Lost for words
A kidnap in Nigeria and a catastrophic wholesale disgrace in Ghana. It is not often that anything renders me speechless. But I have to confess that two recent dramatic events have left me traumatised to the point of leaving me lost for words.
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Let me start with the kidnap in Nigeria. On Sunday, August 30, a good friend and colleague of mine, Donu Kogbara, was abducted from her home in Port Harcourt in the Rivers State of Nigeria. Those who follow the news about Nigeria would know that kidnappings are a regular feature of life in the Niger Delta part of the country. It is a booming industry and most families have had the experience of someone close to them being kidnapped for ransom.
The victims have ranged from the rich and famous, the father of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, well-known writer; the mother of the then Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to medical doctors, lawyers, their mothers, fathers and children. When the kidnapping phenomenon started, the targets were foreign oil workers; but there are fewer and fewer of such people available and/or they are so heavily guarded, the locals are now the targets.
My friend Donu is a journalist; she used to live and work in the United Kingdom and then moved home to Nigeria a few years ago. She is a feisty, straight-to-the point kind of journalist who makes her point without worrying about who might get upset. The people who seized her were reported to be dressed in police uniforms and when there was no word from her or her abductors a week or so after the incident, her family and friends feared the worst.
Reaction to the kidnap
My imagination went riot with the worst possible scenarios. I kept asking myself what has the world come to? These are the places I used to report from and walk around by myself without any thought of being in danger, even when I reported on things that people found unpalatable. The kidnap stories I had been reading for years became sickeningly real to me. I was angry; I was incredulous and I felt helpless. Even the certainties about journalism suddenly became questionable. Should we go public and make as much noise as possible to demonstrate the rage we felt? The advice was the ransom might be higher and a lot of noise might endanger her life. If we kept quiet, could we later on report on the kidnapping of other people that were not friends or family?
In the midst of this turmoil, dear, dear Anas Aremeyaw Anas broke his latest investigative report on corruption in our judiciary. Like the kidnapping, one had heard stories about corruption in the judiciary for years but this exposé brought things home forcefully.
It gave me no joy to see on the list of those caught in the web, the name of the judge about whom I had written earlier this year as having been investigated and found complicit in taking money. I had omitted the name of the judge in my article and the Judicial Secretary had written to deny the story. I later discovered the mistake I made was to put a figure of GH¢35,000 as the bribe the judge had taken when all he had taken was GH¢5,000.
Even though there had always been rumours about corruption in the judiciary and I had reason to believe some of the rumours, Anas has managed to reduce me to near tears by his findings.
I ask myself if I would have been so devastated if this had been an exposé of corruption in the police service or among teachers or journalists or even parliamentarians. The answer has to be unfortunately that even if the expose had been about priests or so-called men of God, I would not have been as saddened as I am by being forced to see judges ready to let criminals go free for a bribe.
I know judges are human and they come from the same society that produces corrupt policemen, corrupt politicians, corrupt journalists, corrupt civil servants and yet I expect them alone to be upright.
Corrupt society
Every once in a while we pick on one group in our society and expect them to behave differently from the rest of us. I remember when the Black Stars managed to reduce grown men to tears with their determination to refuse to play a crucial match unless they get their money; I worked it out for myself at the time that it was unrealistic to expect one part of our society to work when the others were not working.
The carpenters cannot or will not build cabinets in a kitchen that would last a year, the plumbers do a haphazard job and there are leaks every day in your house; the engineers and architects conspire to price buildings out of the reach of the average Ghanaian. Teachers insist on extra classes before their students would pass their exams and some of them would in fact take inducements to alter grades and journalists sell headlines to the highest bidders. Priests seduce young girls and policemen take GH¢10 to allow unlicensed drivers on the road. Our judges come from this same pool.
It is probably a good sign that we are shocked by the news of judges taking bribes. It means that we still hold them in some esteem, which is more than can be said for how we regard many other professions.
On Friday, my friend Donu Kogbara arrived home after being released by her captors. The reports so far indicate she has kept her sense of humour throughout her ordeal and that cheers me up no end.
Over here, I am concentrating my mind on the judges that I know who have integrity. That helps to keep my sanity.