Ursula Owusu: The Ethnic Merchant

Ursula Owusu is an eloquent Lawyer. She’s brilliant and inspires hope when he speaks. Hope of a tincture of intellectualism.

I will not dwell on her weakness as a person born by another. And no man is worthy to judge her. Only Ursula, her God and her conscience should bother about this strange behavior of hers.

I am worried about Ursula and what she is turning out to represent. I am worried about her sudden transition from a gender activist to an ethnic bigot and zealot. Politics is full of bad manners. This I know. And I just wonder, was Ursula pretending all this while to be a nationalist or did she pick the bad manners of ethnic jingoism from her god father, the undisputed champion of ethnic predilection?

And here, I am talking about Ursula Owusu, an erudite Lawyer; a master of elocution, a quintessence of sound cognitive reasoning; the woman who has been preaching on the need to have one Ghana; Ghana that would promote merit over mediocre, elevate nationalism over primordial tribal bigotry.

But the same Ursula Owusu has just started to molt her old skin in a dubious manner that makes her a suspect. She is preaching ethnic hate. She is hyping the same medieval mannerisms that she once charged the youths of Odododiodio to shun.

In lieu of nationalism, Ursula says ‘they’ have rightfully taken over and assumed the leadership of this country and are not prepared to yield the leadership of the country to any group and that, they shall protect same with their might and blood.

Excuse me! Madam Ursula, is this really you? Who vomited this highly divisive and potentially inflammatory comment? So, Madam Legislator, you have reduced Ablekuma West and for that matter Ghana leadership to a We/Them thing; you have gone back to dig up the old dirty habits of Ghanaian politics that you once told the youths to banish from their brains. Chai!

It’s a pity that Ursula has descended to the cesspool of ethnicity at a time the nation is viciously divided along several cleavages and fault lines. It is even more pitiable that the woman who should be helping to patch up the cracks is the one creating craters from mere cracks.

Politics is a bitch, an inebriating broth that turns otherwise good women to bad women.

But Ursula Owusu should be reminded that Ghana is beyond the We and Them.

When those in positions of authority use their influence to further balkanize the nation along ethnic lines for their selfish gains and appeasements of tribal potentates, there is cause for worry.

Ursula and her ‘cousins’ in power who are currently treading the path of ethnicity should learn from history. All over the world, ethnic bigotry has crashed the foundations of nations.

Ursula sure knows about the ethnic conflict that dismembered the old Yugoslavia in which about 140,000 people lost their lives and many more displaced. She knows about the deadly war between the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda and many more of such ethnicity-induced savagery in other climes. She should spare us such in Ghana by retreating from her ethnic voyage to perdition. Ghana has bled so much to the orgy of ethno-religious convulsions. She cannot endure another ethnic conflagration; the type being precipitated by the likes of Ursula and other ethnic merchants.

Though our tribes and tongues may differ, we must never cease to promote brotherhood and nationhood rather than submit to Ursula’s recipe of We/The Rest politically hegemony and dominance. Enough said, Ursula!