May your Road be Rough!

(I borrowed the words of the title, credited to Tai Solarin a Nigerian educator, simply because I love the ring to it and off course because I read it many many years ago and it stuck) 

A relative of mine, a creative fellow with answers to most of my country’s challenges, came up with his latest idea recently. He thinks “we as a people” – this is one of the favoured lines in national debates - should derive more value from our culture and traditions. As far as he is concerned traffic offences will be a thing of the past if we replaced the police on our roads with barefooted and bare-chested men in raffia skirts, shiny little pot bellies, faces painted with white chalk leaving the eyes and armed with little clay pots filled with water and leaves and tiny bells hanging around their necks. Any time a person run the red lights these people would only sprinkle some white powder in the air after the offender with a wand. Off course this got us all laughing.  This chap is never short of outlandish ideas we said; he is the same person who declared a conviction that the tropical sun did something devious with our brains (the consequences of which reflect in our development) and so if he became president his first and perhaps only policy would be that each person would wear a hat at all times in our country. Still, thinking about the angry driver honking like crazy behind us for not driving through the traffic lights as they turned red, we wished his suggestion could actually work!  

I came across a newspaper report a while back that got me thinking; perhaps my relative’s idea is not so farfetched. The nation’s leading daily reported on Wednesday February 27, 2013, that a pressure group called People with Convention of Principles (POWCOP) had appealed to the judiciary at a press conference to consider introducing the “traditional curse” in the court system “to help find lasting solutions in the adjudication of cases at courts”. The group held that the current situation where persons before the court are made to swear on the Bible or Qur’an gave these persons the opportunity to tell lies and that bribery, corruption, etc were on the increase. Obviously, the bible and Qur’an are not working for them as effective tools for getting the truth out of people and so they advocate the introduction of the “traditional curse” in every sector of government. To drive home their point, they cite the example of the on-going challenge to President Mahama’s election as president and suggest that the curse system would be the simplest in determining the truth.  

It seems that “as a people” no matter our religious beliefs, we so believe in the power of curses and fetish pronouncements. That should not surprise anyone. Depending on the packaging the effects of these things are believed to be instantaneous or long term, spanning generations. They also do not discriminate as to the target; that is if it is meant for the father and for some reason the father misses it, the son, mother, girlfriend or whoever is just as good a target. What other punitive system could be this effective? 

I decided my relative had a point when I stumbled on a 2013 report about striking workers who have refused to return to work because of a curse. They are demanding that the curse be reversed before they return to work. I don’t blame them! Kwakubonsam and his likes are about.