Ours is a culture that would need a lot of tweaking to align with 21-century thinking when it comes to women-related issues. Some such issues, including childlessness in marriage, leave a lot of women traumatised because culturally, they are considered as failures and therefore misfits no matter their other life achievements. And so, it gladdened my heart to hear our head ...
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Volta, the votes, the roads and the empty promises
Often when I am walking through the Ho township, many friends will say, Benjamin, “what are you guys doing about the roads in the region?”, Why are you people not asking the ministers and the president to come and fix the roads for us? I will often respond with a grin and say we are trying our best. But let ...
Read More »Attacking Physical ISIS, Killing the Leader, Missing the Ideology
Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi’s death is a big blow to ISIS and marks the end of a terrifying era that witnessed the massacre of thousands of innocent people, most of them Muslims, according to a 2017 Global Terrorism Database by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. ISIS posed a potent, existential security nightmare to many ...
Read More »‘This advert has been vetted and approved by the FDA’: What does this mean?
These days, it seems as if every advertisement aired on television or radio has a voice at the end saying, “This advertisement has been vetted and approved by the FDA.” Even on billboards all around town and in the print media, this statement is present. Here’s the thing you should note: it’s not all advertisements that have this statement. It ...
Read More »Busia’s daughter refines political correction of Akufo Addo
THE DANQUAH VERSUS NKRUMAH UNRECONCILED FEUD. A GHANA PROBLEM Mr. President, this is a comprehensive political overview of our lopsided history. I write for posterity your Excellency. Dr. Danquah is part of a group of several actors in a joint and later split convention collaborating with others operating separately to create a ground swell movement of the chiefs, the youth, ...
Read More »Citizens of Ghana, organise!
One factor that sustains the political establishment, or the Old Guard, is that Ghanaian citizens cannot put aside partisanship for collective action. I think it is about time, as a people, that we made a decision on the political culture. It is either we commit ourselves to redefining politics and pushing for progress or retreat and maintain a system that ...
Read More »Who taught you about sex? …the CSE question
Who taught you about sex? How did that teaching shape your attitudes to your body, to others bodies, to sex itself? Did that learning happen in one session, was it in stages? Was it your parents, friends or was it at school? Was sex about pleasure and power or was it about marriage and babies? Was there sexual abuse or ...
Read More »SDGs: Children with Disabilities in Ghana left behind
Akos (not the real name) sells sachet water on the streets of Madina, a suburb of Accra, and her routine has been to wake up early in the morning to go earn a living for herself and her three children, one of whom has cerebral palsy She lives in a rented single room at Ashaley-Botwe, another suburb of the capital ...
Read More »When property rate knocks at your gate – should you return to sender?
I can say that I am a law-abiding citizen on the score that I am energised to check-in where statutory rules and regulations apply. However, I sulk; I curse and almost swear when my annual property rate notice is delivered at my gate every year. Why do we continue to pay property rate to the local Assemblies with no corresponding services ...
Read More »Our rotten political party system
What do we make of our existing political party system? How can we ensure that it guarantees democracy? How can it prevent civil strife and justice? Can we justify the existing political systems with its squabbles, lamentations and beastility? From pre-colonial to our present post-independence era, people organised on identified interests. In our communal villages during the pre-colonial period, communities ...
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