“You have my sincere word I will endeavor to do so,” Akrofi said. “I admire what you are trying to do for the country.”

He and Bannerman had been in law school together, and high school and college before that. Akrofi had heavily supported his friend’s presidential campaign and Bannerman had promised him the IGP post in return. One didn’t rise to that position. It was a civilian appointment made entirely at the president’s wishes.

Bannerman rose to place the documents on his rosewood desk imported from Italy, and then turned to the view from the southwest window. Accra’s afternoon traffic was as clogged as bad plumbing. From here, one could just see the roof of the Ghana Police Service headquarters. On the other side of the double-lane Ring Road East, several embassies nestled among the trees.

Akrofi came to stand beside the president.

“You and I are cut from the same cloth,” Bannerman said quietly. “So, you understand how much I want this. Obviously, I can’t abolish corruption completely, but I want Ghanaians to come to regard it in a different way—as a kind of cancer that has metastasized to all parts of society. Now it must be surgically removed everywhere it is found. Then things will begin to change.”

Akrofi nodded. “I do understand.”

“We will drum anti-corruption into the Ghanaian psyche,” Bannerman said. “Billboards, radio, TV, social media. I’ll have rappers and football players endorse the plan. With their help, I’ll create a new consciousness.” He looked at Akrofi. “We are warriors against a worthy foe, but together, we can vanquish.”

“By ‘worthy foe’ you mean corruption? Or Evans-Aidoo?”

“Corruption. Evans-Aidoo can’t sustain his position in the polls. This business about him redistributing oil wealth to the citizens is nonsense. We are not Norway.”

“No country is—except Norway,” Akrofi said with a wry smile. “I’m a little concerned about him though, because his followers believe him and there are more and more of them every day. It’s all false hope, for sure, but the nature of people is that they cling to that.”

Akrofi waited for his friend to respond. Instead, Bannerman turned away with his head down and hands thrust deeply in his pockets. Akrofi had an awful foreboding that if Bernard Evans-Aidoo wasn’t stopped, Bannerman’s presidency would be over.

THREE

Nii Kwei was a “sakawa boy,” meaning he made his money through Internet swindles. “Saka” was the Hausa word for “to put in,” referring to adding items to the virtual shopping cart. Nii was well-educated, having completed his BA in political science at the University of Ghana, but that field didn’t exactly invite a tsunami of job offers. Nii Kwei’s options were limited to being either unemployed or underemployed, and he alternated between those two glum circumstances for about a year after graduation.

Whenever Nii looked back on his past, he remembered clear as crystal the day his fortunes changed. Coming out of a Max Mart, he bumped into an old secondary schoolmate called Isaac and was stunned to see that Isaac owned a late model Lexus SUV—a bright red one at that. Isaac had been a loser jock prankster at school with no academic prospects. In fact, he barely scraped through senior high with grades that would never have got him into college or a trade school. How in the world was he driving his own Lexus? Nii Kwei drove an old, dent-rich Toyota Corolla—when his brother could lend it to him, that is.