THE REGIONAL DIRECTOR'S TELLING LETTER TO THE HEADMASTERS...gregory obuobi

THE REGIONAL DIRECTOR’S TELLING LETTER TO MR. OTOTUO BEKOE BARIMAH: TO THE DISHONEST HEADMASTERS.

BY GREGORY OBUOBI from THE LAST HEADMASTER NOVEL.

 ‘It insults!’ Nortey of Tema Municipal Authority insists.

‘It does not!’

‘It does!’

‘That’s your minds. Define the insults you see here…’

‘Will you apologise?’

‘I should evaluate that! Why should I ever attempt to apologize where there is no offense? I see no offense telling the facts as they stand. I never intended any offense. If you see any offense by your mind’s eye, then I am sorry for you. ’

‘Will you put that in writing?’ coaxed Nortey, idiotic. ‘It will be good for your future records!’

Idiots, you! For my future! You hold my future, you think, in your hands? I think nothing measures the level of your stupidity and graft. My future you dare claim you can control?

The inquisitors turned to discussing ‘classics’ when they were assessing Bekoe’s certificates. Dr. Adu kept insisting Bekoe never wrote the A-levels. ‘Otherwise why a second A-level GCE General Paper/Special Paper?’ he tried querying.

Bekoe told them he studied Philosophy! He pursued the course in Pnotifica Universitas Urbaniana, Rome, in Philosophy! That gave Nortey fright.

Nortey turned on Dr. Adu, ‘Please stop your nonsense.’

A short pause ensued.

Then Mensah turned in Bekoe’s direction, threatening, ‘You say Ajavon will see. Why?’

‘I say it is all right!’ Bekoe told the supposed inquisitors.

‘Let’s end it here,’ Dr. Adu moved. ‘We shall write to you.’ His tone bore threats.

‘You can go.’

What do I need your letter for? Bekoe queried the rogue peasant inquisitors who had indicated they held his future in their grips. Who are you? Bekoe stomped out the corruption infesting administrative office Ajavon Lucy Barbara kept.

Is Mr. Asiedu spying for Lucy Barbara Ajavon, he thinks? Bekoe sat considering Ajavon’s espionage machinery already set in motion. Ajavon has an ax to grind. She shall be axed. Ajavon shall be axed!

Lucy Barbara Ajavon felt piqued, cornered and frustrated. Bekoe Barimah Betotuo had refused to write to the headmistress, as wheedled by her so-called inquisition squad pack. The pack felt humiliated, its authority Bekoe had called to the bluff. February 5th, 2001, Bekoe received a letter from the Regional Education Office.

INVITATION TO MEET WITH REGIONAL DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION (GREATER ACCRA REGION)

I am directed to invite you to meet with the Regional Director of Education (GAR) on Thursday, February 08, 2001 at 3.00. P.M. in his office.

You are requested to come to come along with your Academic and Professional certificates.

Signed:

FRANK TEYEGAGA (Rev.)

For: DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION

GREATER ACCRA REGION

The letter carried a reference. My Ref. No…GES/GAR/PL.2/3/SF. 1

This clinches it, Bekoe thought.

He most faithfully followed and answered the demands of the letter.

The director of education studied Mr. Ototuo Bekoe Barima critically and then asked, ‘Have you been relieved from the priesthood by the Bishop of Kumasi?’

What a strange question! Did Lucy Barbara Ajavon ever have access to the information the Regional Director of Education, GAR, has just aired? The depth of stern clandestine sabotage from his mother’s maternal clan home was most unnerving! An ordained priest of the Catholic Church? Was the Church of Rome that outraged by Bekoe’s fighting spirit?

‘No!’ Bekoe told. ‘I never have been ordained a priest for the Catholic Church.’

The regional director of education must have perceived how much deception he was dealing with. Everybody in Ghana is false. Bekoe’s birth home is false. The seminary from which Bekoe graduated to the Catholic university in Rome is false.  Universitas Urbaniana, Rome, is false. Barbara Lucy Ajavon is false, petty and ignorant.

‘Not a priest?’

‘Never have been. I never allowed the Pope the chance to anoint me for the church.’

Flabbergasted, the regional director of education took delivery of the Academic and Professional Certificates Bokoe bore. He glanced through cursorily and said, ‘You can go. It is good you came. I should contact you later.’

Before taking leave of the director’s office, Bekoe showed the director, George Quarshie, a typeset copy of his book – SCARS OF A CALABASH MISDEED. You will be reading a print copy soon. It is the third title of my trilogy, THE PATH TO FREEDOM. This is a project work of my interiority Ph.D. dissertation.

A shock unparalled!

Bekoe queried, amused and triumphant. He marched out. Out of it all!

Three days later Lucy Barbara Ajavon received a letter from the regional education office, Accra.

The Headmistress

Chemu Senior Secondary School

 Tema.

 COLLECTION OF CERTIFICATES    

I write with reference to the above mentioned subject matter and kindly request you to ask Mr. Ototuo Bekoe Barima, a teacher in your school to come for his documents from the Regional Education Office.

Thank you.

GEORGE QUARSHIE (Signed :…)

For: Director of Education

Greater Accra Region.

CC: Mr. Ototuo Bekoe Barimah

      Chemu Senior Secondary School

      TEMA.

Ototuo Bekoe Barimah read the letter to him from the Regional Director of Education, George Quarshie; Esq., Accra, through Mrs Lucy Barbara Ajavon, headmistress, Chemu Senior Secondary School, and judged it to himself: cryptic and concise! And the consequences? What happens to Mrs Ajavon and her pack of inquisitors defeated and honorably pronounced wrong? Let them hang.

They shall hang for their incompetence!

 Mrs. Lucy Barbara Ajavon, headmistress, had felt most thrown and broken by the Regional Director’s letter to Bekoe to be delivered pointedly through her. A standing shattering blow dealt her in the face; and to the hilt. A boomerang swing from the Regional Director himself that proves her wrong. Oh, I’m defeated, miserably. In my determined bid to denigrate Bekoe for vengeance, I’ve been done in! She bemoaned, feeling dejected. Inquisitorial, Mrs Lucy Barbara Ajavon glowered at the letter most closely a second, and a third time, her own academic credentials thrown into jeopardy. Her conscience was in a turmoil. Is she in the correct profession? She feels queried.

The headmistress had Mr. Asiedu deliver the letter to Bekoe, the letter that firmly stands to her eternal shame.

Bekoe, true to character, had taught Ajavon, the headmistress, a hard lesson yet: He had elected to withdraw his services to Chemu Senior Secondary School under the Mrs. Ajavon administration, boldly honoring her request. Mrs. Lucy Barbara Ajavon chose to nurse her humbling humiliation to herself, wailing, ‘Bekoe’s major university education certificate is written in LATIN!’ I am an uneducated and ignorant administrator; I cannot read Latin! She needed to have chided herself.

What report would, eventually, Mrs. Lucy Barbara Ajavon, headmistress, responsibly by her plotted and failed misdeeds, and mandatorily by her office as administrator, pen and plant on Mr. Ototuo Bekoe Barimah’s life file? Mrs. Ajavon, headmistress disgraced, would choose to keep and maintain silence over the issue of her defeat pronounced by the Accra Regional Director of Education to her, however quietly. Mrs. Ajavon would the issue were swept under the carpet of her cobwebs; her abominable evil abuses of the Ghana education service she would the world ignored and glossed over. Impossible! All will, all should be published. The headmaster/the headmistress institution is horribly, and, perhaps, incorrigibly insulted and tainted by horror corrupt administrators of the education ministry.

Holding the scales even, Mr. Robert Akudugu Ajene, Mr. Paul Owusu-Donkor, Mr. Gyimah – all, heads of assisted second cycle schools of the Ghana education service, and certified members of that insouciant club of heads of assisted senior secondary schools of Ghana – would need to study Mrs. Ajavon’s report on teacher-student Ototuo Bekoe Barimah! These would need to study Mrs. Lucy Barbara Ajavon’s assessment of her unfailing perception now of herself and of the intrepid Ototuo Bekoe Barimah’s confrontation with her failed administration of Chemu. The letter by the Regional director tells on them all.

Betotuo Bekoe Barimah audaciously called Ajavon’s bluff, and gracefully succeeded in turning the tables on her. With grace!

TRADEMARK: SIBSTER

Author copyright? Gregory Obuobi

TAGS: #THE LAST HEADMASTER #OTOTUO BEKOE BARIMAH # MRS. LUCY BARBARA AJAVON #EDUCATION #HEADMASTERS #DISHONESTY IN EDUCATION #GHANA #LITERATURE