Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw
Owusu
Tuesday, March
08, 2016
The Information
Services Department (ISD) says it has accepted responsibility for the error-laden
brochure used for the 59th Independence Day parade in Accra last
Sunday, March 6, which depicted the Kenyan President, Uhuru Kenyatta, as
President of Ghana.
The event brochure
distributed at the Black Star Square was full of poor grammar, awful spelling,
badly constructed sentences, as well as shocking colloquial expressions with
the description of the green colour in the national flag as ‘dark green.’
“The Information Services Department (ISD)
wishes on behalf of the National Planning Committee of the 59th Independence
Anniversary Planning Committee to apologise for the misrepresentations in the
Event Brochure of the impressive 59th Independence Day Parade at the Black Star
Square.
“The Department, which
authored the content of the brochure, accepts responsibility and wishes to
unreservedly apologise for the development,” Francis Kwarteng Arthur, Acting Director
of ISD, expressed in a statement issued yesterday which has its own problem
with date.
The letter, which was
supposed to have been written yesterday, has January 12, 2016 on it and Felix
Kwakye Ofosu, a deputy Minister of Communications, had to apologise for the
error.
Ghana undoubtedly became
a laughing stock after a series of blunders were spotted in the brochures used
for the national parade.
Reading through the brochure
carefully, ‘Coat of Arms’ was spelt ‘Coat of Arm.’
Others like ‘Globalised
Sky,’ ‘youthfull,’ and ‘As if by divine-designed’ featured prominently in the
brochure.
In the Table of
Content, the brochure embarrassingly referred to Kenyan President Uhuru
Kenyatta as President of Ghana and misspelled ‘Kinbu Senior High Technical School’
as ‘Kimbu Senior High Technical School.’
As if that was not
enough, the author of the brochure embarrassingly struggled to string words
together to make sense, while the information in it was ambiguous and unreliable.
The Ghana-Kenya
relations article was poorly written while the bit describing the location of
Ghana on the globe appeared disjointed.
Yesterday, an apology
issued by the department was wrongly dated but was quickly corrected when
attention was drawn to it.
Stan Dogbe Pops Out
In a related development,
it emerged that it was presidential staffer and head of Communications at the Flagstaff
House, Stan Dogbe, who was responsible for the brochure.
According to Joy FM’s Manasseh Azure Awuni, the
Chairman of the 59th Independence Anniversary Planning Committee, Commodore
Steve Obimpeh, had asked him to direct his questions surrounding the errors in
the official anniversary brochure to Stan Dogbe because he was “responsible for
the brochure.”
“This morning, I called
someone who works closely with the Flagstaff House and asked for contacts to
members of the planning committee. My source said Commodore Steve Obimpeh
chaired the 59th Independence Anniversary Planning Committee. When I called
Obimpeh and asked to speak to him on the error-ridden brochure, he said: ‘Speak
to Stan Dogbe. Speak to Stan Dogbe; he was responsible for the brochure.’
“He ended the call
before I had time to ask further questions,” Manasseh narrated.
“When I called Stan
Dogbe at 12:59 pm, he did not answer my calls. At 1:05 pm, I sent him a message
on WhatsApp and told him what Obimpeh had told me and that I wanted
explanation. Even though he read the message, and the application showed he was
‘online,’ he did not reply.
“At 1:52 pm, I sent a
reminder, ‘Hi, Stan.’ WhatsApp again showed that he read the message but did
not respond. He has still not responded at the time of posting this article
(5:03 pm),” Manasseh concluded.
Cost
H. Kwasi Prempeh, a law professor based in the United Sates,
was wondering how much money was spent to prepare for the shoddy job.
“So how much did it cost us to commission someone to write
and edit this anniversary booklet? Who wrote this piece of crap? Poor grammar,
poor spelling, bad geography and on and on and on. A shamefully mediocre job,
all over,” he lamented in a facebook post.
Prof Prempeh is just
one of many Ghanaians who have taken to social media to express their
disappointments about the event brochure.
“How many stages of review, if any, did it go through before
it went to press? …I would happily have edited this
damn thing for them pro bono, as my patriotic contribution to the day's
celebration. If you're going to sole-source the gig to your cronies and
partisans, as is your standard operating procedure, make sure, at least, that they
are competent and can do a top-notch job. I guess you choose writers and
editors for these jobs the same way you choose DCEs and some Ministers and
Deputy Ministers: Competence not required! This is a national disgrace,” he
stated.
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