Like a woman in love, the sovereignty of nation states feeds jealously on absolute loyalty ‘(fides absoluta’ in Latin).

Where a woman suspects double loyalty (duplex fidelitas), English playwright William Congreve told us as far back as 1697, to expect hell.

That is how the expression “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” came about.

In the case of nations, however, love is protected by blood and codified into laws.

They erect boundaries and tell citizens to make a choice. Where they are lucky, they tolerate them as dual citizens, but they know they have dual loyalty and cannot be trusted.

The patient dog eats the fattest bone when it is loyal.

The 17th region

Since the Gold Coast, compatriots who have eaten Ghana’s fattest bones have been people who have lived on our soils or have maintained absolute fidelity to our national cause.

We have not had any problems with those who sojourned elsewhere and later joined us to help build better.

We were careful to plant restrictions in Article 8 (2) of our 1992 Constitution to make it impossible for Ghanaians who have allegiance to other countries to occupy sensitive public and political offices.

Since then, we have pretended to have lived with this constitutional prescription, or successfully suppressed suspicious cases, until July 2012 when Bawku legislator Adamu Dramani Sakande, was jailed two years by a High Court for perjury, false declaration of office and deceit of a public officer.

I was associated with the newspaper that first broke the story in 2008 when Sumaila Bielbiel, a cattle dealer in Bawku, challenged the MP’s election for holding citizenship of another country.

In recent times, we have tested the laws in relation to Gyakye-Quayson’s Assin North parliamentary seat.

It was alleged he held Canadian citizenship at the time.

Soon, the ‘crime’ of dual citizenship will be made less sinful if a bill seeking to amend Article 8 of the Constitution passes and receives presidential assent, to allow Ghanaians in the diaspora to keep their foreign citizenships and also hold some public and political offices in Ghana.

At a recent Town Hall Meeting in the UK, the President referred to Ghanaians abroad as the 17th region who brought in $7.8 billion last year alone.

They deserve unimpeded participation in the Ghana story.

Double-headed Medusa

What is it about foreign citizenship that makes it desirable and important on one soil, and dangerous on another?

Like Gyakye-Quayson who had to unswear the allegiance he once swore to Canada, to become a Parliamentarian in Ghana, many Ghanaians hold Canadian citizenship and are plying their trade silently.

They are not less patriotic to the Ghana cause because they have ‘duplex fidelitas’ to both Ghana and Canada.

The last time I made a slight reference to Ghanaians abroad and their citizenship blues, a respected statesman commented that they may be making themselves unattractive to the Ghana market.

He worried about CEOs of public institutions and some politicians who may have hidden their dual loyalties and are enjoying juicy positions quietly.

Instead of giving up their foreign citizenship to return home, they play smart and wait by the sidelines for firm assurances for political appointments before they make the move to the Sahara.

When you have to play smart to be able to serve your own country, then the intention is to serve your interests and not your country.

They are expected to repatriate their foreign degrees and skills to help Accra do something different with our drainage during floods, or inject progressive oxygen into the Ghanaian work ethic. At their best, our diaspora returnees have mostly complicated the plot of the Ghana story.

Often, they abscond to comfort when they fail and blame those who stay behind to patch up their mess.

If dual citizenship ever dished out its worst venom from a double-headed Medusa, we saw it in a former Finance minister who preferred an American prison to his plush and lush mansion in Ghana.

American-Ghanaian IGP

What are the real motivations behind the call for dual citizens to enjoy tax-payer perks as holders of public office in Ghana, while they service their citizenships in their adopted countries?

Like the bird that muddies the waters in the east-end of the river, they are free to fly northward for cleaner water.

They may be tempted to engender our collective security.

The amendment would allow an American-Ghanaian IGP to manage Ghana’s internal security architecture and national intelligence framework.

We cannot chip a bit of our sovereignty away.

For these and other reasons, the Council of State, a usually silent and rubber-stamping group of greying statesmen and women, suddenly found their voice to speak against the 17th region proposal.

Ghanaians in the diaspora pretend to know the Ghana story because we send billions home, and feign a lived experience because TV and FM stations in Ghana call us for our side of the story.

Yet, we participate in the story from thousands of miles away; we do not feel the effects of floods and bad roads like our compatriots in Alajo, Kasoa and Tse Addo.

Citizenship is a cast iron case for ‘fides absoluta’.

There are no halves, duals or near halves.

In Mozambique, they defend it with AK-47, which is carved into the design of their national flag.

Yet true citizenship goes beyond national colours, anthems and oaths; it is patriotism that issues from the soul.

It is fidelity that takes no prisoners in sticking to the side of country.

You are either pregnant with the Ghana story or you are not.

There is no such thing as being half pregnant at two places.

Tissues Of The Issues

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Ottawa, Canada