In the past few weeks, I’ve found myself among pockets of people who bring up Baah-Wiredu’s name. These people just worked with him yet, two years after his death, they still share fond memories of their boss. They are not his relatives. They are not NPP or NDC functionaries. They are just ordinary Ghanaian civil servants who worked with Baah-Wiredu. He was just their boss.
People’s memories of Baah-Wiredu are vivid. The stories are vibrant, riveting and incredible. Even if you did not know him, the stories people share about their experiences with him give you the impression that he was a unique individual. Unfortunately, it is typical to find bosses who have huge chips on their shoulders. Positions of power easily transform some ordinary mortals into monsters who whip up fear in their subordinates.
But two years after Baah-Wiredu’s death, his subordinates still refer to him as “a simple man”, “an action man”, “an ordinary man”, “a playful man”, “a humble man”, “approachable” – among many other charming descriptions. One person said, “He used to walk to our office every morning to greet us.” A lady said, “‘He called every woman ‘Maame’ because he maintained that every woman is his mother so deserves to be respected.” Another person said: “During lunch time, he would often join the drivers in their room to watch them play draft.”
When you listen to the post-death Baah-Wiredu stories from ordinary workers, it becomes obvious that the man had something unique and enchanting going in the realm of practical leadership qualities. Whatever he did – his style, his personal relationship with people, his simplicity – worked very well and embossed a positive impression on the hearts and minds of the lives his path crossed during his passage through this earth.
How many of our leaders, especially the political elite, are leaving such fond memories through their daily interactions with their staff? Is pomposity reigning supreme among some? Are workers in Ghana getting positive experiences with their bosses? Are some bosses depressing their staff to the point of making the workplace a site of terror?
Specifically, are drivers too low for a minister of state to genuinely descend to their level by visiting them in their room to have a conversation as he/she watches them play a casual game of draft? The work space of the drivers as well as that of others at the lower strata provides much opportunity for bonding and for listening to them. But of course, some politicians would be so pumped up with pride that they would easily forget their recent past of funk.
It is probably not surprising that soon after his death, the Ghana Journalists Association instituted the “Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu award for the best in Business, Finance and Economic Reporting” in its annual award cycle.
My only personal encounter with the man:
I met him only once so whenever I come across anyone who goes on and on about Baah-Wiredu, I recall my only encounter with him. It happened a few months before his death. I had been gifted ten young women between the ages of eight and twelve to mentor. After a couple of meetings with them, I asked them to choose a place for us to visit as a group where they would meet women who are doing a lot with their lives. They expressed an interest to meet female parliamentarians.
So promptly, I contacted Akua Sena Dansoa, now Minister of Youth and Sports, with a request for her to arrange for some of the women in parliament to meet my girls. The day came and we arrived at Parliament House for an all-girls’ time out in the corridors of power. As we sat in a corner in the lobby area engaged in a heart-warming conversation with three women parliamentarians, Baah-Wiredu walked toward us and asked what we were doing. To our surprise, he joined us, sitting on the edge of a couch, with his files stuck under his armpit.
Meanwhile, during the one hour or so we spent there, several parliamentarians walked by but not a single one spoke to us – they just rushed on, busy in their worlds as if we were invisible. But Baah-Wiredu sat with us throughout, the only male among fourteen females, observing us but not contributing to our conversation. He was like a flower in a vase, present, yet absent. It was an odd moment and it left an unexplained impression on my mind. Who is this man? I filed away the question.
When the news of his death broke, and over the past two years as I continue to come across people who knew him and who continue to speak on and on about how unique he was, the answer to my unanswered question -- who is this man – is being answered over and over again.
Low-cost hospitals:
The week after Baah-Wiredu’s death, I wrote in this column that I wish he had been an advocate of whatever disease he died of, and had used his powerful position and privileged voice to push for our health-care delivery system to enhance treatment for that disease. Fact: Our country needs disease advocates. We keep too many diseases as personal secrets. And.......we love deaths and funerals......too much!
Our hospitals are low-cost – ill equipped to take care of us. Ghana has the potential to become the hub for medical tourism in the West African sub-region. Yet, we don’t pay attention to our hospitals. They remain gaping death traps, waiting for us to show up just to shock us out of existence.
It is troubling that our elite go abroad when they are diagnosed with ‘sophisticated’ diseases. Periodically, news break that a ‘big name’ person has died ‘abroad’ while going for medical treatment. Our beloved Courage Quashiegah and Hawa Yakubu are just two of such sad deaths that occurred ‘abroad’. Their deaths are loud admissions that the movers and shakers of Ghana do not trust their lives to our hospitals. They know that they know that they know that our hospitals are horribly low-cost.
If they do not want to be caught dead at a polyclinic, or at a higher level – the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, then why don’t our leaders make fixing our hospitals a high national priority matter? Why is the focus misplaced on a ‘paracetamol’ National Health Insurance Scheme? What is the point in gaining political credit for promoting a once in a life-time payment for health insurance just so when we get sick, we would end up on a floor of a low-cost hospital? Is this not a misplaced priority at a sorry height?
How about using the money that would accrue from health insurance premiums, plus just a fraction of the unknown amount of money that is regularly pumped into Ghana from ‘development partners,’ to provide at least one first-class hospital in each region? Not a ‘polyclinic’ but a real hospital with qualified and well-paid medical doctors, nurses and pharmacists, plus the needed state-of-the-art equipment that works. A hospital where high premium is placed on human dignity, not the mortuary; where we can all go when a disease strikes so that no elite would need to fly off to South Africa, India, Israel, USA, Canada or London for ‘treatment.’
dorisdartey@yahoo.com; dorisdartey.blogspot.com
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