AM News with Benjamin Akakpo on JoyNews (14-9-23)
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Thank you for staying with us. Time now for the AM News. In our first story, when his
00:05 dream of becoming a world-class footballer did not materialize, Michael Adumaja's urge
00:11 to see himself succeed, regardless of this, became his energy plug. After some ups and
00:16 downs in changing jobs, Michael settled on barbering, a trade he practices with passion.
00:23 He shares his struggles and successes with Hannah Odame in today's Story of Hope series.
00:37 Michael has always nurtured a strong ambition of being a footballer. He had imagined himself
00:45 on the international stage, playing in the big leagues. When he completed junior high
00:51 school, he put all his eggs in one basket, football or nothing else. So, he traveled
00:59 to Accra, in the eastern region, to make the show for his community. He soon realized how
01:07 it wasn't that easy to be accepted into a football team.
01:11 I went to Sahara, where I was told a selection of places is done. I was asked to pay 500
01:28 Cedis registration fee, but I didn't have the money so I had to find another means to
01:46 survive.
01:47 Looking like a shattered dream, Michael refused to go back home. He quickly had to make another
01:51 plan to survive. He tried his hands on jobs that could fetch him money.
02:05 So I found work by washing utensils for a kinky seller. After a while, I changed to
02:10 helping produce and sell paints. That too didn't earn me much money. So I started selling
02:26 buffalo. I carried it on my head and hooked around to sell. I left that too, to sell fried
02:32 rice but I had to again quit to go back to selling paints as I saw that as more lucrative.
02:40 Michael got excited about migrating to South Africa. A client convinced him that he would
02:47 earn more money whilst there.
02:55 One day when I came to work, I met a Baba who encouraged me to learn the trade. I wasn't
03:00 interested because I wanted to learn tailoring but after some counselling, I decided to learn
03:07 how to Baba and through that I travelled to USA based on the conviction of a friend.
03:21 He touched down in Johannesburg and called the person who was supposed to host him. For
03:27 over 10 hours, the person did not answer his phone call. After loitering in the airport,
03:34 migration officials became suspicious of his moves and sent him back to Ghana on the next
03:39 available flight.
03:40 From 4am when I landed in SA and 10pm, my host never picked his calls. Even from the
03:59 immigration officers, they then became suspicious and deported me back to Ghana.
04:08 With no money left, no job to hold on to and no one to look up to, Michael decided to go
04:15 back home to Assamankese but some friends convinced him not to take that route. It took
04:22 him so many years to bounce back. Eventually, the ever determined Michael got back on his
04:28 feet and now owns a barber shop.
04:31 I spent all my money on the SA trip so when I came back, I really cried. I felt all was
04:48 lost. I hustled a lot but could not get much money. I decided to go back to work with my
04:54 former boss. After working for a while, I thought of getting my own shop so in 2018,
05:00 I rented this place and today I tirelessly work towards making this work for me.
05:07 His friend admires his determination.
05:10 I know Michael to be very hard working. Somebody who doesn't give up easily. I have had an
05:19 opportunity to be around his story. In as much as the downs and everything, he didn't
05:27 give up. Full of disappointment but he came back strongly and started all over again.
05:34 Right now, he is Mickey. Mickey Barber. Barber owner, like a shop owner.
05:44 Married with a child, Michael says he still longs to play football but not on a competitive
05:51 basis. His advice to the youth is simple. Giving up shall never be an option.
06:07 We all have desires but sometimes achieving them becomes difficult. Don't sit down doing
06:12 nothing. You have to try something else just as I did. I also urge my brothers and sisters
06:18 to trust in God to give them their best and like me, they would also survive.
06:35 For JOYNEES, I am Hannah Odame.
06:42 In our next story, residents of Tutupene in the Nkwanta South municipality are asking
06:47 government to fix a health post in the area. The 50-year-old facility is in a state of
06:52 disrepair, leaving residents to travel at least 18 kilometres to the Nkwanta South area
06:59 or the regional capital, Dampai, to seek medical attention. Peter Asenu visited the community
07:05 and filed this report.
07:09 Built in 1973, the only maintenance or renovation works the facility has seen is the construction
07:16 of a reservoir in 1999. Currently, the ceiling and the roofing of the facility are in complete
07:23 disrepair. The roofing leaks badly and has affected the ceiling. This is what happens
07:31 any time it rains.
07:41 This is what residents are worried about. Kisi Raymond is one of the concerned elders
07:47 of Tutupene.
07:48 This clinic was built and opened in 1973. The whole building is leaking. Damage is on
08:02 it. Several times our assemblyman sent a report to the district assembly saying they will
08:08 come and renovate everything for us. Since then, nothing was done. So we are yet to see
08:17 what will happen.
08:18 Augustine Milewu is the secretary to the chief of the area.
08:23 The community itself is making efforts. I could remember we have achieved some money
08:30 from a company who came to saw timber here. We wanted to use that money to renovate this
08:38 facility, but because we needed a police station. So instead of the money going this way, it
08:47 rather went the other way. It is our interest and we are crying out that if any NGO or any
08:56 other person comes to this aid and tries to help us, we will be very, very, very, very
09:02 happy.
09:04 In this room, both in and out patients are received. Privacy and comfort are non-existent.
09:12 The delivery bed has also outlived its usefulness as one of the arms a woman in labor would
09:18 rest her leg is absent.
09:21 It's not the best as required. As you can see, there's one leg here. The other one is
09:27 not there. So you can imagine when a pregnant woman lies here, where would the other leg
09:34 be?
09:35 The facility rather needs urgent medical attention. Here is Solomon, the in-charge of the facility.
09:43 The main problem here is our facility is in bad shape. From the roofing to the ceilings
09:53 to the louvers to the floor, everything is in bad shape. When it rains, we can't even
09:59 sit to attend to clients.
10:01 We need a lot of things at the delivery room. And when you come to A and C aspect, we need
10:08 like a scan that we can - pregnant women, when they come, they can be doing scan for
10:14 them because we don't have that. And when somebody is in need, they have to go to either
10:19 Mkwanta or Dambai. And you know, the road is not in good shape. And a pregnant woman
10:26 being in this bad road, you can imagine what will happen.
10:30 Edu Francis is an assembly member for the area.
10:34 We are appealing to the government to come to our aid. Likewise, NGOs to come to our
10:42 aid and help because this facility serves people from Ofosu to Gechibi. And it's a big
10:50 facility when you take out the two main hospitals in the municipality, which is the medical
10:57 village in St. Joseph. This happens to be the biggest among the two. So we are pleading
11:03 they should help renovate it. We have the workers here so that our people can receive
11:10 good health care.
11:11 Peter Senu for JNews.
11:16 Now the OT regional minister Joshua Makubu says the continuous state of disrepair of
11:22 the steel bridge in the Mkwanta South municipality is a source of frustration for him as a resident
11:28 of that area. According to him, the continuous rainfall and erosion around the steel bridge
11:33 is affecting economic activity in the municipality. The minister has been speaking to correspondent
11:39 Peter Senu.
11:40 From all indications, I feel it's a frustrating situation for you. Is that the case?
11:48 It's beyond frustration. As I speak to you today, let's look at economic activities.
11:54 For such, an indigent of Mkwanta who has mobilized resources and put up a hotel. For the past
12:03 one month, nobody can access the hotel. You can't sleep there. So he's running into huge
12:11 losses. We have -- I met my regional director of Agrika after this. Now he parks his car
12:18 at the -- what do you call it? The Agrika police station. And dangerously tried to cross
12:26 by foot. That thing that is left is not even up to an inch. So today when I wake up and
12:32 we are told that the regional director of Agrika has fallen into a ditch attempting
12:37 to go home. As we speak now, the Chabobo National Park is on the other side. It cannot be accessed
12:47 again. The people there, what are they doing?
12:49 [ Indiscernible ]
12:50 Yeah, one district, one factory for processing is there. One warehouse, one district, one
12:57 warehouse is also there. So I think that -- and if you look at the population from
13:03 Odomi, Keri, Powa, Kwe, and all those other communities, Chiare, Chilinga, and other things,
13:18 the population is so huge and dense. As I speak to you now, some teachers have also
13:22 used that as an excuse. And they no longer go to school. So I can tell you that our primary
13:27 school people in Keri and all those, some of them have not seen their teachers for the
13:33 past one month as a result of the collapse. And today, if you can ask if I am the education
13:38 director, you cannot insist that a teacher should go pack their motorbike and just wear
13:46 one foot. And the bridge itself can get -- it can fall into a ditch at any time at the slightest
13:53 push. So it's very dangerous. So my advocacy is even that we should have a way of removing
13:59 the collapse bridge so that the temptation to try to use it will not even be there. If
14:03 not, we have heard of a couple of accidents, death will follow. So this is more than a
14:09 frustration situation. And to be very frank with you, it's a crisis.
14:17 Now residents in the Sisala East municipality and the Waiista district of the Upper West
14:22 Region are worried about the poor state of roads in that enclave. The area considered
14:28 the food basket of the region has the worst roads in that region. Rafiq Salam, who traveled
14:33 on the Halemboi-Nabuludu East Road reports that due to the deplorable nature of the road,
14:40 vehicles and motorbikes plying the route easily break down, leaving passengers stranded.
14:48 If there is only one thing that the Sisala East municipality and the Waiista district
14:54 have in common apart from sharing boundaries, it's the deplorable roads that have enveloped
15:00 the two Sisala enclaves. The core reality however is that the enclave is the food basket
15:07 of the region and sometimes tops the chart in the country when it comes to mass production.
15:14 The irony of the aforementioned is that when the European Union granted the government
15:19 over 35 million euros to construct farm access roads, they were completely ignored, prompting
15:25 protests from the chiefs and people of the Sisala enclave who yielded no results.
15:31 This is the fancy Halemboi-Nabuludu East Road, which is 1.3 km long. It is deplorable, bumpy,
15:41 full of big gullies and small dams one would have mistaken for one of the government flagship
15:47 programs One Village One Dam. We bump into these women, majority of whom were travelling
15:54 from Ngamduani and Nabulu in the Sisala East to Fansi in the Waiista district for a funeral.
16:02 There were over two dozen of them being transported by two motorcades and both were stacked on
16:08 one of the many big gullies filled with water. The operators and some of the few passengers
16:15 are self-conscious to push them out.
16:24 One of the motorcades devolved a fault and the engine was able to start again.
16:44 The over 15 passengers, some having their babies strapped at their backs, got stranded
17:02 as a result. Cheko Opoyun Habambie is one of them and explains why.
17:07 Some people were moving with their motorcades and we were following. They nearly fell inside the water.
17:14 Right now our motorcades have spoiled. The crotch vise has spoiled. Now we are in between two villages.
17:20 We can't move forward, we can't go back just because of the road. If the roads were well done, we wouldn't have been here.
17:28 We are stuck here. We can't go back to Nabulu, we can't go to Halemboi-Nabuludu.
17:32 Our motorcades have spoiled. We don't know what to do now. We are just standing.
17:37 We don't know what will happen. We are pleading with the government to work on the roads for us.
17:42 Apart from this area which we consider to be a dam, what about the other roads?
17:48 Other roads are even worse. Especially from Wahabu to Walembele to Bukbele.
17:54 From Manduanu to Nabulu-Bukbele, just from this road Buchembele all the way to this place.
18:00 It's the same problem. The same problem. Last one car even fell with people.
18:05 Some got injured because of this. They fell in the water. Some got injured.
18:09 Some with broken legs. Some with just injuries all over their bodies.
18:14 She also spoke of a close shave with Dave some months ago.
18:19 From Manduanu to Nabulu-Bukbele, I was sitting just at the end.
18:24 My legs were outside like this. So when we were going, there was a pothole that the motorcade driver didn't know.
18:30 He jumped on it. So I fell down. I didn't fall. I was standing. I fell and I was standing.
18:36 I held the motorcade back this way. And it moved because it's not where I fell.
18:40 It moved and I used my August boot to hit the motorcade. That day I nearly died.
18:44 They have to send me to the hospital that day.
18:46 The operator of the motorcade later approached us for a favor to pick him and the rest of the passengers to Fonsee
18:53 to enable him to look for a mechanic to repair the faulty crotch bar.
18:58 So now they are now depending on us to pick them from Nabulu Street to Halembole-O-Fonsee.
19:05 And so we are right here. They are currently stranded and they have no way to go.
19:10 And so the only help that we can give to them is to also pick them on the back of our pick-up straight to Fonsee.
19:17 The people in the Sessala East is that they want their roads to be more travelable.
19:22 They have been pleading on government to come to their aid.
19:26 But it appears that government has not heeded to their plea.
19:30 Until the roads are worked on in the municipality, people in this enclave will continue to suffer.
19:38 Reporting for JNEWS, Rafik Salam, Halembole.
19:42 Now from the issue of bad roads, let's veer into the terrain of art and music, which share numerous similarities.
19:53 But the contrast between them has always been striking.
19:56 African musician Mr. EZ is on a mission to blur these distinctions through his latest album, Evil Genius,
20:04 drawing inspiration from the depths of his inner self and the echoes of his childhood.
20:09 Jacqueline Ansomayobwa has more in this report.
20:13 To transcend the ordinary, popular Ghanaian-based Nigerian artist, Mr. EZ has brought together artists from diverse corners of the world,
20:24 each weaving their interpretations into the very fabrics of his songs on his new album titled Evil Genius.
20:31 Mr. EZ says this innovative synergy between music and visual art breathed new life into his new album.
20:39 Earlier I just wanted to be able to do something different to make this album together.
20:44 And I feel sometimes when we make albums, the music videos might not fully capture our expression.
20:51 And because this album is very personal to me, I was looking for a way to more personally tell the story of the album.
20:59 And right now everything I'm looking at doing is connecting African music, African culture, African art, African movies together.
21:07 And so with this I've been able to merge African art and African music.
21:13 And this is what inspires me right now.
21:16 Arts, music, movies, sports, you know, and it's what I'm about now.
21:22 It's what I invest in, what I feel is my calling to impact the creative community in Africa.
21:30 Terminator head singer King Promise joined the chorus of admiration for Mr. EZ.
21:37 Classic, amazing, creative, artistic. You can see by what he's even doing right now.
21:43 It's not even just music, but just art in general. It's a masterpiece.
21:48 Shout out to my boy Tosi. He's a crazy guy. He's always coming up with some crazy ideas.
21:54 He never stops. I just feel like he's blessed differently.
21:58 Political luminary Gappy Ochoa was utterly captivated after listening to the tracks from the album.
22:05 If you are creative, you have a responsibility to promote creativity in every facet.
22:13 And for me, this is African creativity at its best.
22:17 The full album is expected to be released in October for Joy News, Jacqueline and Somaya Voix.
22:29 And that's how we cap off the news this morning on that artistic note.
22:33 But stay tuned because there's more coming your way shortly as we get into the newspapers with Maxwell.
22:39 Look at all. We'll be right back.