Manasseh’s Folder: Ndebugre should say Clara is brilliant, not beautiful

Clara Beeri (Left) and John Ndebugre (right) on Newsfile

The MultiTV and Joy FM’s news analysis programme, Newsfile, last Saturday was very engaging. This was predictable. It was about the judges in our republic who are currently facing judgment.

For a long time, Ghanaians had suspected that some of the custodians of justice had had their hands soiled with bribes and tongues swayed from speaking the truth. Their suspicions were right. When you read some judgments you come to a conclusion that the judge is either corrupt or that he or she needs to consult the curer of sick heads.

Thanks to Anas Aremeyaw Anas, we now know our judges have sound minds. What we cannot vouch for some of them is sound conscience. So as a programme that holds millions across the world spellbound on weekends, Newsfile was predictably going to centre on the scandal. And it did.

The panelists were well-chosen. The battle had become a legal one and all the panelists for that discussion, including the hosts were lawyers. Yes, I know Abdul Malik Kweku Baako is not a lawyer but his peerless understanding of the law has earned him a title “pocket lawyer.” Indeed, on legal issues, he sometimes makes more sense than some of the lawyers who appear on the show.

Last Saturday was the first time, I saw a female lawyer on Newsfile. Indeed, women are hardly part of the male-dominated programme. But Clara Beeri, a law lecturer at the University for Professional Studies, Accra, was on the panel last Saturday.

When Samson Lardi Anyenini introduced Clara, he added that she was the best graduating student at the Ghana School of Law in her year group. Well, I am one of those who have problems with some people with such credentials. For some academics, the importance of such laurels ends on graduation days. In the world of work, their “chew, pour, pass and forget” mentality that earns them such awards deserts them like some crustaceans desert their shells. So I don’t always equate academic excellence to professional excellence.

But Clara’s clarity of thought and eloquence in her preliminary remarks proved she deserved her award. She endeared herself to many listeners of the programme.

Clara Beeri

One very important guest that day was John Ndebugre, who is a lawyer for the 22 lower court judges implicated in the scandal. It was interesting to hear them through their lawyer. In fact, this is the first time I have heard about judges going for lawyers to defend them against judges. Strange, isn’t it?

Mr. Ndebugre nearly marred the programme with what I described on Facebook as “Buga-buga elimination by inferior communist tactics.” When he took his turn for his first comment, he ran down all the panelists, including the host. He was outraged – unjustifiably so – that they had described the judicial scandal as shocking, and in other such terms.

When the host tried to remind him that those descriptions were as a result of what they had read, heard or seen of the investigative work of Anas, he went wilder, calling the Anas video he had seen “rubbish.” He said the video or the published transcripts could not be relied on as evidence to warrant such reactions. He specifically directed his attack at Clara, who used the word “shocking.” When Samson tried to explain things to him, he got furious, accused him of interference and threatened to walk out the live show. At his usual calm and collected best, the host allowed him to go on and on.

In fact, he missed no opportunity to remind his fellow panelists and listeners that he had practiced law for nearly thirty years. That is typical of an MBA holder in Ghana. If you are reading this article from Singapore, MBA in Ghana means “Me baaha Akyε” or “I have been here for long.” What we often fail to acknowledge is that the size of an animal does not matter but what matters is the taste in its soup.

Samson (middle) trying to explain a point to Ndebugri (extreme right)

Clara has practiced law for only five years, but when her time came to speak, she did what gladdened the hearts of many listeners – she tamed Ndebugre. She told him that there was nothing more evidential than a video recording of the alleged bribery scandal, so his claim that one could not rely on it as evidence was unfounded. Mr. Ndebugre had also said those who relied on the transcripts of published by Anas could not use that as the basis of any argument. Here again, Clara clearly reminded him that transcripts could be used as evidence in court. If Ndebugre had issues with the credibility of the transcripts, she pointed out, that would be a different matter, but to say that transcripts could not be used as evidence was not true.

“Besides, he does not know whether I have seen the video or not. And I am not obliged to disclose that to him,” Clara ended firmly.

When Ndebugre spoke again after Clara’s intervention, it was clear that he had been properly tamed. His tone had changed. In fact, his demeanour was like an erected manhood that had been placed on ice – very powerless, calm and humbled. At this point, he sought to do damage control. He now saw the human beings in his fellow panelists and tried making some jokes and laughing. Later in the show, he even apologized and retracted his description of Anas’ video as rubbish.

It was when he tried to repair the earlier damage he had made on the programme that he made a more offensive comment that has necessitated this article. In a light comment, he told Clara: “I have been seeing you on Facebook but I didn’t know you were this beautiful.” At this point, I got angry. Any sincere remark on Clara should have read: “I have been seeing you on Facebook but I didn’t know you were this brilliant.”

You may not be a female gender advocate like me so you may not understand why I call that remark offensive and insensitive. Was Clara there because of her beauty or brains? She is beautiful in her own right but it wasn’t a beauty contest on Newsfile. It was a contest of brains, and she outshone all other panelists, in my view. It was her brains that dazzle viewers, not her beauty. Would Ndebugre ever refer to a male panelist by his looks? Why would he refuse to acknowledge the dazzling brilliance of the best panelist of the day and settle on her looks?

I was on Facebook while Newsfile was ongoing and a good number of the comments I read about Newsfile were about Clara’s brilliance. The producer of GTV’s Talking Point programme requested her number and invited her to be part of her panel on Sunday. The tons of commendations on Clara’s Facebook wall showed that the listeners and viewers of the programme admired her brilliance. For Mr John Ndebugre to reduce her to her looks was offensive and sexist. I was surprised no one on the panel drew his attention to the unforgivable blunder.

We are living in an era when women are still not given the needed motivation to exploit their full potentials. Even though we now know and proclaim with our mouths that the usefulness of women does not end in the bedroom and in the kitchen, almost every commercial on washing detergents and cooking features women. Our cultural practices still limit women a great deal.

Most young women who have had the opportunity to go to school still think they must dress well and expose some vital parts of their bodies to attract men. What they fail to know is that without brains, the importance of those beautiful thighs, hips and shapes they so much advertise does not extend beyond ejaculation.

John Ndebugre on Newsfile

Brainy women such as Clara should be projected and young girls should see them as role models. The young girls in Navrongo where Clara hails should see her on TV and aspire to be like her. When they see one of their own being praised for her brains, they would want to be brainy. If they see her being praised for her looks, they would want to look good. We should not deliberately ignore the brains of women and patronize their beauty when we would never do same to their male counterparts.

I want Mr. John Ndebugre to render an unqualified apology to Clara as a person and women in general for that offensive and sexist comment on Newsfile last Saturday. However, I know that such a step is alien to most men in our part of the world and that such action would be a fatal attack on Ndebugre’s ego. For this reason, this request will prove more difficult to him than asking a visually impaired man to tell the difference between identical Japanese Twins by their looks.

So I leave him with this simple message: “Go and sin no more.”

And to men, like him, I say real men do not look down on women.

The Writer, Manasseh Azure Awuni, is a senior broadcast journalist with Joy 99.7FM. His email address is [email protected].