowon declared the result of the war as “no victor, no vanquished!” In effect, it was a “lose-lose” situation for both sides with the state of Nigeria the loser.
At the end of two and half years of fighting, there were about 100,000 military casualties, while estimates have between 500,000 and three million Biafran civilians dying of starvation.
Is this what some Ghanaians wish for Ghana simply to have power? If 86-year-olds who fought a war in their thirties regret the carnage and destruction to their country, why can we not learn from history?
Before I relate this to the tension being created by the increasing use of vitriolic language sometimes bordering on hate speech, and the violence taking place in Ghana today, what is tug-of-war?
Tug-of-war
Between 1900 and 1920, tug-of-war was an Olympic sporting event.
It is a contest in which two teams of eight per team pull backwards at opposite sides of a rope until one team drags the other across a central line.
Somehow, tug-of-war had a life span of only 20 years in the Olympics.
The objective of tug of war is for each team to pull the rope along with members of the opposing team to their side.
Harmless as it looked in comparison with boxing, it was soon discovered to have terrible hidden dangers, hence one of the reasons for its removal from the Olympics.
Dangers
Sometimes the force with which the winning team falls backwards is so violent that the winners end up with more injuries than the losers who are also not spared serious injuries.
In a few cases where the rope has snapped in tug-of-war contests, all 16 competitors ended up in hospital with serious injuries.
On June 4, 1995 at Westernohe, Germany the tug-of-war rope snapped during a competition resulting in two deaths and five severely injured.
Of the 650 participants in the whole competition, 29 got injured.
In addition to injuries from falling and back strain, there is also damage to the body, for example, fingers, hands and even arm amputations.
In later English usage, “tug-of-war” also means a situation in which two evenly matched people or factions strive to keep or obtain the same thing.
In recent times, Ghana has experienced an escalation of incendiary language and violence against perceived opponents whose thinking does not fall in their mould.
Are the damaging results of tug-of-war what we want in Ghana?
Why are we doing this to ourselves, considering the respect we enjoy not only in Africa, but internationally as a peaceful people?
War-torn countries
What we are working towards with divisive politics is therefore going the Nigerian 1967 to 1970 way.
West African countries like Liberia, Sierra Leone and our western neighbour Ivory Coast, have all gone through civil wars with UN peacekeepers coming to keep peace and restore law and order.
In Rwanda in 1994, 800,000 people were killed by fellow Rwandese in about one 100 days.
Hate language played a major role in this tragedy. Let no one think, Ghana is beyond that! For, once bloodshed starts, ending it is difficult.
For the warmongers, probably a trip to one of these conflict areas where Ghanaians soldiers go for UN peacekeeping will educate them out of their war-cries!
It is amazing how youngsters can threaten the whole country’s security with amazing impunity and get away with it without any adult calling them to order to sanitize their language.
Are they working towards a destroyed Ghana, which they will regret later in life like the two 86-year-olds?
Conclusion
Probably, apart from Rwanda, no African country which has gone to war has made a full recovery.
Gun-toting civilians terrorise innocent people with impunity. A comment I received from a retiree in response to my recent article read:
“...About the vitriol, etc., in our politics: I always tell anyone who cares to listen that, the last thing we should wish for is a civil war. No-one, absolutely no-one will win, and the whole country will be the absolute loser.
I always cite Sierra Leone as an example, because I lived there for two years long before the ten-year civil conflict, and I have been there for a brief visit after the war. Lord! That country is now stuck in the mud, so to speak! I pray for Ghana…!”
Need I say more?
Finally, the lesson from the two 86-year-olds who fought a war in their 30s, General Gowon and Professor Wole Soyinka, is that whatever the semblance of victory might be, tug-of-war always ends in a “lose-lose” situation.
********
Comments
As Enimil Ashon and many have suggested, the winner talks all partisan politics in Ghana has proved itself fundamentally fatally flawed to failure.
To Professor H Kwasi Prempeh and members of the Constitution Review Committee, it is time to look at Proportional Representation, as the late Professor SKB Asante of UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) fame and his team of 13 “Committee of Experts,” proposed in their draft in 1991, as an alternative to the winner takes all, before the Consultative Assembly started its work in 1991.
For a small country such as Ghana with the human and natural resources we have, the winner takes all politics has divided and destroyed us with “galamsey” at centre-stage.
It is time to give proportional representation, which is practised by over 130 countries in the world, as against less than 55 for winner takes all, a chance!
Leadership, lead by example/integrity! Fellow Ghanaians, wake up!
The writer is a former CEO, African Peace Support Trainers Association, Nairobi, Kenya; Council Chairman, Family Health University, Teshie, Accra
E-mail: dkfrimpong@yahoo.com
