The stench of cocaine and Ghana’s new cedi – Occasional Kwatriot Kwesi Yankah writes

On my global rounds last year, I was shocked to see at airport shops perfume names that shook me to the core: a perfume called ‘Cocaine,’ then another designer perfume. ‘Opium.’ But the killer of them all was ‘Sinners Perfume,’ apparently the fastest ticket to Hell.

Surprisingly, the accompanying aromas were smooth, except that no Daddy in his right senses would want ‘Cocaine Perfume’ even mistakenly seized by Customs officials.

Those were on sale for $175 to $200, and attracted a small queue of young men.

The trip to the cocaine world is not as long as you thought. Who knows if we have a cocaine heritage on our hands in Ghana, in search of heritage items on a new currency.

Our beloved country has now launched new currency bank notes, called the ‘heritage series’: a label we are scratching our heads to understand. Are the current cedi notes that weak and fragile, their batteries about to die? Or does the Bank of Ghana seek an excuse to print new money and fill the till to rescue 2028? ‘There is no money in the system,’ market women complain of low sales; so ‘let’s simply print more money and give it an elegant pseudonym, Heritage? Were the signs not clear? Did you notice the speed, the rush, the sense of urgency, and eventually the anti-climax: a comedy of errors on our sovereign cedi. National mourning, indeed, tears for a sinking Ghana.

For once, the entire public is part of this debate on our national heritage; and we are together debating wrong faces matched to human names on new currency notes; and we lament essentials missing in the national heritage.

Indeed, faces on our new cedi notes have sparked so much debate that we forget the likelihood that Artificial Intelligence may have fooled us all.

Let Ghana wait until rumours spread that the man we see as Kofi Annan on the new 100 cedi note is really not Kofi Annan but our friend Kevin Taylor; and that the lady displayed as Justice Annie Jiagge on the new 10 cedi note is ‘before God and man,’ probably Akosua Jollof? Simply imagine the stampede online.

It is now unclear whether the Bank of Ghana will swallow its pride and go back to school for remedial education: honouring the name Theodocia Okoh with the true Face of Theodocia Okoh, the true designer of the national flag. Letitia Obeng, the mistaken identity, was well known to us fellows of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.

She was an award-winning scientist who, in 2006, succeeded Nana Dr S.K.B. Asante as the first female President of the Academy. ‘Auntie Leti’ must be stirring in her grave over her mixed identity with Theodosia.

Then comes, of late, a damning verdict on the picture representation of Cardinal Peter Dery on the two cedi note.

Says a worried Ghanaian: “It is simply disheartening and baffling that a national tribute meant to honour an iconic figure of our faith, the late Cardinal Peter Dery of blessed memory, could be marred by such a glaring oversight.”

Then was this blatant omission of five of the Big Six on the heritage bank notes, leaving a lone Kwame Nkrumah. Remember the Big Six statue in Accra was demolished in 2024 by an anonymous Ghanaian at dawn, who had enough time to videotape the entire event in full view of cheering spectators.

It was during the Nana Addo era. No arrests were made by the police, who were three hundred meters away. When the Mahama party won power in late 2024, the Big Six roundabout was redesigned, with the Big Six statue conspicuously deleted. The Big Six with Nkrumah, Danquah, Edward Akufo Addo, Obetsebi Lamptey, Ako Adjei, and William Ofori Atta, is apparently no longer a heritage priority? But wait till power changes hands in 2028; Ghana’s toy play may bounce back.

And what do we do with this bizarre incident? 2021 one Esther Bosha a Zimbabwean national and crew member of Emirate Air, visits Ghana as tourist, poses for a picture among market women in Accra; then says a word or two in praise of Ghana. A kind-hearted Bank of Ghana adds her picture among traders, as qualified to stick on Ghana’s one cedi banknote. Esther Bosha as Ghana’s heritage icon? Zimbabwe currently chuckles hearing this.

I myself visited Zimbabwe in 2006 and felt at home seeing Mugabe’s Zanu-PF headquarters in Harare, hoisting the Red Cockerel flag of Kwame Nkrumah’s CPP. I warmly applauded, but did that qualify me to appear on the Zimbabwean currency?

Where is our state protocol? Our parliament? Ghana, when did we drop the baton and lose the plot? And how did we sink this low? Our state emblems now run the ship of state aground, and all is quiet? Akom ko, the elders say. ‘The pristine dance of the high priest is no more, leaving the field for those that merely twirl around in raffia skirts…

Ghana is no longer the state we knew: now plunged into a crisis of identity, prewired with a badge of dishonour. We miserably flopped at the soccer World Cup, but beat our chest with pride, excelling in a global cocaine league. Daily news breaks of Drugs shipped through our ports, sometimes officially escorted. Our port officials see no cocaine, speak no cocaine, smell no cocaine and do no cocaine. But kids do cocaine at home and school. The scandal breaks only after the horse has left the stable…When cocaine arrests are made, no names and no faces.

Indeed, a silent cocaine prosecution in a nation that is not angry enough to crack the whip. Yes, we have a heritage to protect, and display on bank notes, but it is Negative Heritage.

A sordid heritage of moving sewage that was once called rivers; a heritage of toxic streams, poisoned crops, dangerous turbidity. No river has been spared, including the great Volta River, and with it the diverse fish species it hosts. The school kids are busy too, learning the sport of poisoning; they have abandoned school and now mine in poisonous waters.

After all this, we finally set our sights on the sea, to seal the shipment of floating sewage.

But we shouldn’t omit pedophilia among the emerging heritage. Our moral compass is gone; elders and security now look on while school kids are defiled. Is anybody home, Ghana?

A new cedi note has been launched in the filth of a negative heritage. That is the legacy we leave for future generations: the stench of cocaine across the landscape, in schools, a nation high on drugs, and a polluted banknote that says it all: A rotten heritage can only be returned to the Sender.

How much has Ghana lost in all this?

There is something they call Financial loss to the state. Hello Attorney General!

Next Post: Yours truly as Drug Suspect at Heathrow.