The Akroma File

Chapter Nine

57 The Akroma File Chapter Nine (Thursday May 10th 1984) E ssuman Akroma Patrickston was the product of a harsh upbringing which he turned into advantage as he grew up. At the age of seven he had been sent to live with a rather brutal maternal uncle, Boache Danqua, a former head master and a former soldier in the British side during the First World War. As a boy uncle Danqua had harboured hopes of becoming a learned man. When those dreams were shattered by the compulsory conscription, he vowed to transform all of his sister’s five children who were placed in his care into the intellectuals he missed becoming. His favourite policy was simply to compel the children to read whole books or chapters of books and then retell the stories every weekend. The strategy would have worked perfectly because he had many books from which the children would have profited enormously during the years that they lived with him. But things did not go as planned. In the first place, he was married to a lazy woman who never allowed the boys enough time for their reading exercises. Yet, on Saturday nights she was the first to encourage the husband to beat anybody who could not retell the story of a book or summarise a chapter. In the second place the man always returned home late and drunk, and even on those Saturday evenings he listened to the narratives half-drunk. To save their skin, therefore, the boys would invent titles of non-existent books and 58 Linus T. Asong summarise non-existent chapters. Thus by the time Akroma and his inmates went to college, and especially long afterwards, he had cultivated the genius of getting himself out of trouble. He could invent the most outrageous lies and get away with them!. 59 The Akroma File 2 T wo events marked him out as an evil genius. In 1967 he entered Achimota College, one of the most prestigious institutions in the country. Prior to that year students in the lower and upper sixth were entitled to a monthly allowance of 80 Ghanaian New New Cedis. But the year they went in, following upon the Political upheaval that resulted from the overthrow of President Nkrumah, it was announced that the allowances had been scrapped. Before the announcement was made, however, heads of several institutions had already withdrawn monies to pay the students. As soon as the announcement was made some headmasters decided to pay the students for the last time. Several headmasters chose to use the monies already withdrawn for different purposes. Some, like the headmaster of Achimota decided to put the money into their private accounts. Akroma could not understand why he would not be given his due. He was particularly pained that his money should be swelling somebody else’s bank account. He visited the National Union of Ghanaian Students’ Office in Accra and somehow succeeded in securing the official stamp and the stamp pad. He then went into the toilet and stamped some twenty sheets he carried in his small bag. Returning to Achimota he typed the following letter on a stencil which he cut and multiplied, using the stamped sheets. 60 Linus T. Asong Dear Headmaster; A students’ uprising is brewing up in your institution and you must take immediate steps to ensure that it does not occur. Students are aware that before the government stopped allowances you had already withdrawn the sum of 12,000 New Cedis which you appear to be trying to use for other purposes than that originally intended. At this moment the military government will view with much disfavour any actions like these that create further instability in the country. To avert this impending catastrophe, uprising which can end up in untold damages for which your meagre 12,000 New Cedis would be inadequate to compensate, you better pay the monies and remain in the student’s good books. The Principals of twenty colleges in the country who were served the letter of warning paid their students, nobody ever knowing how it came to happen. The president and secretary of the Students Union discovered only afterwards that their stamps had been abused. 61 The Akroma File 3 T he second event took place after he had completed from Cape Coast and Legon. While working for...