T-shirt war; when fools lead their flocks astray

One of the many beautiful adages that I heard told was that “the foolishness of a sheep can be traced to its owner.” I fell in love with it that same day and had consciously tried to memorize it for my personal use; be it in my writings or merely using it to tease friends.

Events in Ghana the past couple of days over a t-shirt poking fun at the sitting president appear and creating a storm between the NDC and NPP has given enough weight to the adage.

The latter had outdoored new t-shirts with the inscription ‘ecomini,’ a gaffe President John Mills committed during an address to the country. Anthony Kabo, the youth organiser of the NPP, says the printing of the gaffe is to bring some creativity in the political arena, as well as raise funds to support the party.

He said it was not meant to denigrate the sitting president and his colleagues from the other whom he accused of over stretching the issue. He has warned that any attempt by colleagues from the other side to walk that same dirty road “we will give them the measure they are looking for.”

Though some leaders within the NDC are asking their followers not to walk that same path, the news coming out is that some are prepared to make nonsense of that appeal. A report from Kumasi says a new t-shirt about the NPP leader Nana Akufo-Addo with the inscription 1960 Weed Funky Days, will soon come out. The news report quoted a gentleman by name Kwesi Ofori Agyemang as being behind the said t-shirt to come out.

“We have been encouraged by the NPP General Secretary to create humour in the Ghanaian [body] politic and use it to create fun and I think we also have creativity within us in the NDC and we can also respond appropriately and create some amount of humour so that we can all enjoy.”

Thinking through what I call t-shirt war, it is pretty much depressing that after 53 years of nationhood we still have political junkies who are not interested in putting forward quality ideas to improve the lives of most young persons in the country, but rather rally them around for a stupid cause such as this one.

I find it more unfortunate that somebody such as Anthony Kabo, seemingly a reasonable youth organiser, should get himself entangled in such a mess. As someone who is desperately campaigning for his party to come to power, voters expect him to tell them what his party will do differently that the current government is not doing, not this useless and rather cheap way of selling party ideas.

The average Ghanaian voter who has no regular supply of water, electricity, no job and even unable to meet the basic things of life, will expect people like Kabo and Ofori Agyemang to tell them how their regimes will address these challenges. It's unfortunate but the behaviour of such hoodlums shows the direction Ghana is heading.