How low must the bar for state burial fall?
E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Ghanadot

February 03, 2014

It seems these days that state burial or burial ceremony at the national level is gradually becoming the accepted rite for the departed citizen. Death has become the only lifetime achievement required for this honor.

I came to this conclusion after reading in the news matters surrounding the burial of a member of the Buk Bak duo, one Ronnie Coaches, originally named Ronnie Nii Quarshikumah Quainoo.

The report said Ronnie was “laid to rest at the Osu Cemetery Saturday after a funeral service at the National Theatre.”

The same report said that the wake keeping preceding the burial “was held at the National Theatre where hundreds of fans of the late musician” attended.

Ronnie is entitled to the worship and the rowdy behavior accorded him by his fans. His family is also allowed to stage the ceremony at any venue they can afford to rent. But a wake at the National Theater should not be a question of affordability. It should be earned.

Who must be honored on the national stage and why should be issues that deserve serious consideration now. Obviously, Ronnie’s was bought with rent. With no malice towards him or his family, it is appropriate to observe that this tendency of wrapping our dead in false glory is happening too often these days.

Ronnie, the musician died on November 21, 2013 at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, reportedly after suffering a heart attack. There was nothing historical or heroic about his death. Nor would his music impact posthumously to help refine our sensibilities for the better appreciation of our culture.

Ronnie's music was a passing trend directed mostly at the youth.

Thus, the musical creations of Buk Bak are no more exemplary than those of Ronnie’s contemporaries. Songs like Gonja Barracks, Komi ke Kenan or Gorom should not raise the Buk Bak duo above this set.

Ronnie of Buk Bak fame's elevation to National Theater level should warn us that more of such rises are coming. The threshold for access has been lowered and there would be less demand for excellence in our artistic world. The trend has already reached a point of promiscuity in our society. 

For some, notoriety is all that is required for national honor. No questions asked about the merit of what brought the fame. Curiosity about character as a necessary attribute is forsaken and the integrity of stance on national issues, values and interests becomes verboten.

And it is all because the creeping demand for state burial for everybody has conflated the difference between a decent burial for the citizen and the use of the rite to set up a pantheon of heroes of patriots and statesmen worthy of emulation.

 
Even among our heroes and patriots, we must maintain a subtle difference, one  that recognizes our human worth, but tilts towards our historic achievements.

The burial of President Atta Mills deserves a special mention here. As president he deserved a state burial. The awkward request that he should be interred at the Nkrumah Mausoleum was not necessary because the argument for the request forgot what would follow - that every president who passed after him would deserve the same mausoleum burial. Soon, the needless defacing of the symbolism attained with the building of the mausoleum for Nkrumah would have followed.

After, Atta Mills, there was Prof. Kofi Awoonor. To the everlasting sense of the stipulation he left in his last will, the Professor allowed his human remains no national honorific trappings. He deferred that honor to the simple burial practiced by the culture of the people and place of his birth.

After Prof Awoonor, Komlah Dumor also passed and the cries for state burial went up. As much as this broadcaster did an excellent job as presenter on BBC, his prominence alone should not raise his remains to the level of a state burial.

There are other Ghanaians who number among the top in their professions at the global level. The difference is what they do is not as glamorous. Their accomplishments, though sometimes profound, would remain in the narrow confines of their professions.

But how to honor a Ghanaian of merit should not be a problem. We should note the warning expressed by Thomas Aquinas, ably described by the writer Carson Halloway in his book “Magnanimity and Statesmanship”, that “the excess of the common man is – the desire for political honor or responsibility for excellence that he does not actually possess.”

We have to guard against those who seek artificially this honor.

A wake at the National Theater for a Buk Bak member is to elevate his remains to a national honor that he did not deserve. A plaque in the halls of the National Theater for Komla Dumor for the excellence he established in broadcast media would be more fitting.

And obviously, the place for a memorial for a literary giant like Prof Awoonor should definitely be the National Theater.

Celebrations for the last two would undergird the significance of the National Theater. Excellence would be raised. With Ronnie of Buk Bak this same bar is lowered and achievements in the Arts become common or ordinary.

And that act must spell danger, particular to the Arts. The dissonance in it should be loud enough to be heard: A National Theater turned into a funeral or wake parlor can only indicate drought in our creative spirits.

With due respect to our common humanity, to honor all equally can only lead to the obscene; just as seeking to bestow state honor on all persons of notoriety would signify a nation that has lost entirely its sense of shame.

E. Ablorh-Odjidja,Publsiher www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, February 03, 2014.
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