POLITICS AND INVESTORS MAGNANIMITY

Greetings Gbovuga, it’s been some time now since we parted company when I last visited the village.  With the hustle and bustle of city life, I think it was good you decided not to have of the urban life we have here in the city and therefore want to remain in the village. Life in the city is no more the type you Guys had in the post independent Ghana.

But still cannot missed your unique way of thinking outside the box and the way and manner you organized your thought and fed me with wisdom to read the political landscape.

This is the reason why I have decided to write to you every now and then to inform you of what is making the headline news in the city, African and indeed the world so we can debate and share ideas and objective opinions about current happenings.

Gbovuga, I believe you now know why I don’t trust some of the stories on our airwaves these days. Some of these stories are written with a strange intend to either get three days fame or just push some sought of an agenda to get the public to loose confidence in the government and authorities in order to open doors for the spinners of our time to tell lies.

Last Friday, there was a report which suggested that the Mayor of Kumasi, Samuel Sarpong, has lost his head and cause the arrest of a radio panelist on Kapital radio for allegedly cursing him of some sought. They say the Major picked his brief case alongside a number of dreaded policemen and stormed the radio station with all the vigor in his bosom.

When I first heard the story Gbovu, I said to myself this is just another story which had been thrown into the field to grab attention and possibly relegate development stories which could be discussed the following week out of gear. Since you know me very well Gbovuga, I always seek to find and from what I gathered the police arrested the radio panelist for threatening to burn down the offices of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA).

Wow! You can say that again Gbovuga and that is our body politic for you old man. The young man irresponsibly made that statement on air openly declaring his intention to commit crime. Gbovuga, I don’t blame this youngman because we have been made to believe that you can say anything so far as you belong to one of the big political parties. Let me hold my thought for now as the police is investigating this case. 

Gbovuga, there is a saying that coming events cast their shadows and a soup which will go bad shows it prospects in the early mornings. What am I up to? You ask Gbovuga, in the name of investment and helping the poor, our bona fide properties are being stolen right under our noses as if we are zombies.

We, as Africans, keep complaining about how poor our agricultural sector is and the need to rejuvenate it to boost the availability of food for our people and also export some of these foods for foreign exchange. Due to this deficit in our agricultural sector our leaders travel with collection bowls begging for monies and trying their best to convince so-called investors to come to Africa to help our economy.

But what are we hearing now, some of these so called investors since 2009 have been mounting hectares of land in Africa and reports estimate that 60m hectares of land in Africa - an area the size of France had been acquired rendering many small scale farmers jobless. This new approach by some of these investors of acquiring African lands is said to be currently dominant in Ethiopia, Tanzania, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Mali and Mozambique

Gbovuga to spit on our faces, these investors are no more interested in the production of food but rather biofuel and cut flowers. Don’t you think this is pure insult, Gbovu? We lack food come, and help us and they rather invest in commodities that will cause us to starve. Gbovu, what is the point in calling on an investor whose activities will only end up causing casualties to our unborn generations?

These investors employ bad tactics just to get the land from our chiefs and some corrupt government officials with the promise of providing the inhabitance with jobs. Gbovuga, you and I know these are all lies because mechanical agriculture leads to small labour force and also most of these farmers do not know how to operate some of these farm machines.

These investors will have valid title to the lands and very soon our own people will not have land to build and farm on; thanks to that small bottle of Jonnie walk. Damn!

I pray that this nonsense does not show up on our shores Gbovuga because if it does, I will gather my wife and children and walk throughout the country to protest against such deals. And woe betides any ‘greedy bastard’ who would enter into such agreement with these blood-sucker-investors. Not to forget, Uncle Pratt will always support demonstration or ‘I dey INVESTORS lie?’

For the moment we know of some investors entering into the country with such intentions. Biofuel is definitely an alternative to the world search for alternative energy but we must not allow our land to be mainly converted into such products when we don’t have enough food to feed our people. A word to the wise is enough!