Good Evening, Your Excellency! How far?

Hmmm,Your Excellency, you see, I have been trying to get a few ideas through to you before the ‘State of the Nation’ address today. They were basically signals and snippets of information I picked along the N-1 Highway as I trekked to and back from work in the last couple of days. I thought they made sense; at least by my pedestrian standards. Sadly, I just had to give up along the line as it appeared some dwarfs had sat on the line.

So Mr. President, as expected, Ghanaians have started talking even before you finished. You know how our people can make mountains out of mole hills. In fact,they call things which are not as though they were.

Your Excellency, the boys who sell second-hand fridges at Abeka Lapaz say nothing you said today made sense to them one bit. But you too, Mr. President, what was all that lengthy ‘grammar’ about? What for instance did you mean by “…financing has been finalised for a new sugar processing factory at Komenda. ..”?

As for the ‘bookmen’ and troski drivers at Nyamekye Junction, they simply concluded that both you and the Members of Parliament to whom you presented your address, are not serious at all. One of them actually asked me, “3nti omanpanyin ne MPs koraa, djimi3 ne nkoasia s3m b3n koraa na womu di no w) parliament h) no?” To wit, “so what’s all that nonsense and tomfoolery being exhibited by the President and the MPs? ”

Your Excellency, l guess that reaction was borne out of those silly dry hackneyed jokes you were cracking intermittently and the equally senseless noise being made by those gentlemen and ladies who should have been doing the listening and interrogation on our behalf. The whole episode was like a group of high adrenaline youngsters meeting over a pot of pito and ‘pepper soup’.

So Your Excellency, the boys actually suggested that you could have made more sense by simply taking a strip of flip charts to parliament, with pictorial representations of the various things you spoke about. Three artworks per scenario. The first showing what the situation was last year by this time. The second, what it is today. The third, what you envisage it will be by the time you return to parliament after twelve months.

A classic illustration will be an artwork showing say, ten Kufour gallons with ‘2013’ boldly inscribed at the top right hand corner. Then, a second chart with 6 Kufour gallons, dirty and half empty, with ‘2014’ written in italics and in red at the bottom left corner. And finally, a third artwork showing twelve Kufour gallons with ‘2015’ in green. Simple. Similar strategy can be used for the other sectors.

Your Excellency, this way, life would have been easier for us all. So the boys are saying, thus far, you have made very little sense to them. I tried to rationalise all you said today, but they remained unmoved by my eloquence. I gave up in the hope that in the coming days, the Squealers in your squad will do a better job of it.

But Sir, for whatever it is worth, you c an go to bed assured, that the boys in Katanga have your back. We have been watching! !!