Native Daughter: Needed: An offensive against the culture of mediocrity!

Thoughts of Native of Daughter: Needed: An offensive against the culture of mediocrity!

The error-riddled 59th Independence Anniversary parade brochure that has led to the term ‘brochuregate’, was no surprise to me. Mistakes in government and official publications have now become so common, and seemingly accepted, that even when pointed out nothing is done about them.

A culture of mediocrity in text presentation seems to have the country firmly in its clutches! And maybe our educational leaders, especially English Language teachers, should be asking themselves some hard questions – or providing answers.

I’m certain that if it hadn’t been for the ‘mother of all mistakes’, the description of Guest of Honour President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya as the President of Ghana, the other errors wouldn’t have resulted in even a query. Apart from sniggers among perceptive members of the public at the parade on March 6 where they were distributed, they would just have been shrugged off.

I haven’t seen a copy of the infamous booklet, but other errors cited in media reports include shocking, unpardonable grammatical and factual errors in the parade souvenir given to high profile and international guests. Naturally, in this Internet era, the ‘howlers’ immediately exposed our country to huge international ridicule resulting in consequences for some people.

Little wonder that some call it ‘brochuregate’ a reference to the 1972 scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon: A break-in at the national committee headquarters of the opposition Democratic Party located in the Watergate building, in Washington, D.C., turned out to be linked to the Republican Party, specifically President Nixon’s office. Since then the ‘gate’ suffix has become a global shorthand for scandal. 

One proof of the acceptance of second-rate content is that the official at the centre of the matter, Francis Kwarteng Arthur, then acting Director of the Information Services Department (ISD), went ahead to have the brochure distributed even though he knew it contained mistakes.

(Incidentally, Mr Arthur, who chaired the communications sub-committee of the observance organiser, is one of two members of the National Media Commission, representing the office of the President.)

The Daily Guide of March 9 quoted Mr Arthur as admitting that he did see the mistakes when he saw a copy before the booklets were distributed, errors that he had seen earlier and had asked to be corrected. 

In explanation he said: “I noticed that His Excellency Uhuru Kenyatta has been misrepresented as the President of Ghana; and you have 3,000 copies. The dilemma was, should the parade go ahead without the brochure or should the parade go ahead with the brochure? I must state here that I took the decision that the brochure should go out.”

Had he not been a victim of the mediocrity culture, Mr Arthur would have known straight away that Ghana could not afford the embarrassment contained in the souvenirs for such an event – and that it would lead to a severe backlash.

He could have given just one copy to the lead parade MC to enable him steer the event and then quickly taken the rest away. Such a quick decision is what a person who can think on his feet would have taken. But evidently that day Mr Arthur was not thinking fast. To be charitable, maybe it was due to exhaustion from having had to work hard on the parade preparations.

Of course media people, especially print media, are well aware of the possibility of errors because of the speed of the daily production process. However, with a publication for a long-planned function, the production period is longer and thus there is more time to correct mistakes.

In any case, the presumption is that with such a keepsake programme for such an important celebration, more care than usual would be taken. Maybe this is why some people are thinking that what happened must have been sabotage. 

If he had decided not to distribute them, most likely Mr Arthur would have kept his job. Also, his alleged ally, Stan Dogbe, then head of the communications at the presidency, the person some media reports identify as a principal in the brochuregate would not have been reassigned to another post, as has been reported.

But, on the other hand, maybe to the staff of the ISD the scandal is a Divine intervention.  They appear to have harboured a resentment against Mr Arthur’s appointment to head the ISD. They allege that the department has been sidelined in the government’s publicity programmes since his appointment in December.

Their protest demonstration and furious response to the apology Mr Arthur issued, accepting responsibility on behalf of the ISD, said it all. To make matters worse, the apology was, inexplicably, wrongly dated (January 12, instead of March 7).

The ISD staff insisted their institution should not be dragged into accepting blame for errors in a document they had not produced. They followed this up with a petition to the Head of the Civil Service to terminate Mr Arthur’s appointment.  His dismissal was announced on March 10.

Possibly, it is also an ‘I-told-you-so’ to those of us who for some time now have been expressing concern about the mediocrity and lackadaisical approach of those responsible for official documents or communication. 

For example, in recent times, I have called attention to errors in the Accra street-naming, as well as errors on many of the governmental websites, but little action if any seems to have been taken to correct them.

I’m referring to my article in this space on October 30, 2015 with the headline ‘Accra street-naming: any supervision?’ and the February 12, 2016 column with the headline, ‘Online, public, face of ministries: carelessness galore!’

Anyway, it is said that ‘it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good’: something good can come out of a very negative situation. 

The 59th Independence Day parade brochure must now be ranked a collector’s item, so those fortunate enough to have copies should keep them under lock and key. It’s not every day that a visiting President, invited as a Guest of Honour, is ‘dashed’ the Presidency of the host country as well!  

Most likely people who collect such rare things will pay a good price for a copy!

And maybe, just maybe, brochuregate will result in the government leading a long overdue offensive against the culture of acceptance of substandard official texts, an onslaught against mediocrity!

Adjoa Yeboah-Afari's  'Thoughts of a Native Daughter' column appears in The Mirror every Friday.
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