Manasseh Azure Awuni, one of Ghana’s finest investigative journalists, must certainly be causing too much discomfort for some of the people lurking in the corridors of power in Ghana.

In a poverty stricken country and continent like ours, where the gap between the poor and the rich is widening at an alarming rate, it must be daring for a journalist to hold a politician or policy maker to account because of their responsibility for the hungry stomachs, illiteracy, joblessness and the return of cholera to our people.

Nonetheless, Manasseh Azure Awuni has put himself up as a dead goat or rather a sacrificial lamb without fear of the knife that cuts his throat and he probes with vigor. For, he understands that Ghana and Africa today demands men who are ready to render the highest sacrifices without demur. Not my words, Kwame Nkrumah said so many years ago.

The response of a certain Nana Kwame to a post of Manasseh Azure Awuni over the Africa CEOs Conference held in Geneva, falls flat on the face and still leaves the questions posed by the brilliant journalist unanswered and deserving deeper scrutiny.

Firstly, I have no trust and neither do I consider these so called African CEO's Conference at Switzerland significant in resolving the misery of Africans.

I also do not believe that they are working on the behalf of the teeming majority of the jobless youths of Africa, demanding the takeover of Africa’s resources to address Africa’s problems.

At best, these CEO’s are agents of foreign finance capital who ensure that Africans are made to labour under dehumanizing conditions in order to serve the welfare state of the metropolis.

More so, Nana Kwame's contributions to the issues raised by Manasseh are weak and only sought to ridicule the constructive criticism of Manasseh about the Conference held in Switzerland.

There is no need pointing out that the economic conditions of Manasseh’s hometown and that of Aburi are not very different and, therefore, that Manasseh’s wedding took place at Aburi and not in his hometown is irrelevant! We know and live that reality.

However, the social and economic conditions of Switzerland or the precincts of the hotel where the conference took place are very different from what pertains at Aburi, at Manasseh’s hometown and in under-developed Ghana. How many times haven’t we argued that African problems must be addressed in Africa and in any case how many Africans were in attendance at the Conference? It was dominated by White men who control, every sphere of the African economy in telecommunications, banking, trade and in everything!

In Botswana, the Government insists that all such Conferences on the trade in diamonds are held in Botswana in order for the country to benefit from hotel bookings, transportation.

The directive is also to serve as a boost to local tourism. But why did we express so much anger and describe it as disgusting, the news that Ghana’s parliament was furnished and renovated by the Chinese and not Ghanaian carpenters? And how different are those frustrations from those expressed by Manasseh on this occasion?

In fact, I was most excited to hear that Manasseh Azure Awuni had decided to hold his wedding at the Aburi Garden’s because about the same time, there were attempts by the government of the time to sell the Dubois Centre near the American Embassy and the Aburi Gardens, to functionaries of the regime. The Achimota Forest had already been cut out for sale under a dubious eco development park or whatever they called it.

Manasseh’s decision to organise his wedding at the Aburi Gardens was a master stroke! It made a point about the need to maintain such places for public use. How is it that Accra, the capital of Ghana, has no parks with benches, where Ghanaians can just go at any time of the day for recreational purposes? All public spaces, including government lands and assets, are being scrambled over by strange characters with all manner of associations to the government.

If anything at all, Nana Kwame has only managed to make happy our friends in the National Democratic Congress (NDC), who cursed Manasseh for exposing the Ford gift saga involving President John Dramani Mahama and many of those in that party who continue to blame one of Ghana’s finest investigative journalist as contributing to the defeat of the NDC in the 2016 General elections.

Nonetheless, Manasseh Azure Awuni has become a toast of all decent-minded Ghanaians who are in the fight against the corruption of public officers in public offices and all Africans who are demanding African solutions to African problems.

No doubt, Manasseh is riding the waves and exposing the rot of society with such giants as Julian Assange and John Pilger.

Manasseh Azure Awuni, Onaaapo!

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Author: Duke Tagoe

E-mail: dukezulu@gmail.com