Foreign Affairs Minister Mohammed Mumuni who last week accused the BBC of deliberately misrepresenting President J.E.A. Mills’ controversial Dzi wo fie asem comments, has reiterated his accusation, saying the media big player sought to cause public disaffection for the president.
The president while answering a question on the Ivorian crisis had said he was guided by a Fante saying; Dzi wo fie asem, to wit mind your own business. He had premised the comment on the grounds that regional grouping ECOWAS, had among other resolves, planned a military intervention to oust Laurent Gbagbo from office if all other peaceful avenues failed to get him to relinquish power. The President, while saying he endorsed the ECOWAS decision, also said he personally did not think a military intervention was the solution to the Ivorian situation. Ghana would also not be able to contribute soldiers should ECOWAS decide to carry through the military threat.
The BBC’s Friday edition of its Network Africa programme, used the president’s statement as a “wise saying” for the day and the listener comments that followed were uncharitable to the president.
Foreign Minister Mohammed Mumuni thought “The BBC has been unfair and unjust because it took that proverb totally out of context and presented it and it clearly gave a certain impression, it portrayed president Mills as a person who is uncaring for others, as a selfish person, an inward-looking president who is only concerned about his own internal affairs and does not care a hoot about what is happening in La Cote d’Ivoire.”
Alhaji Mumuni rejected suggestions that President Mills himself gave the impression he is concerned only with his own internal matters when he made the point “mind your own business.”
He argued that when the president talked of minding one’s own business “he (Mills) really was talking about an African position. La Cote d’Ivoire’s situation is an African problem, it demands an African solution which is based on negotiation, it is based on mediation and peace-building. This is his general position on La Cote d’Ivoire.”
The BBC’s David Amanor reminded Alhaji Mumuni in an interview that while President Mills’ predecessor John Kufuor in 2002 when the Ivorian crisis started had said that when your neighbour’s house is on fire you should fetch water and get ready, President Mills was preaching the opposite – just mind your own business.
The Foreign Minister disagreed. President Mills, he said, “identified the Ghanaian people with La Cote d’Ivoire. So in effect, it is like we are in the same house with La Cote d’Ivoire, the Fie (house) does not refer to Ghana, it refers to even La Cote d’Ivoire.”
“The house actually means Ghana and La Cote d’Ivoire, identifying with the people of La Cote d’Ivoire. We are basically the same people. The boundary between Ghana and La Cote d’Ivoire is an artificial, colonial boundary separating ethnic groups, families, people who share the same ancestry, the same kinship, people who share the same languages, that is what it is between Ghana and La Cote d’Ivoire, there is absolutely no difference,” he added.