By Uncle Ebo Whyte
Two small boys, aged five and six, go to Saltpond beach to catch crabs. They select a spot and put their small basket and run excitedly all over the beach and when any of them makes a catch, he runs gleefully to the basket, drops it in and dashes off again.
Along comes an old man carrying a taller basket with a lid. The old man puts his basket next to the boys’ and proceeds to empty the boys’ basket, one crab at a time, into his own basket. Whenever the boys come running to their basket with another catch, the old man will cover his basket and lie down pretending to be asleep. When they drop their catch into their basket and dash off, the old man will get up, pick the crab and out it in his own basket. The boys are getting tired, so they decide to count their catch and share it. To their dismay, they discover that they have not done as well as they thought.
“Ah!” The younger one says, “I thought we had done better than this.”
“It doesn’t matter,” replies the older one, let’s catch some more.
So off they go again, chasing and catching crabs, back to the basket, drop it in and dash off again. After another ten minutes, they know they have caught enough. But when they check the basket, they have less than when they began. As they ponder what could have happened to their crabs, the smaller one whispers to the bigger one that he had seen the sleeping old man making some fast moves around their basket.
Then they put two and two together and conclude that the old man has stolen their crabs. They try to get a peep into the old man’s basket but the lid is shut. The boys start shouting that the man has stolen their crabs, insisting that he opens it for their inspection.
Their shouts and cries attract quite a crowd, The old man picks an elderly man among them and says, “Opanyin, these boys are trying to disgrace me. I swear that I have not stolen their crabs but they insist that I have. So please help us to settle this matter once and for all. Use your mature eyes to look into my basket to see if you can find any crabs.”
The appointed ‘inspector’ goes through the motion of inspecting the tall basket. Inside the basket, he finds a lot of crabs, but by using ‘matures eyes’ he does not ‘see’ them. He turns to the boys and says, “bad boys, this basket is empty, you just want to disgrace a man old enough to be your grandfather. Get away from here.”
In Ghana, the concept of ‘Opanyin’ does not only refer to age, but to position and authority also. The Ghanaian society demands absolute respect for Opanyin – someone older than you or who has a position in the society. Thus, Opanyin can be a Supervisor, Manager, MD, Board Member, a Pastor, a seasoned professional, a long-time resident in the local neighbourhood, an official like DCE or an MP etc. Our culture forbids from questioning any action, statement, decision and even the motives of an Opanyin, assuming that once someone becomes an Opanyin, all his actions, decisions and motives are noble.
The Opanyin in Ghana therefore is clothed with automatic integrity, decency and dignity and any attempt to question that integrity and nobility is regarded as disrespectful and unacceptable.
Another aspect of this culture dictates that an Opanyin should always stand by another Opanyin, no matter what. So, if I am an Opanyin and I see another Opanyin doing the wrong thing, I cannot expose him. The most I can do is talk to him privately or look for another Opanyin to talk to him. In other words, the Opanyin in the Ghanaian society enjoys a lot of immunity of sorts for the consequences of his actions. So, under normal circumstances, no committee of enquiry in Ghana would find a big man guilty if it can be helped. If compelled to come out with the truth, they often find ways behind the scenes to minimize the effect of the ruling on the Opanyin.
Indeed, most big men in Ghana understand that if they are on a committee on enquiry to investigate the actions of another big man, they are not supposed to find him culpable. It is only when the public outcry over the issue is so persistent that the big men on a committee of enquiry will very find means to minimize the issue as much as possible. The big man who does not understand this culture is called a bad man and is often side-lined.
This culture has given birth to an opaque system of running things in Ghana that is not subject to scrutiny.
Under this system:
• Promising young people have been destroyed by someone higher who felt threatened by the youth’s prospects.
• Injustices perpetuated by a person in a higher position have been covered up.
• Corruption has been covered up and the rot permitted to continue – at all levels of the Ghanaian society.
An Opanyin takes advantage of the knowledge that he cannot be challenged, exposed or questioned to lie cheat or steal.
• The Opanyin knows that no matter what he does wrong, he will get away with it because the system is built to save him from exposure and disgrace.
So, if a younger person brings a complaint against an Opanyin in Ghana, the system will intimidate him into silence, hence the culture of silence. Most people are not motivated to complain against a big man because they know the complaint will go nowhere.
What makes this aspect of our culture insidious is that those close to the Opanyin (relatives and cronies) also come under his protection and immunity and come out of trouble unscathed.
The higher the position of the Opanyin, the greater the protection and the more solid the immunity for himself and those close to him.
If we are to arrest the decay and corruption in our society, we have to abandon this aspect of our culture and build a more transparent society in which everyone’s actions can be put under the searchlight to be scrutinized and questioned.
That is a non-negotiable requirement for a modern society in the era of a global village.
