Hello Folks,
I thought of sharing some of the articles I have on the subject of
Juju/Marabou Practices in West Africa.The articles are four years old and
some of the people in the story  are dead..The importance of the subject
-matter is still relevant,I would say more relevant today and to lend
support to the BLOG Suntou has started.I would therfore be most grateful if
you could forward any article /title of book on the subject to the
forum.Brother Suntou is looking at the problem with an Islamic Spectacle
on.Yes.he is right to examine and write on the subject.In Islam,it is a
Cardinal Sin to associate partners with Allah Subhanu Wa Taa'la.This is term
Shirk(Holy Quran 31:13) In my humble opinion,this should not be limited to
Islam alone,It is a cultural problem with Thousand of years of History
behind the practice.all over the West Africa Region,and wherever,West
Africans have gone,they have taken the practice with them..Think of South
America,The Americas during the Slave Trade,the Carribbeans Island and now
Europe.
Let us therefore have a healthy discussion on the subject.
Best wishes,
Musa.

The Trial Of Irrationality In West Africa
By: Akosah-Sarpong, Kofi, (2004-06-13)

Kofi Akosah-Sarpong observes that West African elites and the increasing
open mass media are finally confronting deadly superstitions that have been
inhibiting their development process for long

"If a particular spot on the road is causing accidents the traditional
thinking is that evil spirits or ghosts are operating there and must be
exorcised. We spent resources to slaughter sheep and goats and pour libation
as a way of driving away the evil spirit to prevent the accidents. But quite
often the problem persists." -- Prof. Kasim Kasanga, Ghana�s Minister of
Environment and Science, recalling how superstitious beliefs dominated road
construction

From Kwame Nkrumah�s Ghana to Sekou Toure�s Guinea to Samuel Doe�s Liberia
the issue of culture and development, especially deadly superstitious
beliefs, have never been at the center of West Africa�s development
discourse till now. Samuel Doe himself was so rooted in deadly superstition
that he blew his country into pieces. Sekou Toure and Nkrumah projected
images of mystery. Today�s Big Men should move away from such practices so
as to minimize the influence of unnecessary superstition in the development
process. From Ghana to the Gambia to Nigeria there appears to be ferment of
attacks against certain superstitions that for long was ignored in the
region�s development process.

This is 2004 and West Africans need a new mindset and new thinking informed
by their experiences, culture and history. West Africans live in new
challenges and new dangers, some of which emanate from within their culture,
unknown to them has led them lead a dim life. The Liberian rebel kid who
straps himself with juju-marabou paraphernalia against bullets and evil
forces but killed later is as stupid as the juju-marabou medium who gave him
the talismans and other charms and potions. The juju-marabou medium that
aids an armed robber and a coup plotter is as dangerous as the implications
of poverty in stability. For long, West African elites have not understood
their societies for development, now they are beginning to and this is
expected to influence policy development, most of which currently do not
reflect the values of their societies.

Much of the reason for the sharp rise of attacks against certain cultural
values that are today deemed to be counter-productive to West Africa�s
development is the fact that the region is rated by the UN as the poorest in
the world; Nigerian defence researchers have revealed that of the 37
successful coup detats in Africa 32 have occurred in West Africa (making the
region the most unstable in Africa); and security experts have concluded
that nearly all of the most horrendous civil wars, communal violence, high
profile corruption cases and crimes in Africa have occurred in West Africa.
Most of these troubles are rooted in West African culture. That witchcraft
and other negative cultural values have been disturbing Guinea Bissau is as
true as the same values making Liberia a mess. It is, therefore, not
surprising to hear Ghana�s Minister of Environment and Science, Prof. Kasim
Kasanga saying that irrational ways of solving problems based on
superstition has become the biggest obstacle facing the Ghana (and by
extension West Africa). He, therefore, called for the adoption of scientific
methods of explaining problems rather than relying on superstition. "The
challenges facing the nation today was to transform the minds, attitudes and
behaviours in our society to appreciate scientific approach to doing
things."

Unsatisfied with the excessive blame of colonialism for West Africa�s
despicable state of affairs, thinkers such as Ghana�s George Ayittey and
Nigeria�s Wole Soyinka have argued for a look at internal values that have
been inhibiting the region�s progress. Ayittey has gone to the extent of
coining �Africa�s solution for Africa�s problems.� It is in this spirit that
the increasingly open West African journalists and a generation of elites
have reflected upon certain cultural values that for long have been blocking
West Africa�s progress. Anthropologists and development experts reveal that
the high incidence of witchcraft, juju, marabou and other native spiritual
mediums in West Africa have been impacting on the region negatively to the
extent that poverty-alleviation and democratization are under threat from
such cultural values. Voodoo, bad or good, is only practiced in West Africa.
Juju is heavily a West African value. Marabou (otherwise called Alpha-man in
Sierra Leone and Malam or Kramo in Ghana or Aboki in Nigeria) is highly
rooted and scattered in West Africa). There is also high incidence of
witchcraft in West Africa than any other part of Africa. And all these have
been entangling West Africa�s development.

From coup plotters to armed robbers to pickpockets to family crises all
these negative cultural values have been employed to the detriment of
stability and progress, creating a society of mistrust and weak civic
virtues. Apart from all these certain cultural beliefs such as obsession
with the dead to the extent of spending more money on the dead than living
conditions and the interpretation of all misfortunes on witchcraft, the
mixture all these inhibiting cultural values and poverty has resulted in a
West African developmental trouble. Aware of such negative cultural values
there have seen a remarkable boom in spiritual churches across West Africa
most of whom mix juju and other native spiritism with Christian values, a
dangerous mix that has increased negative superstition, undermined
development and blinded West Africans from reality in terms comprehending
their problems in clear terms, West African elites and the media are waging
campaigns against such inhibiting values.

It is in this regard that in Nigerian broadcasters are no longer allowed to
show miracles on television in a way that are not "provable and believable.�
Nigeria�s National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), regulators of the
country�s media, says television stations that fail to abide by the ruling
will be fined, and their equipment could be confiscated. The NBC, drawing
from the of wave media attacks against deadly superstition and irrationality
like other parts of West Africa, says some of the miracles shown on
television and other media outlets, are false and TV stations can broadcast
miracles only when they are verifiable. This may sound contentions but help
clear the heads of the gullible and the irrational. Like other parts of West
Africa, many of the spiritual churches claim to cure diseases, overturn
court cases, others to bring wealth and happiness. Zambia�s former President
Frederick Chuluba when he was President visited Nigerian spiritual churches
secretly for spiritual help ostensibly against his looming corruption cases,
an indication of such churches aiding mal-development.

But the question of how a miracle can be verified has not been answered. Few
would assume the power to judge whether or not a miracle is genuine. In a
bid that is expected to brighten the development terrain, members of the
Christ Embassy, one of the largest spiritual churches in Nigeria and West
Africa, which used to show healing services, have now gone to court to
challenge the NBC, which aims to rationalize an irrational society. Before
this, the Nigeria media have described their country as the �devil�s den,� a
reference to a country mired in irrationality, human sacrifices, ritual
murders, fearsome juju-marabou practices and the impact of all these on the
stability of the country. Gen. Sani Abacha revealed how juju-marabou mediums
have been undermining the stability of Nigeria.

As the trial of irrationality gains momentum regionally, West Africans are
hearing from the UN War Crimes Tribunal in Freetown how juju-marabou mixed
with drugs, a deadly potent, saw some 500,000 Sierra Leoneans murdered,
beheaded, maimed, raped and mutilated in the country�s decade long civil war
(rebel leader Foday Sankoh was so much juju-marabou drenched that he
believed he could vanish into thin air and that no bullet could penetrate
through him. He was involved in massive human sacrifices and ritual
murders). In Liberia juju-marabou defined the rebels mission. War-lord
turned president Charles Taylor has been accused by both his associates and
publications of gruesome human sacrifices and ritual murders (West Africans
will get know more as attempts are being made to arrest him from his
Nigerian exile and trial him. Taylor cannot escape from Nigeria as he has
already been indicted in Europe, Africa and Asia.). The crime against
humanity trial in Freetown demonstrates what Prof. Kasim Kasanga indicates
that we use scientific method to analyze problems holistically. In Freetown
the influence superstition on the decade long horrifying civil war is on
trial holistically.

Informed by such atrocious and irrational regional juju-marabou induced
developments, Ghanaian elites and the media, like their Gambian and Nigerian
pals, have been waging campaigns against values deem inhibiting the
development process. (The Accra-based Chronicle has reported how Togolese
opposition figures employed Ghanaian voodoo to kill President Eyadema.) The
elites have enjoined Ghanaians to eat well in order to think well so as not
blame misfortunes on witchcraft. They have asked Ghanaians to spend more
money on their living conditions instead of on the dead. They have asked
Ghanaians to think well about their problems instead of relying too much on
prophecies from the spiritual churches. The Ghana Police Service, aware of
the impact of juju-marabou on crime, now sees juju-marabou mediums as
criminal facilitators. Agriculture Minister, Major Courage Quarshigah (rtd),
one of the leading elites, have gone further by challenging Ghanaian and
African researchers to tinker with their cultural values in order to improve
their development process. In a move reminiscent of the European
Enlightenment era, which used reason to demolish entrenched deadly
superstitions, Ghanaian scientists are currently working on strategies that
would help explain things rationally, based on facts and given reasons, and
are also mapping out strategies for science acculturation in order to
minimize the degree of irrationality in the Ghanaian society. Aware of the
implications of deadly superstition on their country, Liberian women have
been demonstrating against the ritual murders of their children. Considering
the increasing integration of the sub-region the anti-superstition campaigns
by the Ghanaian and other West African intelligentsia and civil society is
expected to influence the sub-region against inhibitions within their
culture.

Unnecessary superstition have dominated the lives of West Africans since
ancient times so much so that even a defeat in a football game was explained
off in superstitious terms while �the real technical problems were
neglected.� In Freetown, anything that happens is said to be the �na God
mark am� (a fatalistic belief that means it is God�s design. In this view a
road accident is Na God mark am and not a mechanical problem or the driver�s
mistake). It is therefore not surprising to hear Ghana�s Dr Joseph O. Gogo
saying that the under- development of Ghana and West Africa is due to the
�low level of science acculturation in the system.�

Despite the anti-superstition campaigns by West African media and the elites
more work need to be done in this front against West African stupidity,
stupidity informed by the region�s culture that has seen the region easily
used by the Libyan leader Murmur Ghaddafi to cause cruel civil wars and
general instability (Ghaddafi not only bankrolled West African insurgents
and coup plotters but also trained Sierra Leone�s Foday Sankoh and Liberia�s
Charles Taylor and their associates to cause one of the most terrible civil
wars in Africa and aided coup plotters such as Ghana�s Jerry Rawlings,
himself by his own accounts a rabid juju-marabou dabbler).

West African elites, the media and civil society should continue to campaign
against such cultural practices, drawing from the region�s experiences,
culture and history, and help refine the inhibiting aspects of their culture
for the good of the development process. The media and the elites should
undertake more interpretative/commentative work in terms of the culture and
the development process in their public education services.


COMMENTARY

Kuffour and the Juju Talks - 21/04/2004

Kofi Akosah-Sarpong looks at the implications of President Kuffour being
linked to juju-marabou dabbling and says Ghana's experience expects the
President to live about such talks
"President Agyekum Kufuor was a God fearing man and who is not the type to
visit shrines to consult mediums to help him maintain his position in
power," revealed Joseph B. Aidoo, Ghana's Western Regional Minister. Before
Aidoo's remarks, there have been speculative reports in the Accra-based
Palaver about Kuffour dabbling in juju/marabou rituals. While the credence
of this is subject to debate and in the era of partisan politics, one's
political stand, such talks call for serious discussions since our culture,
our history and our experiences demonstrates juju/marabou and other such
practices inhibiting our development.

Culturally, it is not strange to hear a leader in Ghana (or Africa) being
linked to juju/marabou dabbling. The reason is that juju, marabou, and other
such practices have been part of our culture for thousands of years,
especially in West Africa. That our leaders dabble in such dreadful cultural
values is true-from traditional rulers to ministers to presidents and prime
ministers to the small chief in remote villages. What is imperative, in
terms of our on-going development drive, is that we are increasingly coming
to the realization that juju/marabou and other such practices are
counterproductive to progress.

The significance of looking at the implications of John Kuffour being linked
to juju/marabou is that it was raised in the chambers Ghana's highest
law-making body. By raising such talks in parliament, or rather defending
Kuffour for not dabbling in juju/marabou, the perception is that
juju/marabou is negative, especially for a President, since it has
implications for Kuffour and the nation. The implications border on
Kuffour's reasoning, and as Head of State, for Ghana. As a leader, Kuffour's
private life flows into his public life, more so in country where poverty
and distress are high in a region which is the poorest in the world, and
there are high demands from the struggling people for Kuffour to delivery
developmental eggs.

The idea of Kuffour dabbling in juju/marabou and other such practices, as
development experts debate the implications of juju/marabou, witchcraft and
other such practices in national development, is that it weakens the Head of
State's ability to totally rationalize in relations to the problems on the
ground. Juju/marabou and other such practices not only weakens trust, a key
ingredient in development, but undermines "national morality, because they
are based on irrational spirit power," as Robert Kaplan reports in The
Coming Anarchy. You don't solve poverty problems by dabbling in the
metaphysical and as we all know of some aspects of juju/marabou, murdering
innocent people for some stupid power which does no help anybody (Nigeria's
Gen. Sani Abacha's juju/marabou-directed murdering spree to transform
himself into not only civilian President but also solve his mounting
problems are cases in point). You solve the problems of poverty by
understanding the poverty variables on the ground, listening to the people,
by talking to the people and finding out what worries them and factoring in
its international dimensions, especially a country with colonial history.

The history of Ghana (and Africa) shows that leaders, both military and
civilians, who dabble heavily in juju/marabou either paralyze their country
or blow it into pieces. From Liberia's Gen. Samuel Doe to Uganda's Gen. Idi
Amin to Central Africa Republic's Jean-Bedel Bokassa (who ate human flesh as
part of his juju/marabou rituals for power), dabbling in juju/marabou makes
the leader weak mentally, thus becoming not only gullible but inability to
rationalize about the problems of the people. The leader becomes
unrealistic, depending on illiterate, irrational, unscientific and
impractical mediums that, in all measure, are immoral, stupid and
destructive. The juju/marabou dabbling Africa leader sees critics as enemies
and lives in paranoia. Such leaders become the manipulative robots of the
juju/marabou and other mediums as we saw in Gen. Idi Amin, perhaps one of
the most rabid juju/marabou dabblers Africa has seen-- the Ugandan media
described Amin as spiritually weak.

Ghana under General Kutu Acheampong not only saw a throwback to the ancient
times mired in irrational native spiritual mediums but rule by forces of
irrationality. The era shows a Head of State confused and rolling from one
juju/marabou medium to another. The juju/marabou made Acheampong not only
gullible but also infantile, believing in everything the spiritual mediums
told him. It is, therefore, not surprising that Acheampong was swimming
every mid-night in one of the rivers in Accra as advised by his spiritual
mediums, ostensibly to ward off being overthrown and being attacked by
"evil" spirits (More appropriately "people's" spirit). But Gen. Acheampong
was overthrown all the same and executed. In Nigeria, the juju/marabou
mediums had so much grip on Gen. Abacha that his every move was
juju/marabou-directed: his conducted important affairs of state overnight by
the advise of his mediums; he looted the Nigerian treasury in the same
fashion; he killed and jailed in the same vein (He jailed and nearly killed
President Olusegun Obasanjo upon the advise of his mediums some of whom come
as far as Yemen, Saudi Arabia and India). Nigeria was ruled by so much
irrationality that the country not only became 'dark' but also was on the
edge of another civil war.

Aidoo said Kuffour is "a confident man and that his confidence was in God
who he feared and by whose grace only, he (The President) would have the
mandate of the populace to rule again" and that "the President was however
not complacent, in that he showed his awareness that some persons would do
whatever they could to ensure that he lost the mandate of the people so he
is taking the necessary precautions to forestall that," the Ghana News
Agency (GNA) reports. "Necessary precautions to forestall" what? Such
suspicious remarks emanates largely from the Ghanaian (and African) culture,
where because of high incidence of witchcraft believes, juju/marabou
dabbling and the influence of witchdoctors any mishap, distress and
challenges are thought to be influenced by unseen forces. Leaders of the
countries all over the world that are doing well do not dabble in
juju/marabou mediums despite slight differences in culture. They reason
along with their bureaucracy, cabinet and the intelligentsia. Dirk Kohnert,
of Germany's Institute for African Affairs, reports that the belief in
witchcraft, juju/marabou and other such practices are still "deeply rooted
in many African societies, regardless of education, religion, and social
class of the people concerned." Like any other culture, this aspect of the
Ghanaian culture is irrational and blinds one from realistic assessment
problems.

The problems facing Ghana (and Africa) call for total, no-hold-bar detail
intellectual discussion from the public to the cabinet level and not any
dabbling of juju/marabou and other spiritual mediums. Without raising one's
intelligence, if juju/marabou is all that rational, positive and good why
haven't it been used for the rapid development of Ghana (and Africa)? Why
having it being used to help in our thinking so that we can solve most of
problems fast? Why haven't it being used to increase trust among Africa's
ethnic groups for rapid development? Without stretching our imagination, the
African knows very well that the more an individual or group dabbles in
juju/marabou and other such practices the stupid, troublesome, unpleasant
and self-destructive the person or group is. And without naming names,
African ethnic groups that are known to be heavily mired in juju/marabou and
other such practices are normally poor, live in fear, unnecessarily
secretive, disease-ridden (most juju/marabou rituals are filthy), closed to
modernization, and reason poorly.

For the growth of Ghana (and Africa), it is healthy that Kuffour and other
leaders respond to such juju/marabou and other such practices talks in the
public and in doing so educate the public that some aspects of juju/marabou
and other such practices are not good for development. After all the Ghana
Police Service and the South African Police Force (It has an Occult Unit)
now implicate juju/marabou mediums in crimes if they are proven to be linked
as facilitators in terms helping with their juju/marabou trappings.

Crime: Battling Juju-Marabou Mediums
Inspite of its logistic and manpower challenges, the Ghana Police Service
has made a lot of strides. It is some sort of a star in innovative policing
that thinks from within Ghana's traditional values.

Pre-colonial Ghana or Gold Coast had some sort of traditional policing
services though not in the structural sense of the Western world. In Maxwell
Owusu's Rebellion, Revolution, and Tradition: Reinterpreting Coups in Ghana,
traditional institutions such as the militant Asafo organizations that would
overthrow traditional rulers for violating traditional governance norms were
kind of police service.

Owusu's reinterpretation of Ghana's 21 years of military rule from the
perspectives of Ghana's "traditional beliefs and practices, indigenous
political ideology, attitudes and outlooks" also indicates that traditional
policing was part of pre-colonial Ghana's societies, a view that balances
the overriding analytical viewpoints that Africans had no pre-colonial
policing services.

Today, the Ghana Police Service is not only re-connecting with its
traditional roots but it is also moving deeper to tackle certain traditional
values that have been aiding crime. The arrest of a 40-year-old spiritualist
for allegedly helping rob the Church of Pentecost in Accra's suburb of about
US$ 2,000 is case in point. According to the Accra-based The Ghanaian Times,
Ali Baba, the spiritualist, purportedly helped Philip Kwaku Ahwoa, 23, a
labourer of the church and another to rob the church.

Analytically, most crimes from pick-pockets, fraudsters, armed robbers,
roadside magician tricksters to money doublers are remotely influenced by
juju-marabout mediums and other spiritualists.At this juncture, it is
important to know that when the Ghana Police Service arrested leading armed
robber, Atta Ayi, at Adabraka, a suburb of Accra, huge amulets and other
spiritual paraphernalia, prepared for him by various juju-marabout mediums
and spiritualists, were stripped around his body.

The Ghana Police Service is bravely confronting the dreaded juju-marabout
mediums and other spiritualists who are highly feared in the Ghanaian
society for belief that they can wage spiritual reprisals from their
dark-rooms. By arresting Ali Baba, the Ghana Police Service are not only
putting such deep-seated superstitious fears at bay but also rationalizing
parts of the traditional values that are deemed irrational and that have for
long been aiding crime.

The spiritualists who have not been considered in the larger criminology
thought have wrongly being thinking they are outside any moral
responsibility for aiding criminals. At a certain point in West Africa's
history, juju-marabou mediums were virtually ruling the region from Mali to
Nigeria. Just interview Mali's top marabout medium M. Cisse and you will be
shocked at the damages some juju-marabout mediums have caused Ghana and West
Africa.

As no figures are available for the number of juju-marabout mediums and
other spiritualists arrested for aiding criminals, the best way to measure
it is to look at media reports and word of mouth. Juju-marabout mediums
mostly work for the elites, criminal individuals and gangs. Most ordinary
Ghanaians do not access them for money reasons. By playing the
powers-that-be, the juju-marabou mediums escape responsibility for causing
social dysfunctions that send places like Ghana's northern regions in
perennial conflicts and maldevelopment. Just ask Kwaku Sakyi-Addo (former
BBC correspondent) of his coverage of the on and off  Bawku conflicts and
you will be shocked to hear how the conflict is virtually driven by
juju-marabout mediums and other spiritualists.

By battling of juju-marabout and other spiritualists in its fight against
crime, the Ghana Police Service is helping refine some of the ancient
inhibitions within the Ghanaian culture that have been stifling progress. By
this act, too, the Ghana Police Service is transforming its administration
of justice to include traditional values that have been stifling peace and
progress. This should be part of the new approach to police training.


By Kofi Akosah-Sarpong
Expo Times Independent Sierra Leone
Journalist

Kofi Akosah-Sarpong Argues That Attitude Is Key to West Africa's Progress

 Attitude Change: New West African Crusade

By Kofi Akosah-Sarpong(Source:The Gambia Echo :5/8/2008)

Starting from Sierra Leone, since this year, there have been campaigns West
Africa-wide for attitude change as a progress measure. Anybody who knows
West Africa well, as Kwasi Gyan-Apeteng, a former editor of the once
prestigious London, UK-based defunct West Africa Magazine and currently
member of Ghana's National Commission of Culture, will tell you, "we are
poor because we lack the right attitude."

Actually, our poverty troubles are multi-dimensional but attitude as a
development issue is one of them, if not the key factor, as Gyan-Apenteng
and his West African brothers argue. The attitude change crusades are more
prominent in Sierra Leone and Liberia, two West African states that
undermined their corporate attitude mind-set so much so that they
overwhelmingly blew themselves into pieces in the face of their rich
histories and traditions of civilizations – Sierra Leone as the "Athens of
West Africa," with the ancient Fourah Bay College flashing in West Africa,
and Liberia, as the first independent country in sub-Sahara Africa, as the
bulwark of West African emotional stability.

But if anything, at deeper level, Gyan-Apenteng and his other West African
folks' on-going attitude change crusades are in reaction to a West Africa
for long mired in moral crisis. The ongoing attitude change campaigns in
Nigeria by its Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences
Commission and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to "curb the
menace of the corruption that constitutes the cog in the wheel of progress"
is one of them. As the dark spot of Africa, with most of the trans-Atlantic
taking place there, most of Africa's mindless military coup detat took place
in West Africa. At a time most of the 16 countries in West Africa were the
playground of confused military juntas, with marijuana-smoking officers as
young as 23 years-old and rebel leaders as old as 63 declaring themselves as
Heads of State and roaming the regional scene and sending the region into
tatters.

There are strong perceptions among other Africans that crime is heavier in
West Africa than other parts of Africa - after all West Africa is the home
of the global scam '419.' As relic of too much military juntas (within which
were great deal of indiscipline as the Jerry Rawlings June 4, 1979 junta in
Ghana seek to correct) and civil quarrel, at a point West Africa led Africa
in civil conflicts, from Senegal's Cassamance to Liberia to Sierra Leone to
Guinea-Bissau. As Sierra Leone's on-going government-backed attitude change
campaigns demonstrate, most of these crises, developmentally, is due to
indiscipline.

The Sierra Leone attitude challenge, in the face of its immense wealth and
small size, fit into Gyan-Apenteng's argument that you may have all the
first-class natural wealth but you need discipline to harness them for
progress. "… Switzerland, which does not plant cocoa but has the world's
best chocolate. In its little territory people raise and plant the soil in
only four months of the year. They also produce the best quality dairy
products. It is a small country that transmits an image of security, order
and labour which has made it the world's strongest safe," thundered
Gyan-Apenteng, also columnist for the Accra-based The Mirror, among
countries like Japan that had succeeded more from discipline and order than
endowment with great natural resources.

But while Gyan-Apenteng and his other West African siblings have done well
in critically discussing and raising the implications of attitude in West
Africa's progress, they haven't gone deeper enough, as the West African
reality calls for. The issue isn't the intellect, as Gyan-Apenteng
recognizes: "Executives from rich countries who communicate with their
counterparts in poor countries show that there is no significant
intellectual difference. Race or skin colour is also not important.
Immigrants labelled lazy in their countries of origin are the productive
power in rich European countries."

The burning issue is how Gyan-Apenteng and his West African associates have
not factored in sufficiently enough the implications of the West African
culture in the attitude-progress campaign 50 years after freedom from
colonial rule. Much of the attitude debates have been seen more from
neo-liberal Western values than from African traditional ones. There is
nothing wrong in appropriating neo-liberal values for progress. The
challenge is how you fit it into the West African attitude challenges,
especially from within its cultural milieu.

While Gyan-Apenteng acknowledges that the difference why the developed
countries' progress is grounded in good attitude more than Ghana and other
West Africa states, he makes the case that "the attitude of the people"
(developed countries) is "framed along the years by education and culture."
The lesson here is that Ghana and West Africa have not invested heavily
enough in their culture as a development issue, more so as a discipline
issue. A range of Ghana and other West African traditional values can easily
be appropriated for the on-going attitude promotion.

The defining word here is certain aspects of the "culture" as part of the
reasons why Ghana and other West Africa states have for long being troubled
by the attitude challenges. West Africans have not worked hard in the
cultural context not only as a modernization factor but also as a progress
issue. The trouble, however, is that the circumstances have changed. West
Africans can no longer lean on the neo-liberal values to take on the
attitude-progress issues that have seen them wheeling in mid air in their
development process. Worse still, their lack of grasp of their culture as a
serious progress issue has turned them against themselves.

Whether Gyan-Apenteng talks of "ethics as a basic principle" or
"responsibility" or "respect for rules and laws" or "respect for the rights
of other people" or "punctuality" that spurred the developed countries'
progress, this has to be seen in the context of their culture, and should be
the case with West Africa. It is still shocking why in the face of this
moral crisis, Gyan-Apenteng and his West African associates have not tapped
into the various national houses of traditional rulers to reclaim West
Africa's morality by seeking their advice and direction.

Gyan-Apenteng and his West African associates can borrow some advice from
the Southeast Asians. Recently, as some Southeast Asian countries such as
Japan and China face attitude challenge, they drank deep into their core
traditional values such Confucianism to regenerate themselves in order to
spur their progress.

Gyan-Apenteng and his West African associates are yet to do this in the face
of armed robbers appropriating juju-marabou mediums for crime; parents who
do not discipline their children well and blame their crimes on witchcraft;
drivers who are drunk, get involve in fatal accidents and blame witchcraft
and evil spirits; a President Samuel Doe who rejects all rational thinking
and use juju-marabou mediums and plunge Liberian into long-running bloodbath
and suffering in the face of massive human sacrifice; and civil servants who
use juju-marabou mediums to bring down their co-workers down.

All these attitude problems emanate from the West African culture and people
like Gyan-Apenteng have to consider them in the attitude change-and-progress
crusades, all things being equal – for all things are not equal.

posted @ Friday, May 09, 2008 8:15 AM by egsankara