Kweku Mickey as an arsonist and chaos as a way of life
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Puzzle number two revolves around the causative agent of indeterminate origin and identity which has been making sky-bound bonfires of traders’ cash and goods at traditional market centers across the republic.
This week, I heard someone I presumed to be an expert reeling off on a radio station, a ten-kilometer long list of the possible causes of the unexplained market fires, probably a useful exercise for public education in normal circumstances but quite a pointless one in the case of the epidemic of mysterious fires.
Sorry, old chap, I should have began by explaining that a nation-wide hunt is on in earnest for Ghana’s villain of the decade, an elusive fellow who is out to make a big bonfire of all major traditional markets in the country and on whose head the authorities have placed a GHc 25,000 bounty.
Times are pretty hard, Jomo, and many a jack-about-the streets could really do with the cash but the problem is how to catch the bloke. The John Mahama administration has called in the Americans to dig through the debris for clues that might lead to the apprehension of the disappearing arsonist.
If we are to believe the news headlines, Jomo, the causes of the mysterious market fires range from Almighty God {in retribution for unspecified national transgressions}, random power voltage surges and fluctuations through politically ill-motivated arsonists, substandard cables and faulty wiring, to the nation’s ever recurring power outages and ravenous mice.
Mice? Yes sir. Mickey and nibbling, gnawing friends. The rodents it appears {from the perspective of some experts}, have suddenly acquired a taste for electrical cable insulation materials and are having a great banquet on the materials in the country’s markets. The result? Uninsulated electrical cables are coming into contact and sparking off the fires.
How come it is happening on such a scale and with such frequency and if we might ask, don’t the mice get electrocuted when they sink their teeth into the cables and begin to eat away at the insulation?
Anyhow, I recall telling you how even a veteran bush ranger armed with a state of the art compass of the future would still get hopelessly lost in most of the country’s major markets if he were entering them for the first time. Each of Ghana’s major markets is for the first-time visitor, a confusing maze of suffocating, narrow passageways forming a very complex network of connecting routes through a vast expanse of stalls, sheds and storerooms.
In some of the markets, the passageways are so narrow that two adults cannot walk abreast through them. In many markets, electrical cables hang inside and around sheds like items of looming catastrophe from an old science fiction movie.
I recall also telling you how there was no way any fire engine could get into the heart of any of the markets during a fire and how in the event of a fire, it would be practically impossible to get out of the place, what with hundreds of people trying to stampede through the labyrinth of passageways and how there are no emergency exits in these vast potential death traps.
Puzzle number three: In the beginning it was bad. Then it became worse and subsequently lapsed into a real nightmare for everyone living in Ghana. Now, tell me what you call a nightmarish situation when it deteriorates even further.
If you think I am referring to the energy crisis that has ravaged the nation and her economy for decades, I will score you maximum marks for factual accuracy. There were those who run away with the false notion that the crisis could not get any worse but the power cuts this week ahs brought them back to earth. Inexplicably, everyone seems to have forgotten that the current escalation in the crises resulted from damage to the West Africa Gas Pipeline.
Since the damage to the pipeline in August 2012, the West Africa Gas Pipeline Company has set deadlines for the completion of repairs on the line and the resumption of gas transportation from Nigeria to the Aboadze generating plant but repeatedly failed to meet them.
Based on the assurances given by WAPCO and much to its embarrassment, the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum has in turn repeatedly promised consumers an end to the current crisis. Those deadlines have come and gone with the lights popping off everywhere with a renewed and fiercer vengeance each time.
Following the last promise by WAPCO that it would resume supplies to the Aboadze power plant by April 30 this year, the authorities confidently assured consumers that the power cuts would end in the first week of May, 2013.
I recall suggesting to consumers to please, disbelieve the assurances because previous promises had been routinely reneged upon and now we are old chap: The power cuts this week have been in stiff competition with the worst and I wonder when it will end if it ever does.
Philip Addison grills Dr. Afari-Gyan, says one news headline. Why would Addison be grilling a pensioner recalled to duty when there is much more fresh tilapia in the cold storage stores than counsel for the petitioners in the 2012 presidential dispute could ever consume? And to think that the Electoral Commissioner by uncanny happenstance, owns fishponds richly populated with tilapia which he himself grills for dinner from time to time.
That is the update on the state of affairs at the Supreme Court where the dispute after a whole month, is still raging on at full steam and threatening to travel the full distance into time and probably end up in infinity, but it shall that not travel beyond that day when Ghana will close this unwieldy chapter in our electoral and political history with a long, drawn-out sigh.
Article by George Sydney Abugri
Website: www.sydneyabugri.com/Web
Email: [email protected]
