Education is no joke!

I need not start this article with one of the zillions quotations that underscore the invaluableness of education to growing economies like Ghana. There is enough evidence to admonish that our education should not be compromised no matter the status quo of our economy.

All the rich and natural resources of any country are useless, if the required human capital is unavailable to put them into use. Economies that kick started with ours are now formidable and resilient because they gave priority to education – the Asian tigers.

More and more tertiary students especially those in the varsities are falling off due to financial frustration. Those who managed their way through the system come out as “half-baked” graduates. The vista of our streets is a testimony to the rate of drop outs in the basic and senior levels of our education. Per Facts and Figures of Ghana, over 1,129,334 children are out of only primary schools whiles our illiteracy rate vibrates at 35 per cent.

Over the decade, our educational reforms and its component parts including the laudable Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (fCUBE) has been a spectacular failure. Nonetheless, we still display gross happy-go-lucky attitude to the realities on the ground. What is the nemesis of our educational policies? My view is not far from yours.

The biggest enemy of our educational policies is politics. It is time we made the education sector completely independent of all forms of political miasma. The political-manifesto-to-and-fro policies of our education are doing us a great disservice as a developing country.

We need resilient, strategic and futuristic educational policies with no-nonsense law to ensure that it is not toyed on grounds of merely fulfillment of promises. These persistent rejig to the policies are not only wasteful to our constraint resources but thrash the educational system to utter higgledy-piggledy.

Education is a right, and to make the right realistic, government needs to subvent more funds in the name of subsidies to our educational institutions to avert the mass exit of students from schools, especially at the tertiary level. Any attempt to reduce government subvention to education will be perfectly chaotic from all angles.

Therefore, I am appealing to the ruling government with it socialist ideology to pay more attention to education for it is indispensable in the realms of development.

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe” – this is a food for thought from Abraham Lincoln.

God bless Ghana! Salaam!

Abdulai Hanan R. Confidence

Nurses’ Training College, Tamale.

The “Ecomniots” and the “Ecomini” Noises – Reaction 1

My article ‘The “Ecomniots” and the “Ecomini” Noises’ published on Myjoyonline.com on 02/07/09 remunerated me with zillions of frustrations comments on my mail and Joy Web. All comments received were akin to humour derived from the gibberish of the ???-minded.

I deemed it important and expedient to react to certain misconstructions that I believe have the propensity of miseducating the public. The commentary segment of Joy Web is not a container for all sort of garbage. Your thought therefore must be a reasoned-one. All the comments were unfortunately marked with illiteracy from a bunch of ignoramuses.

Without further ado, let us set the records straight: in paragraph 3 of my article reads: “These are two of the million good speeches of the Professor whose middle name is English.” This sentence attracted a lot of comments from people from varying degree of ignorance and low readings. These people refused to think before commenting on this sentence. In fact, I felt very sorry for them. Let us get ready for want I meant by “.....whose middle name is English.”

Let us go to the world most trusted reference, Oxford. Kindly refer to Oxford Advance Learner’s Dictionary, New 7th edition (Special-Priced), Page 928, column 2: An idiom under the headword “middle name” reads: “be somebody’s middle name (informal) used to say that somebody has a lot of a particular quality: ‘Patience is my middle name!’”

Per Oxford’s explanation, I believe these failed-to-think commentators will now understand what I meant by “.....whose middle name is English.” Consider this sentence: Arrogance is Naane Affoku’s middle name. Please this sentence does not mean that Naane Affoku’s full name is Naane Arrogance Affoku. Let us get some more examples on the “middle name.” The middle name of the previous government was inefficiency. The middle name of the president seems to be modesty.

Now, listen to these dummy comments on the “....whose middle name is English.”

Sorry No. 1: (Issac Abednego Sackey): “You are shallow-minded.....if you care to know having thousand english names does not make one genius in the english language does making reference to Uncle having an english middle name is myopic. If you care to know his first name John is english and you know what that means; loo. Shame on you.” (Check comments on the article in question)

Sorry No. 2: (Kojo Mahu): “So now if someone has an Engliash name they are infallible right. So those of us with Ghanaian names are less human? You are so ignorant....Shut up!!!”

These were some of the comments of the ignoramuses. I legitimately brand them as myopic with capital M. How could one think that “....whose middle name is English” was referring to “Mills” as an English name of the present. What has name got to do with what a person can do or cannot do?

Do these ignoramuses ever heard of an idiom? An idiom is a fixed distinctive expression whose meaning cannot be deduced from the combined meanings of its actual words (Encarta Dictionaries 2008). I believe the definition will help them to think over sentences before exposing their intelligence to ridicule on the World Wide Web.

However, I will forgive them because reading is one and understanding is another. My lovely grandfather of blessed memory once said that “The fool thinks everyone thinks the way he thinks.”

Again, in paragraph 1 of the article reads: “This is a greatest achievement for Ghana to be blessed with the man of the letters. A dream much waited.” Some other commentators stated that the above sentence was wrong. Ridiculous and pathetic! Please, I have no time to indulge in intellectual intercourse with people who cannot read and analyse sentence not to talk of finding faults with it.

Please, if you think is wrong, kindly highlights on what makes it wrong with rubrics of the language on this forum. If you fail to do it, I will analyse the sentence for you in my reaction 2.

Last but not least, I have a free psychological counselling for these frustrated commentators. Professor President Mills still have good seven and half years to “tongue slip” inshaa’allah. So, I entreat you to restrain your frustrations and emotions because Ankaful and Pantang are both choked!

Abdulai Hanan R. Confidence

NTC, Tamale

TEIN (P.R.O.)

[confidencegh@gmail.com]

The “Ecominiots” and the “Ecomini” Noises

Who is the first high learned man to rule Ghana? Your answer simple is the Professor of Law, J.E.A. Mills. The History students should jot this down. This is a greatest achievement for Ghana to be blessed with the man of the letters. A dream much waited.


Professor Mills evidently did not acquire his title by virtue of working as a clerk in Law Firm perhaps in France. Professor has demonstrated in one thousand and one ways his flexibility over the queen’s language. And his dynamism in the use of the English Language promulgated his campaign message to both the lettered and half-lettered.


Read these statements: “A government that attaches premium to formation rather than substance worships mediocrity”, “Our policies must put emphasis on the exigencies of the time”. Don’t they sound very academic and professorial to your ears? These are two of the million good speeches of the Professor whose middle name is English.


Who and who were not there when he made his Inaugural Ceremony speech extempore? No sheets of papers in hand! I mean offhand! Unprecedented!


Let us come to the issue itself: just few months ago, President Mills delivered his maiden address to parliament. It was eloquently and professionally delivered with the usual flair. However, just as it occurs in our everyday spoken language, he mispronounced “economy” as “ecomini”. The phenomenon of mispronunciation otherwise known as “slip of tongue” has happened to anyone who ever lived. For that matter I regard this “ecomini” as something not worth discussion within the domain of little brains.


Surprisingly, this “ecomini” has made a lot of waves within so-called lettered people, radio stations, newspapers and all the rags. Radio stations have edited this speech with background instrumentals which is played as breakfast for listeners. I hardly read news headlines on internet without the “ecomini” and newspapers see this word as a market gimmick. Today, we have several remixed and reloaded versions of “ecomini” with all genres of music used as ringing tones.


I do not blame all these people in the business of “ecomini fooling”, because I can simply describe them as dunderheads. If slip of the tongue or spoonerism or marrowsky is new to these goof-offs, then I pity them. I will humbly refer them to read more on “Reverend William Archibald Spooner (1844-1930), Early 20th Century British Educator”.


More so, Queens of England, supposed Mothers of English, have on many occasions mispronounced words that were later married in the English Language. Mispronunciation existed donkeys years before these teasers came to life. So, why the fuss about Professor’s “ecomini”!


This is a gross disrespect to the presidency, the highest authority of the country which does not bring anything meaningful to us as Ghanaians. However, P. W. Botha declared that “Calling someone monkey does not make him a monkey”. So, the “ecominiots” can continue in their blissful ignorance. Prof is still Prof.


Now let us go down the memory lane: consider this sentence, “Me and my boss……..” Who made mountain out of this egregious grammatical missile. If this statement was made in England, there was no way the speaker could escape trial at the Grammar Court of Subject Misplacement. Get the rule! The rule states that when you have two subjects with “I”, put the “I” second and follow it with a singular verb. “My boss and I......” is correct. Besides that “Me and my boss......” was too colloquial and niggers in America will not even use it.


Listen to this bombshell: “The Abudus and the late Ya-Naa are one”. The same speaker made this statement without a pinch of remorsefulness. The Grammar Court of Proximity Rule wished he had made this statement in England. Get the rule! The Rule of Proximity states that a singular subject near the verb must take a singular verb and vice versa. Let us take the corrections: “The Abudus and the late Ya-Naa is one” or “The late Ya-Naa and the Abudus are one”


These are legitimate statements made by a man who evidently had problems reading scripts written for him. These statements were not slip of the tongue but acute “grammartitis” in action. Who fussed it? Who instrumentalised it? Who remixed it? Are these “ecominiots” proving that little minds discuss events? Please, you can do better!


These “ecominiots” ought to stop the “ecomini” noises or I will call a press release of Jak’s syntax blunders. Hogwash!


Salaam!


Abdulai Hanan R. Confidence
NTC, Tamale
TEIN (P.R.O.)
[confidencegh@gmail.com]
[0249388362/0261226262]

Kwame Okoampa Ahoofe, Victim Of Amnesia And Slave Of Grammatolatry!

Get ready with your lexicon! Pardon me because this goes to a professor(?)


I designed this projectile to inundate the so-called professor(?) of great erudition with chastisement for megalomaniacally and brazenly showing his logorrhoea, grandiloquence and pomposity to the lugubrious countenance of most readers. This phantom professor(?) toils to catapult himself to a wave of profundity of words in a quantitative measure of whitewashing his diffidence as a handicapped, queried and misplaced journalist of knavish malice.


This preposterous phantasma yonder seas to the best of his nickname, Professor(?), doodles and scrabbles very undecipherable and neologised write-ups abound with mendacities and sacrileges with a demonic intent of producing blackouts of his kindred.


The unconstructive and straight-jacketed monumentality of his thrash many a times is ciliated and interlaced with dogma and ism that will not even be entertained in the fraternity of malignant cerebral melanomas.


This professor(?) remains a conundrum to readers for all of his writings never enwombed common sense; and unarguably, an epitome and a sieved template of putrefaction of journalism to the zenith. As a matter of fact, he is a gargantuan cataclysm and incubus to contemporary journalism. He is simply unblessed and unendowed of aptitude to adumbrate or elucidate issues to the apprehension of the sequipedalophobia.


The concatenation of his bombastic and byzantine words cannot bamboozle readers to append credulity to his nickname. He ought to eschew his chicanery, phantasmagoria and pun as it is a calculated attempt to obviate from the actuals and realities on grounds.


Victim of Amnesia


I want readers to help me to diagnose him base on his write-ups. He has never said anything about Ghana’s history that consolidates with what my kid brother learns at school. And his recent article on this web captioned “What if Nkrumah was a thief?” warranted the need to diagnosed him for early medical intervention.


Amnesia is loss of memory as a result of shock, injury, psychological disturbance, or medical disorder. It is of two kinds: Anterograde and retrograde amnesia. Its severity differs depending on the aetiology/cause.


Anterograde amnesia is impairment in the ability to lay down new memories. Thus, the victim cannot record and keep in memory, events that occur after the incident. It typically results from damage to the areas of the brain involved in long-term memory, including the hippocampus (area of brain associated memory), the temporal lobes (part of brain for sensation on both sides of the temples of the head), and the frontal lobes (part of brain for sensation on the forehead). Such damage may result from brain infection (encephalitis), alcoholism, stroke, anoxia (severe oxygen deprivation), or head injury. An individual with severe anterograde amnesia might spend an entire day with a person and then, within a brief time, totally fail to recognize that person.


Retrograde amnesia refers to difficulties in recalling or recognizing past events and experiences. It typically, though mutually exclusive, accompanies anterograde amnesia and is especially common following concussive (jarring) head injury. A person with retrograde amnesia has trouble remembering recent events, events from further in the past, or both.


I believe readers of this professor’s(?) articles dumped on the net will clearly understand that he suffers from retrograde amnesia which unfortunately is severer than the former. Because with the former the patient cannot record and store new memories but can utilize previous experiences to analyze social dynamism and issues. However, the latter comes to rub and rob all your past memories and your memory (brain) becomes as plain as A-4 sheet (termed as tabula rasa in psychology). And you cannot even remember what you did seconds ago.


I believe readers with this insight will not bother much about his scribbles. This is a professor(?) who finds it hard to believe that Nkrumah led Ghana to independence; someone who thinks Nkrumah was a visionless dictator and pathological opportunist; someone who argues that Nkrumah was Mr. and not Dr.; someone who blasphemously branded Nkrumah as a thief; someone who indecorously nicknamed Nkrumah as African Show Boy; someone who relentlessly accused Nkrumah as a plagiarizer of the goddamn Busia-Danquah’s ideas and all the “tooli” stories. Professor(?), you must atone for this supreme blasphemy!


Indeed, discerning readers will understand that his write-ups have diagnosed him with retrograde amnesia. Please, professor(?) go for a check-up and if you are not diagnosed of retrograde amnesia, then your write-ups must be talking about a different Ghana, and not Dr. Osagyafo’s founded and christened Ghana in West Africa formerly Gold Coast.


If you were a primary schoolteacher in Ghana, you would have been humiliated with quintillions of corrections from your pupils regarding Ghana’s history and the Patriarch cum Martyr of Ghana’s Democracy and Freedom, Nkrumah. Let me apprise you that most senior school leavers hardly remember names of your so-worship Busia and Whoever tradition, the apostates!


You may try, but the History of Ghana cannot be rewritten or adulterated by your His-story. Keep your his-stories and we will keep our histories. I understand your predicaments, but remember that a decorated monkey is still a monkey.


Slave of Grammatolatry


Please, waste your time and read any of his articles (perhaps the latest “The false Ghanaian history of Paa Kwesi Nduom” 16/07/09); you will finish reading being more flabbergasted or bewildered on what he purports to enlighten you on. You might even be tempted to believe that you are reading a piece from A. S. Hornby (renowned editor of the Oxford Dictionaries) or from a space-rocket scientist lexicographer. He wastes his time and our time as well!


His sentences are embellishing with a cocktail of words locatable only in the realms of brusqueness, vulgarity, and loquacity. And not even the bombast of his sentences aid contextual connotative and denotative meaning. His paragraphs outlaw topic sentences – not the introductory style, not the imbibed style and not the concluding style: Just from nowhere, at nowhere, to nowhere! And regrettably, he supposed himself as a journalist with this unpardonable enormity of good writing.


I am screamingly baffled about a whole journalist who suckles much orgasm in a macrocosm of anachronism – the use of perplexing and discombobulating words that has been consigned to trash can of journalism for far too long, in far many places.


In mathematical terms, his write-ups are Cos 90; 10,000,000 x 0; sesquipedalianism exponent cosmetics multiply by nought.


I think I am wasting my time! Seeing is believing! Just google his name and you will be linked to his garbage cum bunkum dumped everywhere on the net.


Free Couselling


Professor(?), the sun does not struggle to shine. Nkrumah is the African sun, not your infamous “nicodemuses”, that is why Nkrumah illumines everywhere. You can dedicate your career and life as a “Brofessor” of Creative Maligning and Obliteration; you cannot and never create a micro-diametre of dent on Nkrumah’s legacy. Nkrumah’s ghost alone is prepotent to all remnants of your ideology both alive or “adead”. Nkrumah remains and will forever remain the resilient moving political inertia across Africa and beyond.


How will you describe someone who tries stopping the sun from shinning? Keep your answer!


Abdulai Hanan R. Confidence
Nurses’ Training College, Tamale
Tertiary Institutions Network (P.R.O.)
[confidencegh@gmail.com]