Ghanaian Politicians Must End Dalliance With Violent Types

Author's note:This piece was written on 24/9/2013. It is being posted today, because I was unable to do so on the day. Please read on:


The terrible events resulting in the murder of over seventy  innocent people and injuries to over a hundred individuals   in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi,  clearly show  the indiscriminate nature of terrorism.


Africans of goodwill everywhere on the continent share the pain of the people of Kenya, at this tragic moment,  in their nation's  history.


Who would have thought that  a leading poet and influential Ghanaian politician,  in the person of the late Professor Kofi Awoonor (may his soul  rest in peace), would one day be counted   amongst the dead victims of the murderous Somalian terrorist group  Al-Shabaab,  and  in faraway Kenya?


No matter where in Africa we live, we are all potential victims of the evil and unhinged criminals in our continent,   who join terrorist groups such as  Al-Shabaab,  in order to impose their warped  views on others, using  indiscriminate violence of the type that  resulted in the carnage at Nairobi's Westgate shopping mall in the Kenyan capital's  suburb of Westlands.


There ought to be a concerted continent-wide effort to rid Africa of terrorist groups - such as those in northern Mali, Algeria, and in Central and East Africa.


They are  dangerous and cancerous cells  in the African polity.  The time has come for all the nations in the African continent to work closely  together to remove  such terrorist groups from African soil.


One hopes that the tragic and dreadful events in Kenya, will lead to introspection amongst Ghana's ruling elites.


As a people, we  must work towards narrowing  the huge disparities in wealth  between the well-off and the marginalised in Ghanaian society - lest those at the bottom strata of society become cannon fodder for terrorist groups.


Above all,   the intolerant extremists amongst  our political class, who have a penchant for hiring thugs and criminal types to do their dirty work for them - particularly at election time -  must now understand that the step from being a paid hireling of ruthless and amoral  African politicians and political parties,  to becoming a paid agent of Al Qaeda planting bombs across  nations in the continent, is a small one. They must end their dalliance with such violent and criminal types once and for all.


They must all refrain from the type of selfish politics that leads to their having to employ such violence-prone individuals  in their quest for power. A word to the wise...


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