Chapter 7 Iyanya and my love life

My first encounter with love was in the second year of junior secondary school. I fell for Aziz, a boy who joined St. Martin de Porres School from Achimota Basic School. Academically, Aziz was the unserious type. I later gathered that he had been sacked from Achimota Basic School for poor academic performance. That information didn't dent my love for him. What he lacked in books was made up for in entertainment. He was a member of the Fugees and we mounted the stage to perform together. Aziz was that student who was often punished for the wrong reasons.

I was in his circles and it was common to see us punished together for eating in class without cleaning or getting whipped at the assembly for one misbehaviour or the other. He was eventually sacked from St. Martin de Porres School for poor performance. I wept when I got home and the reality dawned on me that I wasn't going to see Aziz again. When asked, I couldn't say the real reason I cried. Aziz's disregard for books rubbed off on me a great deal, but I managed to pull through with weak grades that were strong enough to grant me admission to Aggrey Memorial, where I met Fianko Bossman, my high school lover. As fate would have it, Fianko was transferred from Aggrey Memorial, but that didn't end our relationship. We continued our teenage love briefly after secondary school and became very good friends afterward. He has been one of the most helpful people I have met in life. In fact, I think everybody needs a Fianko Bossman in their lives. He has such a good heart. The type of men I have fallen for tells a lot about me. I tend to gravitate towards people's needs, talents, intelligence and realness. Looks or six packs are secondary in my choice of men. I have a strong aversion for older men, what they call sugar daddies. I always feel these are people who have almost finished having fun as far as relationships are concerned and want you as a plaything. My most significant experiment with love happened with the Nigerian Afropop singer, Iyanya Onoyom Mbuk. It was not strange that from my near-death experience after a brief spell with a musician, I fell in love with another musician. I have already professed my love for music and how gravitating towards musicians came to me as second nature. Part of my acting career was in Nigeria, so it was also natural that our paths crossed. We had a decent relationship-breakfast in bed and all the niceties of a dream relationship one could think of. I had the assurance that he was someone I could be with forever. He tattooed my initials, YN, on his wrist, and I thought that was a big deal. If he wasn't serious about me, he wouldn't do that. In his hit song, "Ur Waist", he mentioned how he lusted over me. One can therefore imagine my shock when I returned to Ghana after one of my visits to Nigeria and someone called me from his house. The caller said anytime I left Iyanya's place, another actress came over to him and sometimes slept over. The person felt strongly that there was something going on between them and thought I should know. That actress turned out to be Tonto Dikeh of Nigeria, one of the female celebrities Iyanya named in his "Ur Waist" song. When I was convinced about the authenticity of the information I received, I was heartbroken. I took to Twitter to rant and vent. Tonto Dikeh responded on Twitter, saying people changed and so did feelings, so I should move on. I later heard more stories about what Iyanya did with some of his female crew members. It convinced me that what happened between him and Tonto Dikeh wasn't an isolated incident. It was a pattern, his way of life. I knew I eventually would have left even if Tonto Dikeh hadn't come into the picture. I did not see the need to keep fighting her for a man I had lost, especially when I knew her fate was not going to be different from mine. However, it is one thing knowing that there is a good reason to leave and it is another world of hell to accept the decision psychologically and emotionally. It is often easy to convince the mind, but the heart lacks understanding. The heart would often want to be left alone to do things its own way. That was my ordeal during the break up with Iyanya. For two months, I cried inconsolably. A friend of mine got irritated at a point. She didn't understand why a "whole" me would brood so long over a man who had betrayed my love. My efforts to forget about the issue were undermined by the insane interest the media in Nigeria and Ghana developed in our break-up. They dragged it from our perspective and their own perspective. Those with advanced degrees in relationship management offered their unsolicited opinions, while those who were clothed with the power to administer the morality code of the universe had their say. The storm raged on for a long time and, from time to time, some media outlets still looked back to regurgitate the headlines and find a way of linking the past with unrelated present events. When I eventually moved on, my next biggest test of love came from another continent. Ghana had not worked. And Nigeria had failed me painfully. I was certain the United Kingdom would work out because everything about Jamie Roberts had the markings of a perfect partner and doting father. Jamie and I began casually online. He had known me through his Nigerian wife. The woman was not only my fan. People said we looked alike. She was tall, like a model, so I guess she may have started following me because she was told about her striking resemblance with a Ghanaian actress. That's how her husband also got to know me. He reached out through social media and introduced himself as a British photographer whose wife was my fan. After the casual chat, we went silent for a long time. About a year later, when we got in touch and I asked about his wife, he said things hadn't gone as expected. Their marriage had hit a destructive iceberg and gone cold in broken pieces. He opened up to me and told me a lot about the woman. From how he went on and on about his ex-wife anytime we spoke, I got the impression he hadn't got over her. Months passed and we spoke casually. We got closer as friends, regularly messaging and calling each other. I told him I would visit anytime I was in London, but he made it easier by proposing to travel to Ghana to see me. He came over. I realised he was very nice. He quickly settled into the Ghanaian environment as if he had lived here all his life. He ate waakye as if he had transitioned from his mother's breast milk with it and had eaten it ever since. Jamie is a black man in a white man's body. He loves African food, music and, of course, its women. He likes them black and tall. His first wife, with whom he had two children before marrying the Nigerian, was a black South African. I would have been his third African wife had things not ended so quickly and painfully. Love is difficult to withhold even in the exercise of utmost caution. In other words, if you have suffered a painful heartbreak and you make a mental note never to love with all your heart, that promise only holds until you find someone you truly love. What I had gone through in the past did not dim what I had for Jamie. I gave that relationship my all and he in turn made me feel I was worth the whole world. We got into a serious relationship, and he would turn out to be the father of my daughter, Ryn. Ryn was supposed to cement our relationship and make things complete. We were supposed to naturally transition from what we had built to a more formal and binding one. He was a man in whom I saw a husband. Having monitored how he related with and treated his two older children, I considered him the ideal father for my kids. But while we planned, his ex-wife had a more elaborate plan. It was her plan that worked to perfection, not ours. One day, I received an explosive email from Jamie's Nigerian ex-wife. I knew her intention was to destroy him to me, to keep us apart. The email was written in a way that left very little or no room for failure on her part. She knew the effect she wanted to achieve with the email and she got just that. The email was detailed and explosively explicit. She took her time to reveal all the dirt about her exhusband, details that would shake any woman no matter how deep her love for a man is. My love for Jamie was deep. It was the reason the email tore us apart. It may sound ironic, but if I hadn't loved him so deeply, our relationship would have continued even after the email. When you love someone with all your heart, they're able to hurt you deeply. And to say I was hurt after reading the email is an understatement. I was broken. After the email, there were always doubts. There were always questions. The trust was completely gone. I made a decision to opt out of the relationship despite being pregnant for him. It was tough for both of us. Jamie is still very much present in the life of our daughter. He is one of the most caring fathers I know. Having lived without a father, the last thing I would do is prevent my daughter from enjoying fatherly love. When Jamie visits to see Ryn, I give him the guest room. Sometimes, after a week, he would tell me he is going back. After Jamie, I lost the essence of falling in love and believing in a man. My worldview about marriage also changed afterwards, and I prefer a partnership to marriage. I believe in partnership, having someone you want and not having to sign a contract. As a woman, I'm trying to work hard and be independent. If marriage is to solve the insecurity of what happens when a man leaves, that doesn't really apply to me now. If you're in love with someone, why do you sign a contract? Signing that contract is like an acknowledgment that it won't work and the marital contract cannot save it. You can sign a contract to be responsible for the kids and for other commitments, but you cannot sign a contract to love someone. Considering what has become the norm with many marriages, it doesn't make sense to sign a contract. It does not change anything. #DumsorMustStop, Akufo-Addo's Call & the Offer to Contest on NPP Ticket In 2015, a message I considered to be a usual rant on Twitter turned out to be the rallying point for one of the biggest non-partisan protests ever held in Ghana. It was one of the proudest moments of my life, a moment that made my voice heard on the mismanagement of my country and the messy state of affairs in which an otherwise rich nation had found itself. The frustration had been building up in me for many years. When the time was due, it came out naturally and created the needed effect and impact. My dissatisfaction with my society, country and the black race as a whole started in my childhood. Long before America's culture and lifestyle conscripted me through entertainment, I had begun to compare and question the things that were made in Ghana and those made in Europe, America or Asia. If I bought a pencil here in Ghana and saw another pencil from a classmate whose parent or other relative had returned from the United States or Europe with it as a gift, I compared mine with theirs. Most of the time, the difference was clear. There was always something about the foreign-made product that made the local ones look inferior. There are some who argue that such difference is rooted in the inferiority mindset of the black, but that is not true. The finishing or packaging of the foreign ones stood out. The crude and haphazardly assembled products made here appeared as though the manufacturers here did not care about competition or aesthetics. As I grew older, I began to see beyond the look and feel of foreign-made products. It began to dawn on me that Ghana, Africa and the black race in general, were helpless and had to look outside for solutions to the most basic problems plaguing them. Attempts to instill empty words and vague slogans of patriotism in the youth did not help change this mentality in me because the reality on the ground was in stark contrast to what my teachers and books said about being black and proud of one's heritage. That reality drowned the hopes of the founding fathers and what, in their days, were considered inspirational rallying calls for the advancement of Africa and the black race. No child in my days went through basic school without learning about the story of Ghana's independence. And no textbook told that story without the role of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the man who led Ghana to independence. Nkrumah is remembered for the profundity of his proclamations, the strength of his convictions and his faith in the black race. I'm unsure whether he carried this optimism to the grave or whether the circumstances surrounding his overthrow and exile taught him that he trusted too much in a people who had no trust in themselves. Known as one of the greatest pan-Africanists to ever live, Nkrumah was fiercely optimistic about Africa's ability to take charge of its destiny and prove a point to the rest of the world. On the eve of Ghana's independence, he declared that "the independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked up with total liberation of the African continent." His quest for a united Africa, which took a life of its own in the Nkrumah era, was personified in these words. For his faith in the black race, Dr. Nkrumah declared on that night: "But also, as I pointed out, that also entails hard work. That new Africa is ready to fight her own battles and show that, after all, the black man is capable of managing his own affairs." As a child growing up and learning these words, I soon came to the realisation that they were empty slogans, especially because the first part that talked about hard work is often left out in both Nkrumah's quote and the endeavours of the black continent. I was born two decades after Nkrumah left the political scene in Ghana. However, I have learned a few of the things he did to practicalise the words he so eloquently declared on the night the Union Jack was lowered. In its place, the Red, Yellow, and Green with the Black Star was hoisted proudly and it fluttered audaciously with the promise of a new nation. After Nkrumah and his generation, however, there has not been much evidence to prove that the black man-whether in Africa or the diaspora- is capable of managing his own affairs. Sometimes, I genuinely hope that I am wrong. I hope that I am too pessimistic. The reality, however, often defeats any attempt I make at optimism. For instance, Ghana is among the world's leading producers of cocoa and gold and is home to a host of other natural minerals and fertile soil. However, we have no say in the value chain of the raw materials we produce. We still export raw cocoa beans and get next to nothing from the multi-billion-dollar chocolate industry. Our gold is mostly mined by foreign companies and refined abroad. When we struck oil in commercial quantities, we lacked the economic and technical capacities to exploit it, so we looked up to the West, and, as usual, our percentage in it is negligible when compared to the countries whose companies are mining the oil. When politicians talk about adding value to our farm produce and moving beyond an agrarian economy to an industrial one, they are almost always in opposition. In government, they are too occupied with amassing wealth for themselves and their descendants to think about the lofty ideas they espoused when they were hungry for power. Dictated by their insatiable greed and consumed by their selfish interests, our leaders sign some of the worst contracts when they have the opportunity to negotiate on our behalf. The little revenue we derive from our resources are often misused, leaving too little with which to provide critical social needs and infrastructure. In an era when our Asian counterparts who were like us at independence are miles ahead of us, we do not seem to have any concrete plans to make us competitive on the global stage. We have no sense of urgency. Our education is still a relic of our colonial past. Our lawyers and judges still wear white wigs and are compelled to be fully robed in the blistering heat when very few of the courtrooms outside the national capital have air-conditioners or proper ventilation. Despite our enormous human resources, we seem to contribute nothing to the world of science and invention. The black men and women who have stood out have done so on the fertile grounds of innovation created for them in America or Europe. Back home, we tend to hold fast to cultural practices that add nothing to our humanity and progress. I have always expressed these frustrations to friends and we would rant and conclude that the solution is not rocket science. The greed that made us willingly sell our own race to others in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade is still the creed in most African countries. It is in our DNA. So, I sometimes ask myself: if I were that white what would I make of blacks and their nations that are beggars? What respect would I have for a continent that is endowed with resources, but is so hopelessly helpless that when disaster strikes, its default position is to look to others for salvation? If we flipped the coin, would we genuinely think that we deserve the same amount of respect that should be accorded people of other races and continents, those who continue to make advances while we kill one another in greed-induced civil wars? Most of the time, the voices that speak up against our failure and bad governance are those of academics, political activists and civil society groups. The discourse in Ghana, however, got into unconventional circles and the frustration got to every lip between 2013 and 2015, when erratic power supply disrupted every sphere of life and threatened to further undermine the little progress we had made. A nation of nearly 30 million people was still relying mainly on the hydropower systems constructed by the Kwame Nkrumah administration when the population of the nation was less than 8 million. When the power crises persisted, the pinch became so severe that even the most passive observers became active participants in our discourse. The politics of "dumsor" dominated media discussions. The name of the recurring phenomenon of unstable power supply, dumsor, is derived from two Twi words-"dum," meaning "switch off", and meaning "switch on". Dumsor wasn't new, but the one recorded in that period is the worst in living memory. I am not an expert on energy, governance or economics, so my frustration with the power crises was mostly with friends and people in my circles. But one night, I was compelled to take my ranting to Twitter when I was tired of buying diesel to power my generator set. Besides the heat I had to endure in the absence of electricity, my health was also at risk. I use Xalacom eyedrop, which needs refrigeration. I have a family history of glaucoma, and that medication, according to information available online, is meant to reduce "intraocular pressure (IOP) in patients with open-angle glaucoma and ocular hypertension". I had to refrigerate the medication and since the national grid was almost always off, I had to keep the generator on. The cost of fuel was draining me financially. My most pressing need for an uninterrupted supply of power was to store medication. There were others whose very livelihoods depended on electricity. It was for this reason that when I tweeted my frustration and ended with #DumsorMustStop, I woke up the following morning to find that the hashtag had caught fire on Twitter and was trending for days on end. In the midst of the trend, the Citizen Ghana Movement pressure group reached out to me. They wanted to discuss how we could capitalise on the mood generated by my hashtag to pile greater pressure on the government to fix the problem. I met with leaders of the pressure group, lawyers Kofi Bentil and Nana Kwasi Awuah. The two had broken away from the OccupyGhana pressure group, which was the outcome of a non-partisan protest in 2014. I bought into their idea and they set to work on the legal requirements ahead of what became the #DumsorMustStop protest. On my part, I reached out to all the celebrities I knew and sold the idea of the protest to them. It was an opportunity for those of us in the arts and entertainment industry to make our voices count, but not many of them responded. I was, however, happy that the few who came on board did so wholeheartedly. They included Efya Nocturnal, Van Vicker, D-Black, Prince David Osei, DKB, Kweku Elliot and Sarkodie. Sarkodie could not make it to the protest, but he recorded a hit song about the power crises. It was normal that a problem of that magnitude would give a political advantage to the opposition political parties, so while the government did not take kindly to our protest, the opposition parties were solidly behind us even though we had made it clear that our agenda was nonpartisan. In the days leading up to the protest, I received a call from someone who said I should hold on for the presidential candidate of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. In that brief call, he expressed his support for my cause and encouraged me. He said I was a true daughter of the land and that what I was doing was a good thing. He said I should push on and not be discouraged, for the whole of Ghana was behind me. I also received calls from the office of President John Dramani Mahama. The callers said the president wanted to meet me, but I told them I would only meet with the president on condition that my fellow organisers of the protest would be part of that meeting. The officials at the presidency insisted that the president wanted to meet me alone. I stood my ground, stating that if the president was not prepared to meet me with my colleagues, then the meeting was not going to happen. And it did not happen. A few days before the protest, there was pressure from my family members, who tried to talk me out of it. I remember my father, Mr. Nelson, called me one morning and, without even greeting me, asked me to drop the protest. He said the Nelson name had become embroiled in a national controversy because of my intended action. "Yvonne, the name. The name! The name!" he said and went ahead to tell me how his friends were calling him to talk to me. It was interesting that the man who didn't make me feel part of him suddenly became so concerned about me when I was embarking on a national cause. I still wonder how the people who were influential enough to want to stop the protest were able to link me to Mr. Nelson and put him under such intense pressure that he called me. Our relationship as father and daughter was not out there in the public. I had thought it was as anonymous as how we related with each other until Mr. Nelson called. I declined to recline and watch the nation suffer when I had the unique opportunity to make my voice heard. That evening, my mother also called with the same plea. It was either Mr. Nelson had told her to add her voice to dissuade me from leading the protest or she was genuinely concerned for my security and the implications of leading a crowd in the politically charged environment. Whatever her motivation was, I politely told her that it was too late to reconsider my decision to lead the protest. The week leading to the protest was my busiest. While putting finishing touches to the arrangement and fending off attempts to stop it, I was also engaged in countless media interviews. I remember brushing my teeth in the car one morning while on my way to an early in-studio radio interview at Peace FM. It was as if I was running a political campaign. May 16, 2015, finally arrived as a very tense day. My team and I had done a lot of preparation, but we could not be sure that Ghanaians would turn out in their numbers to make the protest a success. The government and the governing party were doing everything possible to undermine the protest. It was supposed to be a vigil, and participants were asked to bring their lanterns and candles to march from the University of Ghana to the Tetteh Quarshie Interchange. The Minister of Power, Dr. Kwabena Donkor, later told me that his outfit fixed the dysfunctional streetlights on that stretch just to douse the effect we wanted to create with the thousands of lanterns and other lights we used for the protest. Keyboard gangs of the governing party were also ready to undertake their coordinated trolling should the numbers fall short of their expectation. The stakes were high. They knew it. And we knew it. When the moment came, I was overwhelmed and moved by the numbers that turned out. Tens of thousands of protestors from different walks of life turned out. Some people travelled in buses from Kumasi to Accra to take part in the protest. The Ghanaian media gave it live coverage, while the international media featured it prominently in their news. Social media was awash with our messages and pictures and live streams of the event. We made a strong statement. It became the most significant and defining moment for the fight to end the power crises in Ghana. As with all actions against the government, the protest came at a cost to my comfort and security. I received anonymous death threats from people who felt I was making the government unpopular. Two weeks after the protest, I didn't sleep in my house. While away, a neighbour once called me and said some Toyota SUVs had parked outside my home and their occupants were peering into my compound. But for the high wall, I guess they might have entered. The gated residential community where I lived at the time came under intense scrutiny. The estate developer was accused of not having electricity metres in some of the apartments and was arrested and detained. I had a metre so no matter how hard they looked, they couldn't find anything to implicate or incriminate me. After some time, they left me alone, and I returned home. A year later, the opposition NPP and its candidate won the 2016 election. The power crisis and its effects were a major sin of the incumbent National Democratic Congress (NDC). Dumsor had resulted in job losses and dealt a deadly blow to the small-scale enterprises that depended on electricity but could not afford alternative sources of power. Even though the NDC administration resolved the crises at a huge cost and through shady procurement deals, the victims of dumsor, corruption and mismanagement could not forgive the party at the presidential and parliamentary polls. The NPP, led by Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, won massively in both the presidential and parliamentary elections. Some friends and I went to congratulate the president-elect, Nana Akufo-Addo, with whom we took a photograph. It is a photograph I regret taking. Akufo-Addo came to the presidency with enormous goodwill. He had been projected as a no-nonsense disciplinarian who would not hesitate to crack the whip on errant appointees. He was said to be incorruptible, and Ghanaians thought he was going to be the antidote to mass stealing at the highest level, which is euphemised as corruption. Unfortunately for Ghana and those who trusted in him, he has turned out to be a monumental disappointment whose government's unbridled borrowing, corruption and reckless spending plunged the nation into an economic dumsor. By the end of the first term of Akufo-Addo's presidency, many Ghanaians had begun to lose hope, not only in him but also in the country and its politics. It was not strange that his party nearly lost the parliamentary majority it commanded in the first term. There was a tie in the parliamentary polls. The NPP only got the majority when its member who had been expelled from the party from contesting the election as an independent candidate, won his seat and joined the NPP side in parliament. Even with that, the governing party lost the election of the Speaker of Parliament for the first time in Ghana's Fourth Republic. I certainly do not wish to associate with a politician who is projected as one thing but becomes the polar opposite of that when elected into office. Strangely, however, some close associates of the president thought I was a candidate to be drafted into their party and pushed to contest a parliamentary seat with their tacit endorsement and support. Prior to the 2020 polls, an influential man in the Akufo-Addo circles came to see me and proposed to sponsor me to contest the Ayawaso West Wuogon parliamentary seat on the ticket of the NPP. The NPP had lost its MP for the area and one of the "wives" of the late MP won the byelection in 2019. The byelection was characterised by violence and resulted in the formation of a commission of enquiry to investigate it. She was lacing her boots to contest the seat in 2020. When I drew the attention of the emissary to the fact that the party already had a candidate, he said the fact that he was contacting me meant that they had concluded their plans and would do everything within their power to pave the way for me to contest if only I was interested. I asked him to give me a couple of days to think about it, but I had made up my mind the moment he broached the subject. I was not interested in the offer. Even if I was interested in going to parliament, who told him I wanted to do that on the ticket of the NPP? What if I wanted to go as an independent candidate? And was I going to allow myself to be someone's political puppet? Once you accept to be sponsored by them, you lose your independence and they expect unalloyed loyalty from you. This was something I wouldn't do even if I was interested. This person was the president's family member. And from the modus operandi of the Akufo-Addo "family and friends" government, I wasn't going to be their conduit, even if I was interested in going to parliament. Apart from the fact that they probably saw a formidable political personality in me as a result of the #DumsorMustStop protest, the other reason the NPP's gods wanted me to contest was not difficult to discern. My colleague actor and friend, John Dumelo, was contesting that constituency on the ticket of the opposition NDC and they feared he could unseat the NPP candidate with his celebrity status. Already, John Dumelo's political affiliation had strained our friendship. We had had open exchanges on Twitter in the past and I wasn't going to make things worse by openly contesting him. I wouldn't betray our friendship to satisfy some people's political calculations. If I accepted the offer, I was going to do that because of the convenience of political power. That constituency is a stronghold of the NPP, the main reason John Dumelo lost despite his popularity and stardom. If I had contested, my chances of winning would have been high, but I do not regret rejecting the offer. Had I accepted that offer, I wouldn't be different from the politicians and their politics of convenience, which I so much detested.