Missing babies and tollbooth headaches!
I have been jolted this week by the two current news of missing dead babies in Kumasi and the tolling going on at the entrances to our premier university, the University of Ghana, at Legon, near Accra.
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The two events are splendid examples of the hypocrisies that now and again engulf the homeland, spearheaded by some of our cleverest compatriots, whose intelligence and wisdom should be deployed to solve our problems, and not to confuse us and increase our stress levels.
Health workers at the maternity ward in Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi are reported to be on strike following violent attacks on them by family members of a woman who allegedly lost her baby during childbirth but whose body or ashes cannot be found. Since this heartbreaking story broke, we have been told that the bodies of two other babies, from the same part of the city of Kumasi, also stillborn, got lost in similar circumstances in the same ward in the same hospital some time ago.
Baby theft
Today, I am not interested in the well-documented allegations of baby thefts during deliveries at home and in our health institutions, but in the way and manner our health professionals have responded to this double tragedy. Some of us still remember the video films made from these stories in the nascent days of local Ghanaian video film making. This story, therefore, strikes an immediate chord with us, especially as the tragedy of maternal mortality has affected almost every household in this country.
The other story, brewed in the capital, has seen the administrative authorities at Legon in a running battle with the government over the erection of tollbooths at the exit points of Legon, to charge incoming vehicles a fee to be able to pay off a loan raised by the university to renovate roads on campus.
The latest episode in the Legon matter is the destruction last Tuesday, of a tollbooth at Okponglo by officials of the National Security Council (NSC) under the instructions of the secretary to the NSC, the National Security Co-ordinator, Col. Larry Gbevlo-Lartey.
Under normal circumstances, recalling the behaviours of some of us in these matters should be a cause for hilarity, but we are constrained by the solemnity of one, and the blatant impunity of the other; both supported by some of our cleverest compatriots, who quote the law as if it is our master, rather than the servant and tool for development that it is, and must remain. We make laws to make our lives easier and comfortable, not to hinder us, and like feckless Pharisees, cite it at every foolish infraction to make us look absurd and ridiculous.
As I listened to the health workers in Komfo Anokye bemoan the real threat to their safety at their workplace, I asked myself if they ever pondered over the real threat to the lives and health of their patients and the general public when they embarked on their numerous strikes?
I disagree totally and completely with a worker in the health services going on strike, for whatever reason. To cement the notion of unstinting service such a noble calling deserves, we actually have laws in this country making it an essential service. Yet, they still go on strike anytime they want, and they always do so and dutifully collect their salaries without a care for their patients, as if the pecuniary attractions of the profession drew them into it, and not a deep and abiding interest in care-giving.
Questions
I have only a few questions to ask the health authorities regarding this unfortunate incident. What exactly is the underlying reason for placing a dead person on a live person at childbirth? This is an extremely weird protocol that I cannot wrap my mind around!
Secondly, if it is true that others from the same part of the city of Kumasi have lost their babies similarly, might the fact that the mothers were illiterate and could only thumbprint their agreement to the course of events prove conclusive in the assessment of the available evidence? The Zongo incidence raises the issue why this particular way of doing things did not affect SDA or Methodist babies. Together, these questions make the so-called documentary evidence look like an elaborate smokescreen.
Now to the Legon incident. The tolling and the resultant interminable delay in entering the university has delayed my own trip to campus to collect a few books to help me clear some cobwebs in this column relative to an earlier article about their past vice- chancellors.
I must make a confession here. I had earlier thought the Legon authorities had a case tolling their exits till I was persuaded otherwise by the able advocacy of lawyer Egbert Faibille about two weeks ago on radio spelling out his opposing views. The lawyer had taken the case of two students who were challenging the university as to the legality of the tolling exercise.
To say that I was stunned to hear the same lawyer condemn the destruction of the booth in direct contradistinction to the brief he has taken, is to understate my sorrow at such intellectual acrobatics.
Way back in early 1996, Rosemary Ekwam of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) wept like a baby when she won her case at the Supreme Court questioning the constitutionality of the ambition of Kwame Pianim to be the Presidential Candidate of the NPP in view of the fact that Pianim had served time in jail for subversion. It later on turned out that Mrs Ekwam had been put up to this dangerous gambit by Mr Pianim himself! As an aside, the lawyer for the victorious Mrs Ekwam was Nkrabeah Effah Dartey, who suffered disqualification from the NPP presidential primaries in 2007 using the same laws!
Here we have Egbert behaving like Mrs Ekwam. Why?
I have listened to and digested all the arguments surrounding this tolling matter, and have only one question to ask the Legon authorities. Only one question. Where in the world do we pay to visit a university, publicly or private-owned, for whatever reason?