Afenyo-Markin, Sammy Gyamfi and the Monkey’s Excreta

Dear Grandma,

I know it is almost nineteen years since you joined your husband in the land of the ancestors. But while scrolling through social media—a platform you never heard of—I came across something happening in your dearly beloved country that disturbed me so much that it immediately reminded me of one of the stories you told us when we were children.

I remember those evenings vividly.

After bathing and eating supper, all the children in the area would gather around your sleeping mat, waiting for the next story. Sometimes, before you even began, we would rehearse the opening lines of stories you had told us before, just to prove that we remembered them.

There was one particular story about a group of children who went into the forest in search of dawadawa fruits.

They went without an adult.

They moved from one tree to another, searching for the sweetest fruits to eat and carry home. But in their excitement, they did not realise that they had gone too far into the forest.

Before long, they found themselves in the territory of wild animals.

The Lion, the king of the jungle, captured them and called the elders of the forest to deliberate on what should be done with them.

But just as the feast was about to begin, the Lion realised that he was not properly dressed for the occasion.

“Leopard, take charge while I go home and change,” he instructed.

The Leopard accepted.

But shortly afterwards, the Leopard too decided that he needed a better outfit.

“Elephant, take charge while I go and prepare myself.”

And so responsibility kept moving from one animal to another.

The Lion handed it to the Leopard.

The Leopard handed it to the Elephant.

The Elephant handed it to the next animal.

And eventually, it became the Monkey's turn.

But the Monkey also wanted to prepare himself for the feast.

There was only one problem.

There was no one else left to whom he could hand over responsibility.

So the Monkey squatted down, relieved himself, pointed at his excreta and said:

“Excreta, take care of these children while I go home and prepare myself.”

Then he left.

That was the moment the children found their opportunity.

Among them was an orphan whose parents, according to the story, never ceased to intercede for him from the ancestral world. Somehow, heaven opened a way for them.

The children ran.

They ran as fast as their legs could carry them.

And before the animals returned, they had escaped the forest and reached the nearest human settlement safely.

But Grandma, that is not even the most interesting part of the story.

It is what happened afterwards.

The Lion returned to the durbar ground and found neither the children nor the animals he had instructed to take charge.

The Leopard arrived shortly afterwards and found the same emptiness.

The Lion demanded an explanation.

The Leopard explained that he had handed the responsibility to the Elephant.

The Lion punished the Leopard.

When the Elephant arrived, the Leopard punished the Elephant in exactly the same way he had been punished.

And the pattern continued.

Everyone blamed the person who had come after them.

By the time they reached the Monkey, there was no one left to blame.

So the Monkey picked up the largest dry branch he could find and began beating his own excreta.

Unfortunately for him, the excreta splashed back onto him and everyone around him.

Grandma, I always thought that was simply a funny ending to a children's story.

But looking at what is happening in Ghana today, I am beginning to realise that perhaps you were teaching us something much deeper.

Because while the animals were busy punishing one another for negligence, the children were escaping.

Nobody asked the most important question:

Where are the children, and can we still catch them?

And that, Grandma, is what worries me about the current conversation surrounding GoldBod.

For the past few days, the national conversation has increasingly become a battle over who should accept responsibility for losses associated with Ghana's gold trading arrangements.

On one side, the Minority Leader, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, has been demanding accountability and alluding that the GoldBod is to blame for such.

On the other side, GoldBod's Chief Executive, Sammy Gyamfi, has pushed back against the allegations and defended the institution's financial position.

The argument has become increasingly personal.

One side says there were losses.

The other side disputes the characterisation of those losses.

One side wants someone to accept responsibility.

The other wants the figures and the interpretation of the transactions properly understood.

And somewhere in between all this noise, Grandma, I fear we may be losing sight of the children.

Because whether the loss is technically classified as a loss, a trading variance, an accounting loss, or something else entirely, there is a more important question that Ghana must answer:

What actually happened to the money, and what can be recovered?

That should be the centre of the conversation.

If Ghana lost money through its gold trading arrangements, then we must understand exactly how that happened.

What transactions produced the losses?

Were they caused by gold prices, exchange-rate movements, financing costs, operational inefficiencies, pricing mechanisms, policy decisions, or some combination of these?

Who made the relevant decisions?

What controls were in place?

What lessons have been learnt?

And, most importantly:

Is there anything that can still be recovered?

These are the questions that matter.

The problem is that Ghana has a tendency to turn every financial controversy into a political courtroom where the objective is not necessarily to recover what was lost, but to establish who can be blamed for losing it.

The NPP can point to the NDC.

The NDC can point back to the NPP.

One administration can say, “We inherited it.”

The other can say, “But you continued it.”

And before long, the entire country is watching politicians exchange accusations while the actual problem quietly walks out of the forest.

That is precisely what happened in your story.

The animals were not necessarily wrong to demand accountability.

The Leopard should perhaps have answered for his decision.

The Elephant should perhaps have explained his own actions.

The Monkey could certainly not escape responsibility simply because he had nowhere else to transfer it.

But the greatest failure was that they allowed the pursuit of blame to replace the pursuit of the children.

And Grandma, that is where I fear we may be heading.

There is nothing wrong with holding people accountable.

In fact, accountability is essential.

If someone made a decision that cost Ghana money, that person must answer for it.

If someone acted negligently, they must be held responsible.

If systems failed, those systems must be fixed.

But accountability should serve a purpose.

It should help us recover what can be recovered, correct what can be corrected, and prevent the same mistake from happening again.

Otherwise, we are simply beating the Monkey's excreta.

And we all know how that story ends.

The branch hits the excreta.

The excreta splashes everywhere.

Everyone gets dirty.

And the children are still gone.

Grandma, I do not know whose face the Monkey's excreta has splashed on this time.

Perhaps it is Afenyo-Markin.

Perhaps it is Sammy Gyamfi.

Perhaps it is GoldBod.

Perhaps it is an administration, an institution, an official or even a system that existed long before any of the current actors arrived.

But honestly, I am less interested in whose face is dirty.

I am more interested in whether we can still find the children.

Because the longer we spend fighting over who allowed them to escape, the farther away they get.

And once they leave the forest and disappear into the town, finding them will become much harder as we may not have power to persecute them in such territory.

So, Grandma, if you were here, perhaps I would ask you the question you used to ask us after every story:

“And what have you learnt?”

This time, I think the answer is simple.

Hold people accountable, but do not let the pursuit of blame make you lose sight of what matters most.

The children are already running.

Let us stop fighting long enough to go after them.