The 2007 Nobel Prize season has come to a close and as usual Ghana won nothing – not even the “soft” prizes like Literature & Peace. I take this opportunity to present Ghana’s version.
* Economics - Kwamena Bartels: For creating and developing the “Stay Sweet Sugar” theory; a sophisticated explanation on how fathers can award gov’t contracts to their children without “knowing”. As the Minister for Private Sector Development and Presidential Special Initiative, Bartels, headed a committee that awarded his 26-year-old daughter’s, three-year-old company its first and only contract worth FOUR Billion cedis. Bartels did not (I repeat, DID NOT) influence the outcome, although 30 other companies with proven track records also bid for the same contract. Stay Sweet Sugar!
* Chemistry - Ghanaian Media: For their ability to make the chemical CEDI1000 determine the outcome of a poll/survey. In layman’s terms: Two Ghanaian newspapers can conduct similar political polls - ask the same question from the same sample of people on the same day - and yet produce entirely opposite results.
* Physics - President John Agyekum Kufuor: For the discovery and development of the “Zero Tolerance for Gravity” principle, i.e. a mechanism to leave the earth’s atmosphere without a trace and without explanation. He proved it by disappearing from the face of the earth from September 15 to 21 2007AD (just to “tie up some loose ends.”)
* Literature – Oboshie Sai Cofie: For rewriting a 150-year-old children’s poem. Her rendition goes like this “31 days have September, April fool is in November” Congratulations, Minister for INFORMATION and National Orientation.
* Medicine – Nana Akuffo-Addo: For his work on the relationship between sperms and elections. According to the honorable MP’s theory “the strength of a presidential candidate is determined by his performance in bed” Long Live Viagra!
* Nobel Peace Prize - Ex-Ministers now presidential candidates: Awarded “for their ability to disturb our PEACE.” They all have plans to do things that they could not do in the 7 years that they were in power. After “positive bank balances”, “zero tolerance for accountability” and “Golden Age of corruption” what more can they give us?
Laureates will receive 20 lashes, a diploma and 3 slaps from the flood victims in the Northern part of Ghana, to be shared between them in each category, on September 31
And By The Way: The Nobel Prizes, as designated in Alfred Nobel's will in 1895, are awarded for physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace. A prize in economics in memory of Nobel was instituted by Sweden's central bank in 1968. The first five prizes were first awarded in 1901, while the first prize in economics was awarded in 1969.
Source: Poku, Kojo