Talking Social Conscience Professorially

Unless they are partisan politicians, particularly of the congress type, when professors of timber and calibre talk, they talk society’s conscience. A tiny few would talk popularity; and the law professor politician, for political expediency, will not talk repeatedly that it is a danger to the motherland to threaten a Chief Justice.

One cardinal responsibility of a professor is to shake the conscience of society. In one week in June, two professors did that.

A professor in communication studies warned us all that we should prohibit politicians from owning media outlets. Another, a specialist in reproductive health, admonished against irrational preacher people bashing compatriots who engage in what they view as unnaturally carnal.

I heard an irrational argument on a Kumasi radio station by someone who thought he was being rational. He wanted the communication professor to present statistics showing how many radio stations owned by politicians were doing bad things to warrant a ban.

There is no need for that; because Radio Gold, which pushed the motherland to a conflagrating brink between December 7 and 28, 2008, did so because it is owned by congress type politicians seeking their selfish congress kleptocratic power over the motherland.

When the communication professor, along with his colleagues, advised against making a politician, the Minister of Communications, the distributor of broadcasting frequencies (NCA Act, 1996, Act 524), parliamentarians refused and deferred to the executive. The result is that congress senseless political victimization is depriving my community of frequency for a community radio for self-help development.

Like the arsenic name Kotoka, the politicians seem united; that they will allocate frequencies whenever to whomever they like, with the disliked denied. Kotoka unites coup makers and coup beneficiaries. Even the armed forces revolutionaries who claimed to be punishing coup makers compromised naming Kwame Nkrumah’s airport after Kotoka who forcibly removed the Osagyefo for contemplating building even a bigger airport.

For the reproductive health professor, his beef is with the preacher people who are bashing compatriots who believe they are not born to approach sex ‘naturally’ like many of us think. The professor wants the Mugabe and Obasanjo type morality crusaders to cease fire.

Seriously, anything that can consensually happen and happens in sex without injury (note sometimes even with some hurt) is natural. The professor is challenging how natural what we all have come to believe actually is by daring our legislators to define it in law.

The impact has been dramatic. All of a sudden, the preacher people seem to be reflecting upon their emotional rather than rational attitude towards the issue.

That is the stuff professors are made of; always talking rational lest ordinary mortal beings descend into hypocritical irrationality which encourages manipulation of emotions for selfish ends.

Apparent objects of the professors’ caution were politicians and preacher people who subsist in their trade on emotions. People of power seem to relish in manipulation of emotions; it is evident in some of our traditional leadership practices.

As a traditional leader, two things keep pricking my conscience. I see our forcible wearing of the cloth by left-handed people right handedly as oppressive. I also see the insistence upon imported schnapps in preference over the locally-manufactured ones as economically self-defeating because we are depriving our people of jobs.

Of course, insisting on the best for our ancestors must be without option. What is best, though, ought to be the best only because it is in the best interest. A coincidence of the best, meaning encouraging our own to be the best, must be it.

I wish, for the sake of the health of the motherland, some more professors of authority will stand up and defend the Chief Justice. Congress has martyred justices of the peace before. Let us not forget that. Let professors of constitution tell congresspeople what they are doing is tantamount to coup d’état. Not that those congress elements will be bothered or deterred.

A broader implication of congress may, however, encourage the tiny, tiny minority to come forward, or at least secretly try to persuade their majority of footsoldiering hoodlums from their distasteful many ways to kill a cat attacks on the Chief Justice.

We are so lucky to have Her Lordship, a true Yaa Asantewaa. Some male specie would have long disappeared with tail between legs. I see a true professional compatriot in the IGP and I know he will save the motherland from the congress planned and executing judicial coup d’état by ensuring the safety of our Lady Chief Justice at all cost to congress.

Shame on you, congress, for harassing Her Lordship! Shame on you for depriving my community of a frequency! Shame on you for organizing prophet of doom congress with my compatriots’ and my tax money! Shame on you for your shameful attacks on the Chief Justice!

By Kwasi Ansu-Kyeremeh