Ghanaians Gather To Celebrate Ebony’s “One Week” Celebration In A Mass Display Of Hypocrisy

Even though Priscilla Opoku Kwarteng aka Ebony Reigns passed away tragically on the 8^th of February, her “one-week” celebration was held on the 18^th, ten days after the incident. The “ceremony” (for want of a better word) was held at the St. Martin’s De Porres School in Accra, attracting people from all walks of life who came to celebrate the dead singer.

Traditional leaders, ministers of state, actors and actresses and of course musicians came together to show support to the family of the late singer. If Ebony was alive to see the crowd that gathered to commemorate the “one week” of her passing, she would have been very overwhelmed.

I can boldly say her album launch late last year couldn’t attract the kind of crowd that the one-week celebration attracted. All these people gathered claimed to be huge fans of the late singer but were conspicuously absent when she was alive and needed their support at her album launch. Media houses represented in their numbers, with some going as far as covering the event live on television.

Again, this wasn’t the case during her album launch when she was alive. The same poor girl who was vilified day and night by Ghanaians was suddenly celebrated as some kind of national hero, with some even advocating for a state burial. Everybody who paid tribute to her claimed to admire her greatly for the same attitude they condemned while she was alive.

So Ghanaians admired her antics all along but chose to drown her in criticism and threaten her with hellfire in her short but eventful life. No wonder Shatta Wale couldn’t stand the hypocrisy and asked God to strike down all her “enemies” who were present at the celebration.

Even though she put up a nonchalant front, I’m sure some of these harsh words got to the poor girl. Why do we choose to show love to people when they are dead and deny them our support when they are alive? Why do we never appreciate people while they are alive to recognize it?

Why wait (or hope and pray) for them to die before we suddenly become lovers? Do we just prefer the dead to the living? What can dead people do for us that makes us cherish them so much?

No wonder Ghana is a death trap and nobody is doing anything about it. Because we prefer our people dead. Because we prefer funerals to birthdays. Or maybe we’re just dead inside so we can only celebrate what we really are, which is dead.