Still in the shadows

By Kofi Akordor
I COULD hear Chelsea being mentioned in the football commentary running on a local radio station. I was not surprised because our local league had long ago lost most of the indigenous names such as Venomous Vipers and Mysterious Dwarfs, both of Cape Coast‚ Eleven Wise and Hassacas, both of Sekondi, and many others, only to be replaced by fanciful names of English and other European clubs.
That was why I was not surprised to hear Chelsea being mentioned by the commentator. Apart from Chelsea, there is also Arsenal in our local league. There used to be a Man U and we do not know what to expect in future.
I only somehow got surprised when I realized that the commentary was not on a local match but an English Premier League match between London-side Chelsea and another team. Then I asked, “Are we back in those days when, during major bulletins, local radio stations hooked on to BBC to listen to the news according to the colonial masters?”
In an era of technological advancement, the individual has a wide range of choices to make in what radio station and television channel to tune in to, whether local or foreign. Therefore, some of us will not find it out place for those who are obsessed with foreign things, including foreign football leagues, to follow their favourite clubs wherever they played.
Our radio stations also have every right to broadcast what they believe will be of interest to their audience. Therefore, no one could begrudge them if they choose to broadcast sporting events in foreign lands. Moreover, Ghanaians, being a sports-loving people, deserve their pleasure from what a commentary on the English Premier League will give them.
In fact, all other considerations would have been ignored but for the fact that what may appear as a nation’s obsession for a sporting event amounts to following a dangerous trend which has left us second to all others.
Some time ago, I raised issue over how the spirit of our local league system is being diluted by a new phenomenon ­-- naming local teams after foreign teams for whatever reason.­­­­ We have or had Ajax, Feyernood, Man U, Chelsea, Arsenal and many others.
Some may chose to brush this development aside by asking, after all, what is in a name? Yes, if there is nothing in a name, why should Ghanaians be anxious to name their teams after teams? What do they expect to achieve by doing that?
Already, we are having problems marketing our local league to our people for several reasons. As we lose interest in our local league, we have virtually shifted focus onto foreign leagues, especially the English Premier League and the UEFA competitions.
We may just be talking football but we have unconsciously fallen into that inferiority complex trap which makes us believe that we can only attain recognition if we associate ourselves with foreign things deemed superior.
Still on football, we prefer to describe our national stadium in Accra as Ghana’s Wembley, which is the name of one of the stadia in London.
There is a street at Osu, a suburb of Accra, called Cantonments Road. Without any official change of name, the street has assumed a new name -- Oxford Street -- again named after a place in London in the United Kingdom.
I wonder whether an average Englishman will bother his head over a country called Ghana, let alone a street in its capital. While we care to know and admire everything about them, the average European and American only knows that there is a place called Africa which is home to all the problems on the Earth, including diseases, poverty, famine, illiteracy and ignorance.
We have done everything to appear or sound like Europeans or Americans by bleaching our skins and forcing on ourselves some strange nasal accents in our delivery of the English language.
While desperately trying to portray ourselves as Europeans or Americans that we will never be, we have woefully failed to pick some of their best attributes, such as environmental cleanliness and sanitation and personal hygiene.
Our beaches are refuse dumps or public toilets where people defecate openly. Elsewhere, beach fronts are prime locations where only the nouveau riche could afford plots and build residential accommodation. The beaches are money-spinning zones, churning out billions of dollars in foreign exchange because of their attraction to tourists. Proper utilization of our beaches alone has the potential to bring us out of poverty.
If we are ashamed of our natural identity and want to be like other people, then we should begin by identifying with the wonderful things that endear those people to us. We must love the environment and protect our coastline and keep it neat; we must protect our water bodies and beautiful landscapes nature has given us; we must begin to love ourselves and all the good things God has given us, and instead of seeing goodness in others, we must begin to see goodness in ourselves. We must aspire to greater heights, instead of living in the shadows of others.
If the English Premier League is interesting and attractive to us, it is because it is well-organised and has never been at the whims and caprices of individuals or groups. The answer to our poor league system does not lie in abandoning it and embracing that of others. It lies in building ours on strong and firm rules and regulations that will pass the test of time.
It is this mentality of inferiority complex that has undermined our national development efforts because we have failed to release the latent energies in us for our own good. We have failed to identify and exploit our strengths and capabilities that will propel us from hopelessness and mediocrity to a strong, virile and proud people who would not play second fiddle to others.
If we think we do not deserve beautiful things and that anything beautiful must have originated from outside or bore semblance to something from outside, then we must as well give up all pretences of being a free and independent people.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com