If I remember accurately, this same Rojo Mettle-Nunoo was involved in the infamous case of the Colombian cocaine-pushing cartel mogul who used to hide out in the East-Legon area of Accra awhile ago, under the \u201cable watch\u201d of the self-righteous Mr. Rawlings.
\nAnd in that matter, if memory serves me accurately, the guy was named as having served in some dubious advisory capacity to the South-American fugitive. Perhaps Rojo was even one of the impudent pimps alleged to have regularly supplied that cocaine-head with a steady stream of fetching Ghanaian woman.
\nAnd so in quite a plausible sense, I can fathom him calling striking junior nursing staff at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital by such uncouth street phrases as \u201cstupid, unwarranted and nonsense\u201d in that order, of course. Rojo\u2019s beef appears to have been that in deciding to lay down the tools of their venerable trade, these \u201cprobationary\u201d nurses were causing needless deaths to innocent citizens. Perhaps somebody ought to have reminded the card-board deputy Health minister that in refusing to pay the salaries, wages and allowances due these frontline health workers, the Government was flagrantly complicit in the negligent treatment of the patients.
\nThen again, maybe he would better and properly appreciate Ghanaian nurses if Mr. Mettle-Nunoo tried to put himself through nursing school one of these days, and then graduated and started receiving the same piddling and professionally insulting wages being paid these first responders to our existential crisis. Which is not exactly to imply that, somehow, nurses on strike make such a laudably fascinating tableau.
\nWhat actually got my horse, as it were, was the news report that the deputy Health minister was especially miffed because the striking nurses were on probation, prior to being permanently engaged by the Ministry of Health. And it is precisely because of his slave-driver\u2019s attitude towards the nurses that Mr. Mettle-Nunoo ought not to have been hired by President Atta-Mills. For really, who does the former think that he is but a veritable hireling like those for whom he seems to publicly harbor such insufferable and abject contempt.
\nAnd here, the ready temptation would be for the liberal reader to blame the apparent Bukom-background of the deputy Health minister, until one quickly comes to the sobering realization that, indeed, there are hundreds of thousands of enviably behaved denizens from that metropolitan -hub district of Accra. And actually quite a slew who are far, far better qualified than this sorry-ass Rojo guy for the at once sensitive and respectable job of deputy Health minister.
\nAnyway, the very idea that nurses on professional probation have absolutely no right to protest sub-standard conditions of service is rather retarded, not to mention downright psychotic. And it would have been nothing short of intriguing to have had Mr. Mettle-Nunoo terminate the appointments of these \u201cprobationary\u201d nurses and see whether any vacuum thus created could be readily filled by the members of his own family.
\nMaybe a more levelheaded person needs to point out to the evidently portfolio-challenged deputy Health minister that a junior registered nurse \u201con probation\u201d is still a fully qualified professional with all the requisite attributes. And with hotheaded second-banana bosses like Mr. Mettle-Nunoo, is there any surprise that Ghanaian health workers would be foremost among the ranks of professionals in search of the proverbial greener pastures?
\nAnd believe me, almost invariably, Ghanaian registered nurses and other well-trained health workers who left the country ended up with better salaries and conditions of service. And most significantly, they have not had to put up with clowns like Rojo Mettle-Nunoo disguised as Health ministers.
\nWhat also amused me almost to no end was the fact that when confronted with his derogatory on-air remarks at the striking \u201cprobationary\u201d nurses, rather than promptly regret his gross display of professional indecency, Mr. Mettle-Nunoo asked to be allowed to review his taped voice before issuing an apology (See \u201cI didn\u2019t know I was on-air when I said \u2018stupid\u2019 \u2013 Rojo\u201d MyJoyOnline.com 10\/6\/10).
\nIf this isn\u2019t the stereotypical picture of an arrant fool and\/or an arrogant buffoon, I don\u2019t know what else is!
\nAnyway, on a more sobering side note, I must admit my general respect for quite a number of people who go by the surname of \u201cMettle-Nunoo.\u201d Indeed, as I vividly recall, about twenty years ago, while a media student at the City College of the City University of New York and writing for the New York Amsterdam News, I had the delightful privilege of reviewing the esthetic genius of a Mettle-Nunoo at either an art gallery or museum on Riverside Drive. That Mettle-Nunoo was quite mature and at once urbane and staid in his demeanor; and so I take the liberty in presuming that the other Mettle-Nunoo was probably either the uncle or some such relative of the Rojo guy.
\nAnd by the latter observation, what I simply want to suggest, in the perennially sagacious words of Nigerian novelist and thinker Chinua Achebe, is that: \u201cIt is still morning yet on Creation Day.\u201d In other words, it is not too late for Mr. Rojo Mettle-Nunoo to brush up on his sense of etiquette, off- or on-air.
\nSource: Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If I remember accurately, this same Rojo Mettle-Nunoo was involved in the infamous case of the Colombian cocaine-pushing cartel mogul who used to hide out in the East-Legon area of Accra awhile ago, under the \u201cable watch\u201d of the self-righteous Mr. Rawlings. And in that matter, if memory serves me accurately, the guy was named […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n