The population of Ghana is estimated to be around 21.5 million. Yet when one penetrates the remotest villages and towns and interacts with the people, it becomes obvious that for decades no census officers have ever visited their villages and towns. This intriguing anomaly is not at all surprising as it is not possible to count each and everyone headlong in a country and so eventually have to settle on an approximate figure. So most researchers concur at a figure of 23.5 million but by the presence almost unnoticed of the patriarchs, progenitors of an unwanted race in our midst, I will raise the figure to 25.5 million.
These modern patriarchs, the father Abrahams are young men who before they could even complete junior high school find themselves impregnating more than three teenagers or adolescents or more. They are full of wiles and deviousness that when they embark on their adventures of eroticism and petty ensnaring belle tactics the credulous and gullible young ladies fall prey to their whimsical caprice and canal lust and before they could even finish school or secure a job they have become mothers against their will and the vicissitudes and harsh realities of life will dawn on them as in most cases they wouldn’t even get the lecherous young men to admit responsibilities for the pregnancy or fatherhood of the child.
The illegitimate child thrown into a society of hypocrites, self indulgent self righteous prigs who care about nothing but their own selfish desires, have to struggle at the hands of an inept and callous teenager who is not only immature and careless, but lacking in sensibilities and inherent duty of parents. As single parents, with out any meaningful employment for subsistence, they are forced to give whatever meal they may lay their hands on to their children and the greatest assert they can bequeath to them is to toss them like rat infested rug onto the street.
These kids at early age are denied education and social care. They are left to fend for themselves in a staggering city of filth and crime. Living mostly outside the societal structure of care and proper upbringing they resort to all the negative anti social activities that society is always struggling to eliminate. If early in their childhood society saw them less as burdensome to care for them, now they will act beyond the confines of the society because they are not social products.
We talk of high rate of illiteracy and unemployment riddling the youth, congestion in the city as a result of gross rural urban migrations, indiscipline, moral decadence, child labor and child abuse, streetism, armed robbery, prostitution, charlatanism and dilettantism, graft and corruption, falling standards of education. Filth engulfing the city and general apathy, the appalling and wretched conditions of social workers and how humanity as a rational entity is debased, dehumanized and left to flounder in garbage conduit and sewage of barbarism and savagery.
The pertinent question is who created the mess? And who are responsible for its cure. Are our consciences pricked and the validity of our existence questioned or our vainglorious apathy and hypocritical and sham pretentiousness and egotistical mediocrity inflated to see our young ones storm the street with all kinds of ridiculous wares which is supposed to be sold at the market place. Are we happy to see the street converted to a business centre? Are we serious as a developing nation to create a platform for the youth to be initiated into high sounding illiteracy and hopelessness and in the end left to wander and be trapped on the street and perish?
The major high ways and traffic light points are paradisiacal realms for the young school going age kids – the girl child especially to hawk inconsequential wares, live, sleep, be impregnated by a fellow street hawker and a hooligan and together on the street raise a starved, underfed family of innocent kids who will grow up proudly in filth and illiteracy and proudly inherit the street business acumen of their parents and the rest distributed in the various professions of armed robbery, charlatanism, double-dealing, prostitution, deviousness, licentiousness and idleness.
A cursory glance or visit to some of our high streets will clarify the point I am making and give a firsthand knowledge of the unnecessary and deadly heroic adventures of the street urchins. They position themselves at strategic points in the streets and raise their wares slightly above their heads or thrust it into the vehicles. Yelling and screaming the prices or the names of their wares in a deliberate coaxing imploring voices which seems to tell the passengers that can’t you express some sympathy for us and by our wares? We are really suffering!
They are dexterous and athletic. They are endowed with two special legs not common to ordinary man. They can convert it to four wheel drive when the occasion demands. They are filled with Gabriel selasian muscles and Olympian fervor and can pursue moving vehicles with equal speed praying earnestly to pair up with their customers in motion.
It is a shameful drooling tale of survival – on the street. The mess even becomes gloomy and murky when one penetrates the interior of the city notably central Accra. There, not only will one see our business community (sole proprietorship been the dominant mode of business ownership) storm the street moving up between vehicles but also display their wares on tables on pavements, some have even gone beyond the limit and they now display ridiculous wares without fear or shame on the asphalt! These daring acts of lawlessness and disregard to human life and gross obstruction to vehicular movements are done most at times by matured women. Market women tycoons.
The resultant effect of the street been converted to a market, a social centre, a sex pub, home of the homeless and haunt of criminals, vagabonds and confidence tricksters is that, there is unending chaos and anarchy, pollution of the city. Gutters are choked and emit offensive smell itself detrimental to the health of all and sundry. The whole city is engulfed by filth and foolhardy escapades and misadventures. Refuse receptacles over flow with rubbish and flit in the street whiles A.M.A and zoom lion officials and the market women stare and move in it unconcerned.
Because the society have neglected its fundamental duty of addressing the needs and safe guarding the basic rights of the citizens, its extreme display of cant and hypocrisy and its maniacal aberration into the forbidden and treacherous terrain of capitalist democratic conspiratorial sickness of egoism and individualistic tendencies, slumbering in orgiastic sloth and refusing by the courtesy of callous, insensate and corrupt leaders to lay any meaningful social, education, economical foundation for its hapless citizens, the bulk especially the youth have now found a receptive home in the street where their aculturalisation into antisocial practices and vices is been enacted.
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