Is there anything wrong with flaunting your own wealth, to bury your own mother – even if your fellow countrymen are suffering in a country run into the ground by people like yourself?
Some say yes, some say no – that’s the beauty of the Ghanaian discourse.
GhanaCelebrities.Com Founding Editor, Chris-Vincent Agyapong, has given his two cents on the matter.
According to the hard hitting writer, whilst the argument can be made that it’s Dr Opuni and his family’s prerogative to bury their mum however the hell they like, they don’t live in a vacuum; and when you juxtapose their sick display of wealth against the backdrop of the problems plaguing the ordinary Ghanaian, it becomes an immoral choice.
“The opulence is beautiful and probably cheaply affordable by those who paid for it. But if measured against the background, the very soil it sits on, it’s a clear illustration of the inherent Ghanaian viciousness and our increasing sense of greed.” Chris-Vincent writes.
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“How do you justify this to a poor third world population–especially the woman whose baby died a few miles away because she couldn’t get access to a good healthcare facility?
“This is not human–this is not civilisation!” he emphatically concluded.
Chris’ position is diametrically opposite to that of Lydia Forson, who defended the Opuni’s after the news broke of their mum’s burial. The actress stated strongly that how one buries their loved ones is entirely up to them, and it’s poor form to criticise them for it.
Read full post by Chris-Vincent below..
I really didn’t want to comment on this but the comments I have come across from my previous post in relation to this picture are extensively repugnant–and as usual clothed in what’s the fountainhead of our problems, politics.
No one is saying Dr Opuni used state’s money to erect this offensively ridiculous grave edifice for his dead mother and neither has anyone claimed that he is the only wealthy individual in his family.
Everyone with riches has a legal right and perhaps a natural right to allot and use his wealth as he sees fit.
But which right thinking Ghanaian can, in the face of the fact that malaria kills 3 Ghanaian children daily, about 40% of the entire population do not have access to common clean drinking water and a large number of the population cannot even afford basic health care–say that one or a group of the people from this same region have best used their wealth acquired from this country judiciously by erecting this edifice for a dead woman?
Especially, when a child next door probably hasn’t even had a balanced diet in a year.
This is like saying, instead of giving your surplus to the needy or being human to help others by cutting down on what you do not need, you would rather overfeed your dogs with it–after all, it’s your own food or money.
It’s our sense of commitment to the well-being of just our own to the detriment of the general good of everyone we can possibly make an impact in their lives, to foster collective progress that this picture captures.
The opulence is beautiful and probably cheaply affordable by those who paid for it. But if measured against the background, the very soil it sits on, it’s a clear illustration of the inherent Ghanaian viciousness and our increasing sense of greed.
How do you justify this to a poor third world population–especially the woman whose baby died a few miles away because she couldn’t get access to a good healthcare facility?
This is not human–this is not civilisation!
—Chris-Vincent Agyapong Febiri