CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE: THE HENKING-CHRISTIAN-PADI MODEL

This is how an observer (also a citizen of the land) summarised the long chain of activities that led to the declaration of “Self-government” in the Lower Manya Krobo Municipality (Manya Krobo Traditional Area) to compelled government and, for that matter, the Ministry of Local Government/Electoral Commission to conduct the local level elections in the municipality after three years without assembly members.

At least, one person has acknowledged my/our role (as Kloma Gbi) in rescuing the “poor” market women on the Agormanya market from the hands of the “greedy” and “heartless” leaders (if you like) who took advantage of the absence of Assembly Members and the virtual breakdown of the structures at the assembly to do all kinds of things including feeding from the toils of the “poor” market women/traders. Below is how how Dr. Enoch Teye Kwadjo puts it; I find it interesting and inspiring. 

And the people of Manya Krobo declared SELF GOVERNMENT, the second to do so after Dr. Kwame Nkrumah did for Ghana

Dr. Enoch Teye Kwadjo

He writes: Today (December 3, 2013) the chiefs and people of the months-old Democratic Republic of Lower Manya Krobo (DRLMK) go to the polls to elect their representatives at the municipal assembly, so as to “re-join” Ghana. 

The road to today’s election was synonymous with what Nelson Mandela would call “long walk to freedom”. And if there is any group or individual that has fallen several times along the way then it should be (and rightly so) the “three-member” Kloma Gbi group.

While variants of civil disobedience or positive defiance may exist, the Henking-Christian-Padi model appears to stand out among the other known forms of defiance. Selling the idea to market women to avoid payment of tolls and allied levies in protest against non-availability of assembly representatives was certainly not an easy process. Yet they succeeded in getting the market women and some prominent chiefs to buy into this idea. 

Only a few people may be aware of the blackmail the three-member group suffered: the bloody lies; the failed attempt to round them up into police cells; the rejection and betrayal at the hands of those who should know better; etc.

Today, LMKMA votes through their blood and toil. And to learn that none of the Kloma Gbi members is standing to be elected as representatives should make their detractors re-think the obstacles they erected in their paths. Though majority of young people are driven by extrinsic motivation for what they do, there are still a few intrinsically-motivated youths around. 

For years to come the Henking-Christian-Padi form of civil disobedience will remain a potent tool for other districts in Ghana to use. Indeed, while people can stop a person whose time has come, no one can stop an idea whose time has come. The Henking-Christian-Padi form of civil disobedience was an idea whose time had come.

I salute you guys on the occasion of today’s municipal level elections at the LMKMA.

The story of the boycott/self government: http://graphic.com.gh/news/politics/1295-boycott-lower-manya-krobo-declares-self-government.html

http://graphic.com.gh/news/politics/5306-assembly-elections-in-lower-manya-krobo-hang-in-balance.html

From:  Dr. Enoch Teye-Kwadjo

Published on his facebook wall on December 3, 2013

OPEN LETTER TO HON ISAAC T. AGBO, MCE OF LOWER MANYA KROBO ……Echoes from Odumase Presby School

MCE for Lower Manya Krobo, Hon. Isaac Tetteh Agbo, 

The wall which was never cmpleted

Dear Hon. Agbo,

When on Wednesday August 12, 2009 Zain handed over the new Odumase Presby Junior High School block for use, you proudly graced the occasion in the presence of your boss, Hon. Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, then the Eastern Regional Minister who expectedly wowed the crowd with some promises, one of which was the walling of the entire school compound as a guard from the flood that runs down the mountain onto the compound and, of course, as security for the heap of flashy equipment the school was blessed with by the telecom giant.

Not too long after that event, we saw you take the good step of giving practical effect to the promise- which until then appeared a mere political talk- by erecting a wall north of the compound toward the Zimmerman Presby Cemetery.

The wall under construction

In fact, Zimmermann Presby Church even simplified your work by already raising a huge wall which separated the chapel from the then shameful, dangerous and “colonial piggery” of a classroom block which collapsed to give way to the new one we see today.

South of the compound toward Salosi also saw a Jericho type of wall constructed from the coffers of the same Church, when in fact those resources could have been channeled into first putting back the school into shape- but hey !!! That is my church for you, scale of preference turned upside down (Hard fact, isn’t it?).

In effect, you were left with only two of the four-sided compound to wall to claim the bouquets of glory and what would have passed as your invaluable contribution to your alma mater.

We the past and present students salute you for at least starting the project, being one of us and we pride ourselves in your current status and what the future seems to hold for you, but in case you have not visited the school/site in a long time, the contractor you assigned the job has ran away after deliberately setting a trap that nearly caught a game when part of the wall fell flat on reopening day (Jan 8, 2013) to welcome students back to the dangerous ground.

Without any external force, a section of the wall came down with a blast enough to “faint” the faint-hearted even from a distance but the school was spared another casualty and pre-mature death because students were indoors, otherwise you can be sure we would have been heading for the cemetery again with a body/ies of innocent school children (whose only crime was their desire to get educated) if they were on break- which they do twice daily, even today, they will.

The rest of the blood-thirsty monster of a defense wall is loosely standing with gaping gaps supposed to be filled with “iron-rodded” pillars to hold it firm.

Hon. the good work you have started is washing down the drain; if you care to know, when on that fateful reopening day (Tuesday Jan 8, 2013), a calamity nearly visited the school, myriad of accusing fingers started pointing in your direction for importing onto campus a monster with jaws wide open to hound the pupils.

If there is something you can quickly do to finish the work, please do it without delay- in fact this is the time- because with the onset of the rain, the scary and dreadful memories of the disaster that led to the demise in 2008 of that 12 year old class six pupil- Bernard Narteh- and the subsequent reconstruction of the school have been raked again, and even worsened by the sight of your falling wall.

Students and passers-by are in constant fear with your name always on their lips.

Yours sincerely

SGND

Henking Klono-Bi Adjase-Kodjo

(An old boy)

Published: Feb 4, 2013, Myjoyonline.com

(http://opinion.myjoyonline.com/pages/pressrelease/201302/100916.php)

And part of the weak wall collapsed

  

Bit by bit, the entire wall fell to the ground

Why ???

ZAIN THE SAVIOUR

Full video via this link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLVH07UUu1k&list=UU7ljxYzKiZJZYmrQI8c0nLA

Henking A. Adjase-Kodjo, the writer

To the chiefs and people of Odumase-Krobo, particularly the staff and students of the Presbyterian Junior High School (the school that was left to rot), the name Zain, will forever remain synonymous with salvation and relief because what all others have failed or refused to do, Zain has done.

Just when hope was getting lost because the authorities were shirking their responsibility and virtually running away from what they were mandated to do and with no rescuer in sight, Zain came from nowhere to restore smile on the faces of the visibly hopeless tutors and pupils of the 1888-built school; the school had been left for a long time to rot, injure and kill.

All, even those whose mandate it was to ensure that the building was fit for human habitation and, for that matter, academic exercise fled in the face of the worsening condition, leaving the teachers and pupils like “orphans”. But Zain did not. It is, therefore not for nothing that the name Zain has gained acceptance in the Odumase township and beyond.

At least if for nothing at all, their prompt response to the distress call of the school within a day has succeeded in averting a worse form of the earlier recorded disaster. This has shown that they are not only in the country for business, just like others, but to improve the lots of the people.

But for the rescue mission, the news of the impending rainy season would be a bad one for the “orphaned” teachers and pupils because it would worsen their plight.

I am very sure if they had the power, they would have suspended the season and, for that matter, the rains but they had no such power so they resigned themselves to fate only hoping that nothing disastrous happened.

If at the hands of mere showers that preceded the season, parts of the roof of the colonial edifice kept flying off, to the extent of snuffing life out of one student and injuring many others, one can imagine what would have become of the building, the pupils and teachers during and after the heavy rains of this season as has already been predicted by the Meteorological Service not too long ago.

We needed no consultation to arrive at the conclusion that a great but preventable disaster was looming. I am firm in the belief that other schools in other parts of the country are in similar or worse conditions.

If in the heart of a town like Odumase-Krobo, which is very close to the capital city, we still find crumbling schools buildings like this, one can guess with certainty the nature of school building in the “remote” parts of the country. How long should we continue to toy with risky situations like this?

Some things can be toyed with, if we so want, but not when human lives which we neither can create nor restore are involved and more so when one has already been lost as a signal that more were going to be lost.

Is this the kind of free, compulsory but quality basic education government keeps boating of? Why then should it be compulsory if children have to face life-threatening conditions to access it and die in the process? What would the benefit be to come to school only to be struck dead by a collapsing school building?

I shudder to think that the deceased, Bernard Narteh, has been dispatched to eternity prematurely and for this reason the authorities responsible for the mismanagement of the schools must be taken on for negligence of duty. Negligence because the building started showing signs of imminent collapse long ago and yet the authorities simply refused to act. This is where or disregard for maintenance has brought us.

Could it be that those whose mandate it was and still is to ensure the safety of the people (pupils and teachers) and the provision of a conducive environment for academic activities simply refused to do so because they are not directly affected in any way or the condition of the school had not been brought to their attention?

Was it a case of lack of finance, the usual refrain, and if so, what prevented them from taking initiatives? Am I being made to believe that “communal labour” which has been very effective in arresting situations like this has outlived its usefulness?

Was it that the stakeholders were too many and their roles not properly defined for which reason they shirked their responsibility? And who at all is directly responsible for the management of public-mission schools like the one in question- Odumase Presby Junior High School? Because one of the identified causes of the abandonment is “who has what responsibility to do what?”

Is it the government, the mission/church or the Parent-Teacher-Association? Some may even argue that the old students have a role to play. Is there a clear definition of who does what? If there is, then the identified authority must be held responsible.

While the government, for that matter, the District Assembly and the Ghana Education Service (GES) seem to be too busy with “more important issues”, the church has also almost withdrawn, playing a passive role in the management of the school.

I very much believe that the church has withdrawn because the school is “public”, otherwise what reason can the Presby Education Unit (PEU) the Presby Education Foundation (PEF) and the Dangme-Tongu Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana (PCG) assign for not responding to the distress call of the school”

Anyway, where was the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO)? What did it do about what happened? Why the silence even when they had fully been made aware of the disaster?

Would I be wrong to think that what happened was not disasterous enough for them to manage? Perhaps, disaster to them is better managed on a large scale and not when only three people are injured and a single life lost.

Thank God, the management of Zain has been touched by the plight of the school and is hurriedly putting up a befitting classroom block with a library and a computer laboratory in place of that “death trap”. But the question is, what of other schools in the same and similar conditions?

Zain certainly cannot do all and that is why the government must sit up and prioritise properly, otherwise the very essence of the laudable interventions such as the Capitation Grant, School Feeding Programme, free school uniforms and the others would all not be felt.

Of what essence would it be for the children to attend school for free, be fed for free but learn in crumbling school building only to die later because of the faulty and abandoned school building?

We have toyed with lives for far too long and so this must be a lesson. We done Zain! This is a long-lasting investment that you have made and you will forever be remembered for this philanthropy. You are really making the world a wonderful place.
Daily Graphic, Monday June 22, 2009

Watch full video via this link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLVH07UUu1k&list=UU7ljxYzKiZJZYmrQI8c0nLA