1. Introduction
In general parlance in the African traditional setting as well as in Western culture, the word “Cowardice” is used as a pejorative or accusatory term in derision of a person’s inability to act when expected or undertake the defense of another when it is imperative. In Akan Twi of the Ashanti ethnic group of Ghana, a Coward is “ohufuo” which is translated literally as “the one who fears”, which sounds like a congenital or a genetic and hereditary disposition (Acheampong, 2023) . In the Ewe language which is spoken by the majority of the people of Volta Region of Ghana and in some parts of Togo and Benin, a coward is “vorvornortor”, meaning the one who is timid or fearful, or runs away from responsibility because of fear (Gebe, 2023) . In the Northern part of Ghana, among the Kessena-Nankani combined ethnic group, a coward is “Kafum” or “Kafume”, which means the same thing as the one who fears or the one who runs away from duty (Awiah-Norman, 2023) . Though cowardice does not fall under what may be described as “categorical imperative” or depravity for failure to act in certain situations, it is the expectation of a community that when bravery is expected from a person or a group, they stand the consequential possibility of being called failures or cowards (Serunkuma, 2023: p. 1; Roberts, 2023; Vasilach, 2020; Westermayr, 1915: pp. 250-253; Walsh, 2014: p. 8; Schneckener, 2006: pp. 21-23) .
The Role of the Judiciary in Speaking Truth to Power
When it comes to speaking truth to power to counteract government conduct that is inimical or pernicious to development, democracy and the rule of law, most of Ghana’s intellectuals and opinion leaders are not only cowardly but a significant portion of them are also dangerously nonchalant, while others are obscurantist. Most importantly, the conduct of a great number of the judges in Ghana appears to undermine national development, the interests of the nation and the majority of the people of Ghana. This assertion is based on the general observation that a significant number of Ghana’s Judges have the propensity to support government’s position, act and decide cases on partisan lines than any other interests, unless the position of the government is by all subjective and objective standards clearly indefensible. It is believed that if the judiciary in Ghana was strong, non-partisan and truly independent and, perhaps, and not as corrupt as they are perceived to be, the political class would have been more accountable to the people and normative ethical values of the Ghanaian public would have been observed more intimately. Partisan interpretation of the laws in Ghana, led the Minister of National Security, Albert Kan Dapaah to caution Ghanaian Judges to stop taking “one-sided approach”. The caution was issued at a meeting with the judiciary to discuss the role of the judiciary in Ghana’s national security architecture. In addition, “if you [judges] are going to be able to address security challenges that we have, especially the domestic ones, we need to ensure that there is a judicial system that works. If you do not have a judicial system that works, many people will simply take the laws into their own hands and misbehave and do what they want”. He added that, “if the interpretation of the law is tilted in governments favor all the time, people will start accusing the judiciary and will not have the confidence that they need” (Kan-Dapaah, 2022, http://www.ghanaweb.com/; Transparency International, 2019; CDD, 2022; Norman, 2023) .
The Role of Some Categories of Professions in “Speaking Truth to Power”
The expression “speaking truth to power” invokes the courageous confrontation of establishment order or authority, calling out injustice, abuse of power, corruption, embezzlement, or neglect of duty such as poorly resourcing health facilities in the nation, the abysmal conditions of some of the nations’ road network, basic schools building and physical infrastructure while government officials ride around tarmac roads with little or no potholes in the city in four-wheel, V8 powered vehicles, and human rights abuses under their leadership with the purpose of demanding change. Its approach is non-violent, social and political tactic employed by men and women of conscience, political opponents, social activists, and change managers. In Ghana, one of the political leaders that demonstrated this concept more vividly than any other person is, probably, Kwame Nkrumah, prior to his evolution into the dictatorial entity that he later became (Serunkuma, 2023) . The community organizers that came after him, whether in the political or social history of Ghana can be described as “adjunct subaltern intellectuals”. This is due to the lack of continuity in their commitment to the causes they may have been known to be promoting or promoted.
In some categories of professions such as medical practice, medical doctors represent a cohort that appears to be totally detached from, and, disinterested in, political discourse in the public space but raise their voices in whispers to each other on closed social media platforms with contributions that go nowhere? This behavior could certainly fall in the domain of cowardice, or conservatism and a display of superiority complex, which is also not charitable as a descriptive term or psycho-social condition.
William A. Glaser offered an analysis of this phenomenon in his paper, Doctors and Politics (1960). He reported that, “In some respects doctors share the conservative values of other American (in this case, Ghana) social elites, but in others they may differ and may be predisposed to a peculiarly professional belief system”. Glazer added that the cohort “see themselves as made-men and women; probably consider themselves as more successful than everyone else”. This is a position which is highly subjective and probably delusional. “Doctors’ distinctive orientation towards politics, follow from the characteristics typical of a very successful social elite and a highly developed profession whose special tasks, knowledge, methods, and work routines are very different from the ordinary work of government” (Glazer, 1960: pp. 230-232) . Missing in all the debate is patient advocacy towards improved quality of care. A significant number of the Ghanaian public see the failure of the National Health Insurance Scheme in providing for their medical insurance needs is patently attributable to medical doctors, big and small, for example. Doctors are probably the only professionals who can speak truth to power about patient centered health reforms in Ghana, and to address the poor management of the National Health Insurance Scheme under this administration. Above all, they are privy to, or are in a position to know and should have known of the fraudulent practices perpetrated by their colleagues in both solo and public medical practices but choose to look the other way, and thus bastardize the concept of esprit de corps among their members into a conspiratorial ring fence (Smith, Buadze, Stute, & Liebrenz, 2023) . As a group in Ghana, they often run away from such discourse in the public space because they are “ohufuo” or “vorvornortor” or “kafum”? Every professional group has unique skills, standard operating procedures, protocols and modalities as well as core competencies that cannot easily be reproduced by a member of another profession without the benefit of years of formation and training so medical doctors may not think they are intrinsically more special than accountants or economists or lawyers in a complex system such as the economy of Ghana.
Who Are the Subaltern Intellectuals in Ghana Today?
Generally though, there are only a minuscule number of intellectuals and professionals among the general population of Ghana, who risk life, social standing, and pecuniary interests against advocacy for the masses. These are men and women who undertake arduous tasks by propulsion of their conscience and by the compulsion of empathy with others to act in defense of others. Majority have fidelity only to money and power, which are neopatrimonial goods often held by the government and quarter-mastered by the President (Norman, 2023; Bernstein, 2005; Wiarda, 2014) .
Before delving deeper into the subject of intellectuals or who an intellectual is in Ghana, for example, it is argued by some in academia and other professions that Ghana or Africa as a whole does not have intellectuals anymore as it used to with subaltern personalities like Frantz Fanon; Kwame Nkrumah; Leopold Sedar Senghor; Tom Mboya, Amilcar Cabral; Steve Biko; Walter Rodney, Ngugi wa Thiongo, Samir Ami; Christopher Hope, Wole Soyinka, Okot p’Bitek; Ken Saro Wiwa, Ama Atta Adu who displayed resistance, militancy and active engagement with their communities and at the same time in scholarship (Serunkuma, 2023) . To a large extent, it is hard to refute this statement, and even harder to find similar personalities in Ghana or Africa today performing at the level of the personalities listed in this paragraph. The current cohort of subaltern intellectuals is not dedicated to the total immersion in subalternity and its consequences. The current crop of subaltern intellectuals participate in communitarian projects on ad hoc, almost opportunistic manner which may appear to demonstrate a lack of sustained commitment to whatever cause these subaltern intellectuals may from time to time get involved. This approach makes the current crop of subaltern intellectuals in Ghana and in Africa a kind of “Adjunct Subaltern Intellectuals”. A typical case in point is the recent gathering of lecturers, professors and other in academia meeting in Abuja, with Nigerian leaders to advise it about national challenges and on military intervention in Niger, following the coup that overthrew President Mohammed Bazoum. Though laudable, such an effort is patently too little, too late (You Tube, Niger Coup: Professors Counsel Ecowas, 2023 ).
Despite what has been stated above, this author believes that Ghana still has some of such personalities but they are few and far between the majority schadenfreudes in academia and in public life. Those intellectuals and professionals despite their religious faiths, who do nothing; not even to raise a voice of discontent when bad things happen to their fellow countrymen and women due to dictatorial government policies, can be described as schadenfreudes. That is to say, they are people who take pleasure from another person’s misfortune. Being a schadenfreude is a sign of depravity. It appears many of the Ghanaian political figures, political appointees, their wives and husbands with their boyfriends and mistresses, who roam about the plastic waste and garbage endowed City streets in big four-wheel vehicles and hide behind tainted glass windows as they whisk by their unfortunate compatriots; are mostly schadenfreudes, who look down on their unfortunate brethren and probably say to themselves how perfect their lives have turned out? Although the deeds of the modern day subalterns pales in comparison with the sustained and objectively and independently measureable deeds of the colonial and post-colonial subalterns, still it is better to have “demisubalterns” than to have zero of such personalities.
In Ghana, and depending upon your location, profession and exposure, the personalities who are not politicians but either in academia or private business or professionals in solo practice that inspire awe, respect, social acceptability and goodwill includes Lawyer Martin Kpebu, Chief Justice (Rtd.) Sophia Akuffo, Professor Fred N. Binka; Professor Raymond Atuguba, Economist Mr. Kwame Mpiani, Lawyer Martin Alamisi Burnes Kaiser Amidu, Professor Kofi Abotsi, (Lawyer), Professor John Gartchie Gatsi, (Economist), Professor Ransford Edward Van Gyampo, (Political Scientist), Dr. Vladimir Antwi Danso, (International Diplomacy and Security Studies), Professor Godfred A. Bokpin, (Finance), Efua Sutherland, (Author), Professor Emmanuel Kwesi Aning, (Political Scientist and Security Studies), Manasseh Azure Awuni, (Investigative Journalist); Lawyer Anas Aremeyaw Anas, (Investigative Journalist and Master of Anonymity) and last but not the least, the author of this research and unique paper as well as many others whose names have not fallen into memory at this moment.
I have excluded the politicians from the list for obvious reasons, cardinal among them is the preemptive avoidance of debate over why such and such a person was included or excluded in this loosely and subjectively put together list. Those personalities in the list have performed different levels of services to the nation beyond their normal professional commitments, although their activities are not often given the publicity and attention they deserve, or they are often pushed to the back burner of current affairs and history by the national media. This work is about intellectuals and in all fairness, politicians are not traditionally considered as “intellectuals” but something else.
The statement above about the media not giving the above listed personalities works the exposure they deserve is not supposed to raise high expectations for the media houses in Ghana. Expectations on the media houses on many fronts are high but it needs to be toned down to a considerable low notch. It is true that the media houses in Ghana habitually ignore men of letters and in academia with respect to the work they do, the research they conduct, the publications they produce and the books they write, but pay inordinate attention to men of money; whether ill-gotten or not, and those with power, politics, whether they have legitimacy or not. This happens for wont of experience and scholastic skills but not because of hate or wickedness. For example, there is not a single program in the national media space that is devoted to discoveries, research publications with innovative ideas and suggestions of the work of academics in general, although the media houses claim to be “educative” instead of being, perhaps, “educational”. In order to make the claim of television program being so-called “educative” it has to be based on curricula and follow the rules of pedagogy. For a program to be “educational” it is merely the provision of a service to promote learning or instruction. Therefore, when the intention is to provide instructions, it is best to describe your effort as being “educational” (Dailywritingtips.com, n.d.). Many in the Ghanaian media cannot really understand how to appraise peer reviewed papers, let alone brief it for discussion and make it interesting for the viewing audience attention. Although a few media practitioners have advance college degrees at the Masters and even PhD levels, (and these days, some go for Doctor of Business Administration, DBA, even if the individual is not in business, finance, banking, insurance, trading or commerce, brokerage, transport and any of the variety of business activities). DBA is supposed to be industry based “clinical” degree and not a teaching or research degree. Some holders of DBA claim that they also want to be called “Dr.” and that is why they went for it. Most in the media houses have personnel who are academic novices from whom expectations for critical thinking and appraisal skills should be toned down a number of notches not because they are incapable of reasoning but that scientific research is a skill which most with Bachelor degrees do not have, let alone those with 2-year media diplomas. These days, the big universities in Ghana, including University of Development Studies, University of Cape Coast, University of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, to mention but a few, due to the size of the undergraduates, do not require dissertations from the graduating classes. Instead they do group assignments. Some universities have introduced “no examination” degree programs which ought to be monitored closely to assess their potential negative effects on the educational system and training of future leaders and workers. Many of Ghana’s first degree holders do not know how to put together a scientific paper and can hardly write or compose original material without copying, dabbing and plagiarizing from published sources. Some of these universities run the undergraduate programs like a production line in a factory manufacturing fungible goods with very little and mostly no differentiation. “Fungible goods” are those goods that are interchangeable for commercial purposes and whose properties are identical (FTA Provisions for Fungible Goods, 2023) . A study financed by US Embassy in Ghana revealed that, only 6.5% and 6.1% of the females in media had Masters Degrees in Media Studies and in other disciplines respectively (Yeboah-Baning et al., 2020: pp. 14-15, 041-061) . This study did not compare the females to males for their level of educational attainment, although the project’s aim was on gender equality and advocacy. At any rate, gender equality or inequality is not the subject of this paper although it could be the pre-occupation of a subaltern intellectual who desires to promote equity among the sexes.
The Subaltern Intellectual and the Attributes of Subalternity
In the following few pages, I will first explain the title and why it is probably the most fitting among the options available and why some of Ghana’s intellectuals are described as subalterns and others are described as cowards. I will discuss the paucity of research on cowardice in Ghana and even in Africa, and situate the obligations of subaltern intellectuals in descriptive ethics in the works of researchers in Ghana’s politically corrupt economy and equally corrupt social structures be it in marriage, parental care, and filial responsibilities and functions. I will describe the setting, introduce characters and provide the background to support the theory that some of Ghana’s intellectuals are subalterns and most are cowards, who have shown by their deeds that, their allegiance is to the ruling government, or those with money and power. The majority of intellectuals and professionals are particularly fearful with those that have the power to provide project grants and consultancies which often are of low monetary values, but still coveted by the professional and intellectual classes. They are even more emasculated, drained of conscience and judgment whether they are clergy men or not, when it comes to the desire for appointments to board memberships, board chairs or chancelleries of universities and other public institutions. This is because such appointments gives them access to extra income, extra opportunity to fleece the nation of a part of its wealth, access to earn honorariums and per diems for attending meetings that yield zero outcomes for the people of Ghana and even access to foreign travel as board members and consultancies despite blatant conflict of interests implications (Agyeman, Aboagye, & Ahali, 2013: pp. 7-9) .
In evaluating the works of personalities as cowards or heroes, I have collected a good amount of data from personalities that have been in the public space and have attracted a wide attention for good deeds for analysis. These are personalities in academia, public and private services, legal professionals and others who, despite the potential loss of income, good standing with the government and even their political parties, were able to take a step back from the mundane routines of the nation and to evaluate with a high degree of objectivity the conduct of government, public and institutional officials with the intention or expressed view of making Ghana a better place to live. It is interesting to notice that while the names of personalities in the legal profession easily fall into one’s consciousness, it is hard to identify personalities in medicine that are known or seen to engage in patient-centered health advocacy with the few exception of scholars like Professor Fred N. Binka, former Director of the Navrongo Reseach Center, former Dean of the School of Public Health, University of Ghana, and former Vice Chancellor of the University of Health and Allied Sciences. In fact, but for his immersion in national politics, Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, a well-known cardiothoracic surgeon could have easily been the lead medical name to be included in the review of medical subaltern intellectuals for promoting cardiothoracic health of the population for a considerable length of time, including raising money, building and equipping the Cardio Center at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, a feat for which the Ghanaian society can never pay him back in gratitude. The heavy and destructive burden of political machinations and shenanigans seem to have masked his scholarship as a medical subaltern intellectual, not only in the view of this author but in the public consideration of previously known personalities in a respected field of endeavor, who enter politics. Please see: Saad Gulzar, Who Enters Politics and Why? (Gulzar, 2021) .
The perception of masked medical scholarship appears to be created by medical doctors themselves. For example, the average medical student does not seem to give a care about the politics of medicine and do absolutely nothing to promote the interests of medical doctors due to their singular devotion to medicine and the mistaken belief that they are better off than most. The moment the medical doctor veers into politics, a certain degree of his social standing appears to be lost to eternity, although this is subject to empirical confirmation or rebuttal.
It is important to bear in mind that, the unstated goal of this paper is the promotion of personal liberties and the pursuit of happiness in a place where the citizens have functioning and capabilities as well as agency, as articulated in the Preamble to the 1992 Constitution of Ghana with these words: “prosperity, the blessings of liberty, and equality of opportunity…” Any professional or any citizen whose output does not contribute to giving meaning to overall goal of the constitution of Ghana may be described as a loafer, one who engages in loathing, and a coward or subaltern in its pejorative sense.
The term subaltern is derived from the Latin “sub” meaning below or under; plus “alter” in other words, “alternus” or alternate, which combines to produce “subalternus” and the modern derivative, subaltern. As a term used in the military realm, subaltern designates a lower ranking, even an inferior individual. Subaltern has come to be used as subordination in social, political, religious and economic hierarchies (Encyclopedia.com, n.d.). Oxford English Dictionary defines subaltern as “a person and, or thing of inferior rank or status” (https://www.vocabulary.com). Global Social Theory defines subaltern “in relation to subordinate social groups and individuals whose historical activity is repressed, neglected, misinterpreted or at the margins of hegemonic histories, discourses and social formations” (www.globalsocialtheory.org).
Shreejoyee Bhattacharya’s paper, An Analysis of Subaltern Studies (Bhattacharya, 2016) , reported that Subaltern studies emerged in the 1970s as a result of the work of Ranajit Guha (1982: p. 8) . The term was first used by Antonio Gramsci (1971) as a term of subordination to describe colonial populations who were socially, politically and geographically excluded from the imperial establishment and from the national activities in the colonial times. Gramsci defined the term as a “general representation of subordinates in a typical South Asian Society which can be expressed in terms of gender, class, caste, etc”. Gramsci saw subalternality as extension of Marxist ideology for the proletariat or underclass with a focus on the cultural subordination that intertwined with economic oppression (Louai, 2011; Hoare & Smith, 1998) . From the reading of Bhattacharya and other works, it is deduced that the term was to throw light on the dominant practices and resistance against such practices which takes place outside of the regular framework of history and class struggle are simply ignored (ibid, pp. 1-5). That is to say, Subaltern Studies was to fill the gaps in the historiography of class struggle and resistance against the establishment which the regular historical framework had hitherto fore, ignored.
At some stage in the emergence of this discipline, and the battle between the individual and the State, academics and politics got involved which led to clashes between the scholars who spoke for individuals and those obscurantists who spoke for the State (ibid, pp. 3-4). The term was not always looked at as pejorative or derisive, but described the struggle of the vulnerable and the underclass against the establishment for relevancy and participation in their nations as equals (Lauwers & Sil, 2022: pp. 1-4) .
Miss-Application of the Term “Subaltern Intellectual”
To be labeled as a subaltern intellectual as done by Yusuf Serunkuma (2023) is confusing even though he succeeds in deriding the intellectuals of today as subaltern in the traditional sense of the word to mean “someone with low ranking in a social, political and other hierarchy”. Serunkuma argues that today’s intellectuals engage in “self-censorship and contentment with the status quo, in contrast with the earlier generation of activists. Comparing such world class social activists and social re-engineers to the current crop of intellectuals and professionals reveals the devotion of the current group of intellectuals as selfishness, egotistic and materialists in addition to the claim that they lack cognitive awareness of their roles in their respective societies. He concludes that “today’s intellectuals have so wholehearted and cowardly acquiesced to ‘neo-colonialist-capitalist tyranny’”, that they appear to be afraid of their own shadows, emphasis mine. He offers that “a good number of them appear to be doing good scholarship, though they appear to be obsessed with obfuscation, focused on terminologies”, dead theoretical frameworks that have no resemblance to reality in our world, “representations with intense attention to minutia while at the same time running or dodging confrontation with the big national issues” such as climate change, environmental degradation, poverty, xenophobia, vigilantism and uptick in urban crimes. He finally ended that “the gulf between the academics and their communities has become more pronounced with the scholars seeing themselves simply as too polished to mingle with their wretched compatriots”.
Subaltern Intellectual or Grassroots Community Organizer
Putting aside the position of Serunkuma, there was a time that being called a subaltern intellectual meant one was closer or part of the grassroots (Gramsci, 1971; Spivak, 1988; Walsh, 2014) . Today, the term at least in the Sub-Saharan African region, has lost its feel as a social transformative concept and morphed into a concept of exclusion from the poor, the grassroots, the vulnerable and neglected members of society and which could be part of the reasons for the amplification of poverty and inequities despite the rise in GDP of the respective nations. Herein lay the crust of the matter and the motivations for this paper as well. That is to say, the modern day intellectuals harbor a substantial number of cowards or “Kafum” who renege on their social obligations, “vorvornortor” who run away from responsibility, “ohufuo” who are in mortal fear of the politicians, their Heads of Departments, Directors, Ministers and even the Presidency, instead of respecting important public officials but respectfully challenging them to perform their roles and accomplish the promises they make to the electorate.
What Is Cowardice, or Who Is a Coward?
Chris Walsh clarifies the confusion with the modern application of the term “Cowardice” in his book, Cowardice: Brief History (2014) that, the term was used in connection with the commission or omission of pre-existing obligation to a community. Bear in mind that the attributes of a responsible citizen includes participating to solve the challenges of the community. In fact, lecturers and professors get promoted on not only their scholarship but community service. Therefore, there is an unwritten social contract between academia and the community to be of service to the needs of the community but not to merely teach in exchange for a salary. In my estimation, about 95% of lecturers do not observe this requirement for promotion and their superiors, the Vice Chancellors appear not to care to insist that their lecturers are engaging or have engaged the community or not. Walsh admits that in the past, the word was used “when courage faltered and duties were left undone”. Today, it is used as a political speech act in matters affecting national security. In the USA, it has become a standard political response to acts of public violence. For example, President George W. Bush called the activities of the 9/11 terrorists as “cowardly”. Securitization theory shows us that national security policy is not a natural given, but carefully designated by politicians and decision-makers. Political issues are constituted as extreme security issues to be dealt with urgently when they have been labeled as “dangerous”, “menacing”, “threatening”, “alarming” and so on by a “securitizing actor” who has the social and institutional power to move the issue “beyond politics”. So, security issues are not simply “out there” but rather must be articulated as problems by securitizing actors (Eroukhmanoff, 2018: p. 1; Norman & Kpeglo, 2023: p. 2) .
Walsh defines cowardice as “someone who, because of excessive fear, fails to do what he is supposed to do”. This definition has many moral and ethical vectors such as duty of care, obligation, volunteerism, courage, virtue. That is to say, a coward lacks all these ethical values or attributes and so the term invariably speaks of a person with low values, someone despicable and not deserving of the respect or esteem of his peer. Notwithstanding the ongoing presentation, Walsh reminds the reader that “the word no longer connotes failure to perform one’s duty either in moments of extreme fear or even in the mundane routine of everyday life”. It however, “now describes a rare and monstrous thing” such as an act of violence against unarmed civilians (Williams, 2015: pp. 3-5). Walsh presentation on the use of the word, “coward” may resonate with western culture. In Ghana and other traditional societies, the word coward still has relevance to the issue of failure or inability to perform a task that a given group of people or an institution expects it to be performed with bravery and personal commitment irrespective of the consequences to the one who is performing the act.
Staying with Walsh’s definition of cowardice, we are to consider the extents that fear plays a role in the lives of ordinary people. Arthur K. Westermayer (1915: pp. 250-256) in his work, The Psychology of Fear: Considered in its relation to Human Conduct. Westermayr offers that “Fear is considered contemptible; man tries to divest himself of it. He is ashamed of its existence; he hates its profoundest and most beneficent manifestations”. But at the same time, he writes that one should not discount fear as part of the essential emotions or consciousness because “fear is the great force that prompts us to acts of self-preservation and operates as effectively in the brute as in the human animals” and that “courage is the opposite of fear, which divides into the moral and the physical” (ibid, p. 254). Westermayr takes the consequentialist view to fear that it restrains many men from going against the community’s edicts or ethos for fear of condemnation, being ostracized and discounted. The laws of nature, biological and rationality allow men to flee from danger. He argues that to this end, all rational men are “dominated by the fear of the consequences of mental, moral and only those devoid of rationality can be said to be devoid of this protective emotions”, (ibid, p. 255). Whiles we look for heroes, Westermayr offers that even the so-called heroes have vested interests in the feats they pursue, be it in the defense of others, in sympathy with the plight of others or in support of the cause of others.
Westermayr sounds cynical to admonish, for example, a Fireman who runs into a house on fire to search and rescue trapped residents, since doing so is for the esteem of others, for applause and for accolades but not to save the lives of the residents. He offers in detail that the performative services of a hero actually are motivated by a number of factors including: “the absence of imagination whereby the individual becomes incapable of foreseeing and, therefore, unable to count or measure danger”. This thinking is hard to swallow because society has trained its security and first responder personnel to actually do what it can safely do to retrieve trapped persons behind a wall of fire as part of risk-intervention-mitigation continuum in disaster and emergency response. Westermayr would have us bear in mind that, “that person is impulsive and lacks reflexive cognizance and thus prevents him from thinking about the danger he disregards”. He added that “the need for honorable mention or praise supersedes the rescuer’s need for personal safety”, and that “fear of contempt impels him to conduct heroic deeds”. That is to say fear of derision from his superiors or peer blinds the rescuer and compels him to do heroic acts. The last but one point Westermayr makes in his paper, is that a rescuer may simply “love vanity” (ibid, p. 253). Meaning that the intervention of a rescuer to enter a house on fire to retrieve a trapped old man or woman was an unnecessary supererogational act for which there was no moral or legal obligation to do? He ends with the salvo that a rescuer for example may have “idealized selfishness which finds happiness in service to others, even though that service necessitates the assumption of serious personal risk”. This is because Westermayr maintains that, “all rational action springs from motive which impels the doing of the act”, because, “Without motive, the act is irrational” (ibid, p. 254).
To pull the discussion so far together from the first paragraph of this paper to this part, we come to a point of conflation of ideas that, western psychological thoughts on cowardice is more or less the same as the Ashanti and Ewe in Ghana’s view of who a coward is: One who fears, or one who runs away from responsibility because of fear. Therefore in order to meet the apparent universal description of a coward, one has to allow the factors listed by Westermayr to prove that one is brave or one has the esteem of one’s peer for not being a coward. Despite the contentions of Westermayr, putting aside the psychological explanation of bravery, it is important to also notice that all men are intrinsically propelled by the moral concept of categorical imperative which necessitates the urgency to jump to the aid of another person, despite his antecedents or our individual societal statuses. Therefore, failure to speak truth to power, to intervene when evil is meted out to your neighbor, your fellow Ghanaians, and when one man appears to wield all the power to himself because we allow it, then we are all cowards by deed and in fact.
2. Method
As already stated in the abstract, this is a case-control study. Case-control study allows for the study of unusual phenomenon such as the incidence of Cowardice in Ghana’s intellectual space, by reviewing past events retrospectively; the consideration of variety of reasons for the conduct or risk factors; and allows for the optimization of outcomes that may be difficult to determine at first (Boubekri, Cheung, Reid, Wang, & Zee, 2014: pp. 603-611) . Research on Cowardice in Academia is almost non-existent when it comes to Ghana and Sub-Saharan Africa, which makes the concept an unusual phenomenon within the national intellectual discourse. Although the controls in this Case-Control study are conveniently identified personalities and are already mentioned in this paper, the cases can only be spoken about in abstraction and on scenario basis. This is not one of the moments where the author’s self-restraint not to name any cases can be considered as an act of cowardice. It is rather out of respect for the privacy of those cases some of whom are already known to the author. I have intentionally not defined the attributes of an intellectual except by rank within the university system. The generic description of a lecturer, a professor or university administrator does not qualify one as a coward without the manifestation of other attributes, which I would leave to the imagination of the reader. This is a retrospective review of prior acts and conduct some of which may already be in the public domain, and some of which are available on the World Wide Web and to which references will be made from time to time. The use of those events in the public domain does not mean to suggest or label the actors in those narratives as cowards. The author also requested for dossiers from some of the controls mentioned for indepth treatment of their contributions to society in advocacy, social transformation and amplification of the plight of the underclass, the vulnerable and the marginalized. That is to say, the controls were opportunistically selected due to their prior public output, contributions and deeds. In order to qualify as a control, one should not have been doing the bidding of a political party or engaged in promotion of government program such as the proposed building of a national cathedral, or come from the point of view of boasting about development projects executed by such a government, since often there is a mismatch of the reality of such presentations and actual results created. Such advocacy must have the aim of benefiting all of society irrespective of political party affiliation. One should have been engaged in advocacy for a cause that seeks to benefit a large portion of the national population; participate in lawful public demonstration or picketing as expression of conscience and the promotion of civil liberties, be part of media discussion of troubling national issues such as debt restructuring as Bright Simons of Imani Ghana has often done at the expense of, perhaps, his potential pecuniary interests, or the potential threats to funding for Imani Ghana, or Franklin Cudjoe the President of Imani had been known to do over a long period of time. A control should have been an advocate for justice in a court of law or at the Supreme Court on a matter of national significance as in the case of Professor Raymond Atuguba, Lawyers Martin Kpebu; Oliver Barker; Kofi Abotsi and others have been known to do with the overarching goal of helping to make Ghana a better place to live and pursue one’s dreams, even if the lawyer was paid for his legal representation, since it cost a great deal of money for a lawyer in private practice to put body and soul together and to be able to try a case in Court, let alone the Supreme Court. The author has collected and assembled for briefing and analysis 1) scholastic publication and court cases pursued by a few of the controls among the intellectuals to promote the public good; or dossier on 2) participation in non-violent public demonstrations and civil disobedience, dossier on 3) engagement in the media on critical national issues to speak truth to power against government attempts or encroachment on civil liberties, and 4) to raise alarm on official omission of duties to the population in the provision of services, and addresses 5) the abuse of media and personal freedoms. I conducted contented analysis of data after briefing each item pertinent to the topic. The literature searches included phrases such as “who is a coward?”, “What are the attributes of a coward?”, “How does the military define acts of cowardice?”, “Is cowardice bad?”, “Is cowardice a congenital condition?”, “Should intellectuals be men and women of cowardice?” and such other combinations to identify pertinent literature on the topic despite the paucity of research on the topic as a universal matter. Each publication selected was read, content analysis conducted and salient points noted down until the entire collection was briefed, findings aggregated for common themes before the commencement of the analysis.
3. Result
3.1. Characteristics of the Cases vis-à-vis the Controls
In the result section, the focus is on selected Controls (the subaltern intellectuals), due to word limitations on papers for peer review journals. Although the Cases (the intellectual Cowards) are not identified in this discourse, “you know them when you see them” in society or in academic circles. This descriptive phrase is borrowed from Justice Potter Stewart. In a 1964 obscenity case of Jabobellis v. Ohio, 378 U. S. at 197, this US Supreme Court Judge in his concurring opinion on detecting and defining what constituted hard core pornographic material or content, he defined pornography as “I know it When I see it” (Gewirtz, 1996; Lattman, 2007) . So in the same vein, one knows an intellectual coward when one sees such a person.
A common feature of such men and women in academia and in life is that, they like to speak but say nothing. They are the bosom buddies of the chancellery. They are brownnosers. One cannot tell the point they are making about the issue they speak, after listening to them, yet they are the ones that get promoted and elevated over their non-compliant, independently minded peer. They appear passionate about government and varsity leadership actions and do whatever they can to promote such goals, so long as they have something to gain from such support. They engage in prevarication when their previous statements appear to contradict subsequent presentations. Juggling with veracity is as easy to them as juggling balls in a windy space, where everything is influenced by flux. They are motivated by rent-seeking behavior, going after grants to conduct so-called social or other intervention study or research that in the long run produces little to zero result to the population overall. It is not only in government that there is the abuse of money earmarked for national development. In academic research too, significant portions of project money are misdirected into the personal coffers of the top people in the institution such as the Principal investigators, the Chiefs of Party, the Heads of the Department in which the project is situated, the faculty in which the project sits and even in some cases all the way to the Vice Chancelleries, although the institutions that house research projects receive 10% of the face value of the funds as “Institutional Direct Cost”. Just as it is in the public space, in academia some of these researchers create, share and loot from project money earmarked for specific objectives, although this assertion, though based on the author’s experiences needs further validation with empirical data as a general matter.
The Controls, however, are real life personalities, heroes, that have undertaken true arduous commitment towards improving the public health, ontological security and safety of the populations, in areas such as the right to enjoy private property without government encroachment or trespassing and, or, taking it without due compensation and even due process. This prohibition forms part of the descriptive and normative ethics of Ghana as enunciated in the 1992 Constitution. It would also cover the struggle between the citizens’ right to free speech and freedom of assembly and the government illegal efforts to curtail civil liberties and freedoms.
Finally, it would cover the way the legal system has been used to foster such freedoms despite the government’s determined effort to influence judicial outcomes of cases before the Courts.
“Lord Burnett of Maldon, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, head of the judiciary of England and Wales and President of the Courts of England and Wales, warned of “unprecedented levels of political interference” by politicians in the work of the courts which he headed. He even suggested that MPs should be taught about “boundaries” (Rickard, 2020) . According to Rickard (2020) “one of the most recent examples the” Chief Justice of England and Wales “cites concerns a case in which a former MP was jailed for sexual assaults, and MPs from the same party tried to stop character references supportive of the convicted MP, part of the case that was heard, from being made public (…)”. “Where judges have vested interests, where it becomes apparent that the particular judge is doing the bidding of the appointing authority that brought him or her to the bench or the highest court of the land, such moves too are clearly decipherable by experience jurists and astute judicial observers”.
“The Chief Justice of Ghana on the 28th of September 2022 told a group of judges and magistrates that, “misinterpretation and misunderstanding of court decisions regardless of the motives with which they are done should not cause judges and magistrates to waver in their duties” and should “withstand those pressures, if some decisions of the courts lead to public outcry”. Such an admonition is not right and should not be absorbed as if it is the best option on judicial accountability. It is not. The judiciary as active partners in development ought to have a more mature appreciation of the impact of their decisions on development; on community cohesiveness, and on trust (Norman, 2023: pp. 135-141) .
The omission of what cowards do in this presentation actually shows the lack of effort on the part of the large majority of the intellectual cowards, who only live on the expectation that, if they do nothing to promote individual liberties, in the long run, things would work them-selves out, and everyone would be happy. Delusional as it sounds, there are so-called intelligent adherents to this strain of thinking within the national intellectual and professional classes.
3.2. Public Demonstrations, Picketing, Civil Disobedience
“Civil Disobedience” is simply an argument for the scientific and legal disobedience to an unjust State, and the promotion of Civil Liberties” (Thoreau, 1849) . Even today, Thoreau is considered the father of Climate Change advocacy, and the general ecological and environmental awareness of the world society. Ghanaian society appears to be now influenced by rights-based demands not only on employers but on Central government. These manifest as Worker agitations, Civil Society demonstrations for political or social change, which are becoming rampant in Ghana and in the sub-region. Such agitations sometimes diverge into violence, because a significant number of the leaders of workers unions, Civil Society Organizations and Non-governmental Organizations do not appreciate the demands on their positions as leaders and what is required to organize civil disobedience or worker demonstrations. From Mahatma Gandhi of India to Martin Luther King of the USA, through the pre-independence movement of Ghana and many nations in Africa, non-violent action has been effective in causing dramatic social change and government positions on race, universal suffrage, segregation, apartheid, human rights, and climate change. Ghanaian intellectuals appear too detached and feel being part of a street demonstration will devalue their essence and their social standing, a notion of personal value which is all an imagination. Public demonstrations can easily be infiltrated by trouble makers and even terrorist organizations. There is therefore the need to be cautious in any action of public importance through non-violent picket, demonstration or protest (Norman & Norman, 2022: pp. 2-3) .
Although the 1992 Constitution of Ghana and the Public Order Act of 1994, (Act 491) allow for civil disobedience, there are permissible modalities for organizers as well as the police to be mindful of, to avoid the police use of force as displayed in Ejura in 2021 and as has been witnessed in Accra in 1994 with the Kume Preko demonstrations. The impact(s) of localized disasters, including droughts, local and regional floods, epidemics, conflicts and wildfires as well as the COVID-19 Pandemic, have contributed to the worsening of livelihoods and safety nets for a large population in Ghana, and which could lead to public disorder and agitation (ibid, p. 4). At the risk of creating a rift between various members of her big and powerful and currently the ruling Addo Danquah—Ofori Atta—Akuffo—Darko family, the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Ghana, Sophia Akuffo along side with the retiree bondholders picketed at the Ministry of Finance in Accra in February of 2023 against the government decisions on bond yield payments. She granted media interviews at the picket line over the government’s domestic debt exchange program in which the government offered to pay only 15% coupon rate which was rejected by the bondholder-retirees. Sophia’s role can be described as a classic case of subaltern intellectual, if one could allow a liberal review of her heroic action. She saw the need to join the retirees because of empathy, motivated by her conscience as the right thing to do, despite the absence of a pre-existing obligation to help bring pressure on the government to do the right thing within the confines of the law, morality and ethics. She was well aware of the risk, her impact on that important social issue in the public discourse, and the potential to alienate her cousins, and other family members within that family. She did not become “ohufuo” or “Kafume”, a coward, so to speak. She became the candle in the dark. She found the government decision to offer only 15% payment on their bond yield to be unconscionable, “wicked and unlawful and wrong” (Akuffo, 2023) . Her action was not motivated by avarice or vanity and the need for the acclaim of her peer, according to Westermayr’s dialects on the psychological motivations for heroic deeds but did so out of a genuine concern, a categorical imperative to love her neighbor as herself. As a retired Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, she retired on her full salary subject to upward periodic adjustment due to inflation. She had no obligation to picket and this singular act in the assessment of this author, qualifies her action not only as a supererogational act, but inures her as a subaltern intellectual. The real question is how many of the people of Ghana would have done what the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Ghana did in support of the bondholder-retirees.
The #FixTheCountry movement started with a tweet from a social media influencer, Joshua Boye-Doe popularly known on Twitter as Kalyjay. Kalyjay had with over 450,000 followers at this time in May of 2021. In reaction to announced upcoming price increase on just about everything by the Akufo-Addo presidency whiles multiple members of his family are in cushy jobs with good salaries as the rest of the population was suffering and reeling under the yoke of Akufo-Addo’s bad economic policies and poor financial management, instigated Kalyjay to tweet #FixTheCountry—“Enough is enough” and “Tomorrow we go on a peaceful walk to rewrite history” to his followers. On 4th August, Kalyjay helped to organize several thousand people to a peaceful protest in Accra (Borgen Project: 5 Facts about Ghana’s #FixTheCountry Protests, 2021).
Mobilizing the youth of Ghana for activism is not a narrow focus goal but also, in the broader view of things, the movement aims to ensure equity, equality and egality in the political landscape in Ghana. It has the beneficial effect of forestalling any potential development towards a military takeover as a result of government persistent disrespect of the values of the people of Ghana. The military, perhaps, see such citizen’s effort at correcting the ills of government as an enabling undertaking to improve democratic practices in the nation, and nullifying perhaps, the perception that the citizens are in danger and cannot fend for themselves, and thus necessitating military intervention. On 4th August 2021, several thousand protesters marched in Accra, Ghana under the slogan “#FixTheCountry”, which was a protest against the government of President Akufo-Addo’s New Patriotic Party government. Amongst the charges for the demonstration was assertion that the government was corrupt, engaged in identity politics, neopatrimonial practices in job placement, outright stealing from the national purse, and so many other ills bordering on criminality. Others “criticized Akufo-Addo’s project to build a new USD$200 (Euros 169) million national cathedral, a pledge Akufo-Addo says he made to his God after his 2016 election victory over John Dramani Mahama of the National Democratic Congress” (Aljazeera, 2021) . Among the movement’s goals, is the “demand for a new society founded on justice” and the avowal that, they “are refusing to play by the rules of a political class that is so disinterested in the Ghana project” (Vormawor, 2022) .
Oliver Barker Vormawor, one of the converners of the Fix The Country Movement was determined to push for social transformation to make Ghana a better place for all, “in spite of the open attacks and oppression especially by government elements”. He was devoted to the quest of a “new Ghana where leadership serves rather than impoverishes (...) and that every fiber in his being assures him that that new Ghana is possible (…) (Vormawor, 2022) . Soon after the Facebook post in which he protested the imposition of e-levy tax on financial transactions, he was perhaps declared as an enemy of progress. Perhaps, Oliver went too far with the threat that, “if this e-levy passes (…) I will do the coup myself”. In a mature democracy, such a flippant statement would not have received the attention of the security forces the way it did in Ghana, but would have been considered as a mere rant to be monitored to see if he was planning to actual give effect to the vague threat. Unfortunately for Oliver, the government of Ghana has very thin skin and is cowardly afraid of the citizens exercise of free speech. Thus, upon his arrival in February of 2021, he was arrested at the Kotoka International Airport on a flight from the UK, assaulted and placed in detention for criticizing the Akufo-Addo government (Akinwotu, 2022) . In a law-suit he filed in July-August of 2022 against the mal-treatment he received in Ghana, he alleged among others that, his passport was confiscated. He was secluded into a room and beaten for more than three hours by security officers. He was blindfolded, taken in a convoy of police and military vehicles to a cell on the outskirts of Accra where he was stripped and forced to give access to his phone and held in detention for two months. The Ghana Police’s official justification for the treatment meted out to him was that, “the post contained a clear statement of intent with a possible will to execute a coup”. Oliver Barker-Vormawor is a lawyer, a PhD candidate at Cambridge University, and a former government adviser working at the United Nations office of legal affairs. He knew and understood his statement to be mere puff, a bluff, but the Ghanaian authorities and the police saw it in a different light: A threat to national security.
At this moment, one would have expected that the intellectuals, the lecturers, professors, students and others in academia and in other professions would provide support to this noble cause. That did not happen even though those on the low end of the economic totem pole, such as shoe-shiners, market women, motorcycle taxi riders popularly known as Okada in West Africa and Bodaboda in East Africa, that is to say, members of the grassroots, the real subalterns were in the march demanding for a better Ghana, whiles the intellectuals, professionals and others were out to lunch, literally. The actions of Kalyjay, Oliver Barker Vormawor fall into a resistance sub-type or subaltern consciousness and therefore could be considered as virtuous acts of bravery or heroic. On the other hand, the response from university lecturers, and other professionals could be labeled as acts of cowardice for omitting to sacrifice their petty bourgeoisie privileges in favor of the broader, communitarian dividends. No sane Ghanaian can deny the fact that the reelection of Akufo-Addo in December of 2020 had not ushered in hardships. The contest over whether the Akufo-Addo victory over John Dramani Mahama was stolen or not led also to discontent, and in the week after the December elections, some 5 persons were killed in election related violence (ibid, Brogen Project, 2021). There were other events that compounded the already tensed atmosphere in the nation because there was the perception that despite participating in the general elections, the outcome was pre-determined leading to only 79% voter turn-out in the 2020 general elections. Such developments should be of concern to every patriotic citizen but to most of the professionals, lecturers, professors, and university authorities, they were unfazed by these concerns.
3.3. The Subaltern Controls in Academic and Professional Circles
From here, I have discussed the “subaltern controls” in the national academic and professional circles. I have subjectively chosen four personalities and evaluated their conduct for the purpose of this investigation. Although honorable mention was made on some personalities in the paragraph above, those were illustrative controls whose information were readily available on the World Wide Web. Those that were purposively selected as Controls are discussed below. This is not the first time this author had taken interests and written scholastic pieces on, for example, an exemplary professional or academic. Please see Defense of S. K. B. Asante on African Integration: Convictions for Tomorrow? (2023) Such work is done with no instigation from anyone but purely as academic and social inquiry.
3.3.1. Professor Raymond Atuguba
Speaking of restoring the values of probity, accountability and truth in Ghana’s governance and the judiciary Professor Raymond Atuguba on 2 July 2017 advocated for “a legal revolution” for Ghana. Raymond was the former Executive Secretary to Ex-President John Dramani Mahama during his administration in a lecture given at the College of Surgeons and Physicians, under the title, Restoring the Values of Probity, Accountability and Truth in Contemporary Governance (2017). He is the Dean of the Faculty of Law, University of Ghana, Accra. In this paper, Atuguba talks about his own family’s treatment that marginalized and pushed them into underclassness for a while. He recounted that, “The marginalization, disparaging remarks, and insults (he and siblings) faced as northerners going to school in Kumasi, somehow, prepared me for the marginalization I was to face going to school in the United States as a black person” (Atuguba, 2017: p. 5) . His motivations for his continue advocacy for the marginalized, those that have suffered injustice is the crystallization of his personal experiences with injustice thus, “Having narrowly escaped the gallows of political and economic malfeasance, it is sensible for me to work against injustice, in all its forms. I hate injustice. Injustice freaks me out, because it sends my body, soul and spirit into a riveting stupor, responsive only to the pain that injustice creates” (ibid, p. 7). In order for Ghana to deliver justice to all, we need a legal revolution. Justice delivery in Ghana “takes too long to get to court, it cost too much when we get in there, and its ultra-crowded when we get there. Also, the principles of law and justice applied to us in there are alien to us, some imported from the Brits many centuries ago; we are lost in a maze of procedures and jargons while we are in there; it takes too long to get out, the results we get from the court halls are often spiced with corruption and flavored with politics, and our relationships are damaged after we get out”. And that “we need to remember that in the adversarial system of law and justice we practice in Ghana, the party who has better lawyers, more resources, a greater capacity to influence judges and court officials, has truth on their side, at least temporarily” (ibid, p.19).
Raymond Atuguba next advocacy was on April, 2022 within the legal profession on the topic: The Survival Of The Legal Profession In A Changing World, more so because “law is a derivative profession” whose impact is determined not by what lawyers choose to do or ought to do, but what their clients ask them to do (Morgan, 2005: p. 1) . Morgan argued in that paper Educating Lawyers for the Future Legal Profession that, “while there is interchange between the lawyer and the client, for most lawyers, most of the time, professional activity is dictated by what their clients want and need, not by how the lawyers themselves would prefer to spend their time. For example, lawyers do not initiate business deals; clients bring the deals to them” and so on (ibid, pp. 2-3). Raymond’s paper was more or less focused on the same trajectory as that of Morgan, clearly the scholarship of another subaltern intellectual that, first, “the survival of the legal profession starts from the faculties of law, not at the Bar, not at the Bench. Secondly, “the faculties have long been orphaned in this tripartite arrangement of the Bench, Bar and Faculty and that needs to end”. He cautioned that, “sometimes responding to change involves stepping back, not moving forward” (Atuguba, 2017: p. 4) . In the narrative about some of the communitarian activities of Professor Raymond Atuguba, his goal was not about himself but how society’s rights can be enlarged through professionalism, probity, accountability and transparency even in the closed industry as the practice of law and the justice delivery system. His message is rich in philosophy, although Raymond Atuguba is not ordinarily known as a legal philosophy. What often happens is that when one commits to society, and thinks about the welfare of others, the statements about duty, obligation and the mundane routines of men assume deeply philosophical implications and effect on the receiver of that communication. Such an academic is essential to the socio-political development of the nation and the people in it, and which makes Professor Raymond Atuguba, a subaltern intellectual.
3.3.2. Professor Fred Newton Binka
Professor Fred Binka is an outstanding researcher with over 225 items, some in the Lancet and other prestigious, high impact journals and over 10,984 citations as recorded by Researchgate as of (9/3/2023). He is a world acclaimed scientists, and a great medical doctor and an inspiring public health practitioner who has worked in Israel, Nigeria, Geneva, Asia, USA and other places in addition to Ghana. In Ghana his commitment to the people took place not in posh offices and towns but in resource deprived communities such as Navrongo in the 1980’s through the 1990’s and in Kintampo, prior to the 2008 and thereafter. When he was tasked to launch the University of Health and Allied Sciences, there were no classrooms, no office spaces and literally there was no facility or physical structure in which to launch a whole university in 2012. This author was a witness, standing beside him in what is now the permanent campus of the University with a tape in his hands; in the middle of secondary forest, measuring to potential collaborator from Tulane University, where the Vice Chancellor’s office was earmarked to be per the architectural drawings. For some six months or so, he lived in one-room hotel accommodation in Ho, as he worked with private contractors to get the temporary structures of UHAS installed while at the same time pushing central government to get going on the permanent structures between 2012 and 2013. To be a subaltern intellectual, it means one is willing to sacrifice many personal comforts for the good of society and with vulnerable and marginalized citizens as beneficiaries of your efforts. At the Kintampo Health Research Center, KHRC, and working as the Executive Director of INDEPTH network, he came to the realization that, as a medical doctor, saving the life of one child from the claws of malaria was fantastic but saving the lives of many children was awesome. He capture this commitment in his statement to Newsweek reporters in 2007 that did a story on him and his collaborators with this: “If you could just develop a vaccine to prevent this disease, malaria, then well, it would be fantastic” (Carmichael, 2007: p. 54) . In collaboration with a handful of people, Fred created INDEPTH, a network of 37 research centers across Africa, Asia and Central America. Among other achievements chalked by INDEPTH is a huge database on virtually every aspect of the lives of patients at these sites, including medical history, marriages, and even religion. There was a time Kintampo alone had recorded some 140,000 people, today, the figure is certainly higher. Such databases help to conduct clinical trials and longitudinal studies on diseases of clinical and public health importance. There have been vaccine trials by companies like GlaxoSmith Kline, Wyeth, Sanofi-Pasteur and Marck, all contributing to improving the health outcomes of large populations.
If Professor Binka was only known for vaccine development, he would probably not be considered as a subaltern intellectual, but as researcher, as indicated earlier, he has conducted either alone or with others and produced 225 papers and 10,984+ citations. As a PhD scout, he has mentored over 60 PhDs including the author of this paper and many others who work or have worked in the healthcare systems of Africa and the world. Fred was the Dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Ghana for a number of years before being nominated and appointed as the Foundation Vice Chancellor of the University of Health and Allied Sciences, (UHAS) Ho, Volta Region. Even today, he continues to teach and mentor students at the Fred Binka School of Public Health, Hohoe Campus of UHAS. In 2020, during the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Fred was a regular face on television and radio stations to discuss epidemiologic approaches to containment, contact tracing, isolation and quarantine and risk communication and other vectors of public health controls including social distancing and handwashing. This was a time when many or former Vice Chancelleries, medical doctors and researchers were hiding from speaking truth to power about the latent and patent mishaps in the fight against the disease particularly in the supply chain of consumables and supplies as well as the containment approaches. This author appeared on a handful of occasions on television and radio stations to help educate the public and the public health officials about the disease. The extra-curricular activities, the commitment to communitarian values, and patient healthcare advocacy inure Professor Fred Binka with the title subaltern intellectual. This is not because he is a world acclaimed researcher, effective clinical trials expert and research systems developer but because he is a genuine care and altruistic subaltern whose life stands for the promotion of the greatest good to the greatest number of people.
3.3.3. Lawyer Martin Kpebu’s Legal Engagements and Advocacy
In the legal circles in Ghana and probably in the Common Law nations of Sub-Saharan Africa, Lawyer Martin Kpebu is a name that is well known for pushing the limits of the law to protect civil liberties and to improve the general understanding of the constitution of Ghana. In the last few years, Kpebu has presented and argued successfully some four cases before the Supreme Court of Ghana, namely Ghana Center for Democratic Development et al., v. Attorney-General, Writ No. 31/01/2021, argued on 31/5/2023. This matter was on the practice of the national Presidents issuing “Proceed on Leave Order” to Article 71 appointees. The case that led to the judicial review of this conduct by our Presidents in the past was the matter involving Auditor-General v. Daniel Yao Domelevo under President Akufo Addo. It may be recalled that, the Auditor-General’s audit in the transactions of the Ministry of Finance and that of Mr. Osafo Maafo, a Senior Minister in the Akufo Addo government, had found breaches in the Public Procurement Act that had resulted in their payment of USD$1 million to Kroll and Associates, a private firm in the UK. The four officials of the Ministry of Finance and Mr. Osafo Maafo sued the Auditor-General on the theory that, the actions of the Auditor-General in alleging that the payment to Kroll and Associates constituted a breach of the Procurement Act was an error in law as well as ultra vires.
The Court’s decision was in his favor and stated amongst others that, forcing Daniel Yao Demolevo to take 169 working days of his accumulated leave was unconstitutional particularly because he was an Independent Institution’s Commissioner or Auditor General. That, whether the Auditor-General would go on leave or not is purely an internal matter with which the President may not interfere. The Court posed the rhetorical question as to how Ghanaians would react if the President, any President were to tell any member of the Supreme Court to proceed on leave or the Electoral Commissioner to proceed on leave in the middle of, for example, a national election? By the time the ruling was made, Demolevo was already over 60 and also gainfully engaged outside the nation but an important precedent had been set as an estoppel against such future action by another President, a conduct which Presidents Evans Atta Mills, John A. Kufuor and Akufo Addo have all been guilty of in recent times.
The benefit of this case goes beyond the man Martin Kpebu and cuts across political and ethnical lines and even beyond the geographical limits of Ghana. In Ghana, it was not the first time a sitting President had written to instruct that an Auditor-General, for whatever the reasons, should take his vacation. In 15th April 2009, President Evans Atta Mills demanded the Auditor-General, Mr. Edward Dua Agyemang to proceed on leave effective that day.
Another great effort on his part was a case that settled a very important right in criminology, criminal justice and constitutional law concerning the right to bail, in the case of: Martin Kpebu v. Attorney-General, [2015-2016] 1 SCLR, 143-288. Again, he won the case with the final salvo from the Supreme Court that, “The plaintiff’s (Martin Kpebu’s) claim for declaration as to unconstitutionality of section 96(7) of Act 30 as Amended was upheld by five to two majority decision”. In that ruling, the court struck down two statutes which infringed on the human rights of the accused persons and sureties and provided legal decisions on two more laws to ensure that the accused persons receive fair trials.
The Martin Kpebu case provided for other fundamental rights including making all criminal offences bailable; that sureties (bonds men) cannot be jailed when an accused bolts from the jurisdiction; that where necessary a few courts should sit on weekends and public holidays to hear bail applications; and above all, the accused person has a right to discovery before the trial of the case and presentation of evidence. Prior to this case, the police was in the habit of arresting suspects on Fridays evenings and putting such persons on remand, although the law provided for bail within 48 hours. If the courts are closed on Fridays after work, then the accused stayed in remand until the next business day. If the person happened to be arrested and remanded on a public holiday, such a person had a long stay on remand before even being charged with a crime. Not only did this practice trespassed and abused the civil liberties of the accused but it opened opportunities for police corruption, extortion and abuse of office by both men and women in the investigative and prosecutorial services.
It is easy to gloss over the fact that, the Supreme Court did not just come out with its ruling. Someone had to present a case, argument and writs; someone had to have interests in the matter for the Court to issue a grant of Certiorari to hear the case. This victory at the Supreme Court is no mean achievement. This victory was not for his benefit but for the benefit of all potential offenders or persons whose conduct may cross path with the law and the criminal justice system. Because this paper is not a law review paper and because many non-lawyers simple shy away from legal reviews and other writing, this author is trying to present a part of the story of the public goods and services Martin Kpebu has rendered to the benefit of all for a long time to come in as simple a manner as possible. All in all, no one would describe Mr. Kpebu as belonging to the nonchalant intellectual majority in Ghana. Here too is another classic case, an example of subaltern intellectual, a hero and someone who is not “vorvornortor”. Martin has time or makes the time to engage in media advocacy on legal issues and social justice on regular basis. In addition, he founded an NGO, the Juvenile Justice Project, (JJP) to provide free legal services to juveniles in Accra. The JJP is supported by Legal Aid, Ghana and Unicef. These attributes are the fruits of a true subaltern Intellectual, perhaps, as privileged as he may be, in a nation that has many troubling challenges in the domain of human rights, child rights, inter-personal abuse, parental neglect, non-custodial parent neglect and so on, Mr. Kpebu serves society well.
3.3.4. Participant-Observer-Author’s Advocacy and Scholarship
At the risk of blowing my own horn, it is probably proper, in the interests of full disclosure for me as a participant-observer and author of this piece to provide a short narrative about my own advocacy, not because I see myself as some kind of a hero but a responsible citizen who is not merely asking for things from the nation and others, but contributing in diverse ways to the development of the nation. My scholastic output covers a number of disciplines such as Security Studies, Disaster and Emergency Studies, Criminology, Public Health Legislation, Biomedical Ethics and the intersectional jointures of these disciplines such as Leadership in Emergency, Pandemic response, International Law and Diplomacy and other dimensions. Some consider me as an outspoken person whiles, like everyone else, others see me, perhaps, as harsh and judgmental, both of which labels I accept without apology. There is nothing wrong in being judgmental provided you open yourself up for evaluation and assessment by others as well. Being judgmental is only bad when one does not want to be judge as he or she judges others. Hence the Biblical admonition: “do not judge, or you too will be judged” (Mathew 7:1-5). As a parent, university lecturer, as public advocate in matters of national security and emergency response, I can be vociferous and confrontational, simply because I am not afraid for others to evaluate my conduct to assess if it is morally wrong or right. As subaltern intellectual, I know that it is not always that one would be praised, even applauded and that often times the opposite is more accurate: insults, ungracious labels, and outright show of disrespect. Such is part of occupational risk for advocates, for subaltern intellectuals and real change-managers.
I am a lawyer who has been privileged to travel far in this world, and have had many life affirming and enriching experiences not only in Ghana, but in many other places. I have often taken the path less travelled and learned a great deal of wisdom from just being there, where the action was or is (Peck, 1978) . From what I have done in several of the professions I have chosen, such as being a hotelier for 14 years in Ghana that catered to over 300,000 exclusive clients, from what I have seen, read or discussed with other practitioners in the academic and professional disciplines in which I hold advanced degrees and training as well as work and life experiences, caring for the needs of others gives one a great sense of fulfillment and accomplishment than working for one’s self-interests alone.
During the COVID-19 Pandemic, I was part of the faces one saw on televisions and whose voice was heard on many radio stations across the nation, and by doing so, even telling the government that its intervention protocols at the initial stages was a joke, I earned the anger of many in government at the time. I experienced the effect of cancelled culture within the Ghanaian political and social circles in vivid ways from people I had toiled with for the NPP to gain victory in 2016. But having sympathies for a political party does not mean one should also be blind to every deviation of that party from probity, transparency and accountability. If a nation loses its moral compass because of identity politics that nation dives deep into corruption, mismanagement and abuse of power as well as underclassness and economic stagnation. I often contribute to the national discourse on various aspects of disasters and emergencies and national security at television stations such as Joy News TV, CitiTv, TV3, GHOne, GBC and numerous Radio stations such as Joy FM, Starr FM, Uniiq FM, Pink FM, Darling FM, Adom, to mention but a few. In all my public media appearances in Ghana dating back to 2005, there has not been an iota of political or personal self-aggrandizement, or monetary gain as the motivation for me to render technical submissions, other than to help educate the people of Ghana. My scholastic publications with over 50,000 readership and about 500 citations at the time of this writing this piece, I think I have entrenched my position from a deeply capitalistic person whose initial pre-occupation was making money for himself and family to a committed subaltern intellectual since entering academia full time in 2005, first in pursuit of a PhD in Public Health and then in 2009, as an academic working in the university system. I engaged in public mass education, activism, and self-efficacy-preparedness-awareness continuum promotion for my peer and others. In addition, in 2019 I created a tertiary educational institution, a university-college to train future leaders at the bachelor and master degrees levels in disaster risk management and criminology to improve the national emergency response time and improve the criminal justice space for offenders and the legal system. That humble effort has improved with a good number of students which has inspired the introduction of PhD programs in both areas as well as efforts to introduce master level education in Non-violent Demonstration, and in Prosecutorial and Investigative Sciences.
4. Discussion and Conclusion
It has not escaped this author’s attention that with the exception of the mention of Efua Sutherland, Ama Ata Aidoo, Chief Justice Sophia Akuffo, (Rtd), as being subaltern intellectuals, most of the “Controls” are men against a shoal of “Cases” of both males and females. It is as if Kwegyir Aggrey (1875-1927) was wrong and, perhaps, sexist to have said “if you educate a man you educate an individual but if you educate a woman you educate a community”? His statement can only be reviewed within the context of modern social politics from a narrow view of using that opportunity or statement to arouse the interests of parents to send their girl child to school, particularly at the time that the statement was purportedly made. In reality, that statement does not seem to measure up to practical societal outcomes of female education in many areas of social endeavors, although women constitute about 50.1% of the national population (Ghana Statistical Service, 2023) .
Similar observation has also been noted about the fact that with the exception of one medical doctor, almost all of the “Controls” are lawyers. These are men who step outside of their regular professional vocations and do advocacy, or engage in activism and deeds that enrich the greatest number of people for the greatest good of society, but most importantly who are not known as politicians in the public space. This requirement of not being a politician excludes many capable but politically oriented individuals among both males and females from inclusion. The majority of the controls being lawyers should not come as a surprise since in most societies; lawyers play the role of change managers and opinion leaders more often than those from the other sciences. This is, perhaps, due to their facility for appreciating and taking apart policy, legal frameworks and systems and patching them together again in a critical evaluation.
Despite the apparent weaknesses of this paper, some of which have been addressed here, it is important to bear in mind that this is not a historiography of the sexes with regards to subalternality. It still presents a reminder that, perhaps, women ought to take lead roles in the social transformative agenda by not hiding within the political cocoon or rich international organizations’ sponsorship for protection just as the males do without political protection or powerful international support. A true subaltern intellectual is either at the forefront of a political movement or becomes the leader of a political movement due to the role she or he plays in advancing the interests and the cause of the vulnerable, the marginalized and the underclass such as Wangari Maathai, who founded the Green Belt Movement to advance environmental causes or Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar. Prior to gaining international recognition, these women worked at the grassroots in obscurity.
The theory of change of this paper is that if the nation wants to avoid military takeovers, the intellectuals and professional classes ought to become more active in governance, using tools such as civil disobedience, public demonstrations, promotion of a strong judiciary and judicial activism, advocacy against corruption, identity politics and the use of litigation against the abuse of power, the rule of law and civil liberties. If the intellectuals and professional classes wait for someone else to bring pressure to bear on the Establishment, the ruling political party, that someone may be the military, before things get completely out of control.