So... Who said Tweaa?
In Africa, tell you what, titles are a big deal. From religion, through academics or politics to even herbal medicine, inappropriately making mention of someone’s ‘hard-earned’ titles can cause you a lot of discomfort.
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Get to any university and call the name of any professor or doctor by only his/her first name without their enviable accolade and you would see fire!
Even for the dead, it is abominable to exclude their titles from the obituary. Besides, the living whose names would appear on the said obituary might even refuse to attend the funeral if their titles are not rightly mentioned.
So… was it anything out of the ordinary when one of our own ranted (and subsequently boycotted a function) when someone heckled him, insisting that the culprit wasn’t his co-equal? Of course not!
The ritual of clinging passionately unto our titles has been ingrained in us by our society; even in death. Our ranks mean everything to us, trust me.
I know how hard it is to climb the social status. Yes I do. Especially in this part of our world where only a few others in the higher echelon would do all they can to remain the only ones there, attaining a status is the hardest thing one can think of.
But… is life not more than titles? Of what profit is/are title(s) when there is no performance? It’s only in GH that you hear a name preceded by titles upon titles (which in themselves can be another name), yet the said person might not even had contributed a single idea to his/her field of specialisation.
Of course, we celebrate titles, not performance! Little wonder we are still the same old people struggling with the same old challenges. And… who said tweaa this time?
Come to think of it, the names of great people are often mentioned without their titles at all. They do not need such accolades to tell whoever, the weight of their impact on society.
Frankly, I rather would prefer a ‘title-less’ generation with great ideas that would move the nation forward to another generation with all the titles, yet ‘development-less’. And… as long as we have limited our lives to titles, the latter would almost always be hard to find.
The society we live in has no space for the ‘title-less’. World-changing ideas might have been churned out of many of these who are not even listened to.
Believe you me, there are many inventions by many ‘lay people’ right here in GH when some professors, so-called, can’t even boast of a single modification of what has already been invented; everything is theory!
Ghana has all it takes to be a force to reckon with; not only in football but in all other fields. Maybe if the supposed dwarfs sitting on our money would let us be (laugh out loud).
Geniuses are born to us day in and out. We often successfully kill the ingenuity spirit in such (in the name of what we call titles) and leave them to be either beggars on our streets or on the streets of the Western world.
I would sparingly make mention of my title(s) if my laurels are nothing to write home about.
Unlike the typical Ghanaian who would satisfactorily walk about head high in the name of one title or another, I would preferably do all within my might to leave an indelible footprint in my field.
But until I do so… the mysterious question that lingers on my mind is… who indeed said tweaa.