The OAU vowed last September never again to admit into its hallowed portals anybody who comes to power through a coup. Now, we hear there has been a "good coup" in Cote d'Ivoire. A good coup?! Now what next OAU?, asks Baffour Ankomah.

Many interesting things happened over the Christmas and New Year holiday period. When the good and the pious were attending church services to say their annual prayers, a friend kindly reminded me of Ted Turner's quotation. Ted Turner is the founder of the now ubiquitous Cable News Network (CNN): "Christianity is the religion of losers", Ted Turner had once said. "He can afford to say that, can't he", I said. "He has dollars coming out of his bloody ears".

On my TV at home, meanwhile, members of the Calvary Baptist Church in Accra, Ghana, were having one of those soul-inspiring Christmas services shown annually on British TV. No wonder, the Bible has become the fastest selling book in Ghana. Losers? Ask Ted Turner.

By then, the BBC African Service had assailed our ears all dawn-long with the results of its year-long "African of the Millennium" poll. Bush House was quite proud that over 20,000 listeners had sent in entries, and Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana, had won by a good margin, even though he had been lying solemnly in his grave for 27 years. Nelson Mandela, everybody's man of the moment, came second; and Nnamdi Azikiwe, the first president of Nigeria, came third. It showed that New African is right on song. If you didn't see our January "special [Africa must unite] issue", please get a copy.

As New Year approached, I kept a good eye on the computer at home, fearful of the mighty Y2K bug that was said to have the potential of making the earth melt like cheese or something like it. But the time came and went. And Y2K had just been a big pile in the sky! Soon I was seeing headlines such as: "The bug that never was" (The Times of London). "Who says you can't fool all of the people all of the time?", The Times' intro asked in an opinion piece written by Anatole Kaletsky on 6 January.

My mind quickly raced to the Aids in Africa debate, where all the people, cowed by (or is it cowering under) the avalanche of frightening figures put out recently by the Establishment, dared not say "but we can see it, the emperor has no clothes".

Not Kaletsky. He posed all the right questions in his article on the Y2K: "So, how does it feel, sucker?," he asked. "You and I have just fallen for the biggest confidence trick in history - and I certainly don't like the feeling... The global total spent on the bug is five times the amount required to write off completely the debts crushing all the world's developing countries."

According to the experts, some £400 billion was spent worldwide on the bug. Britain alone spent £20bn on it, and people here "certainly don't like the feeling". Robin Guenier, chairman of the British Taskforce 2000, said: "I think people like the Italians who spent very little on Y2K are quite right to ask what it was all about. If British Telecom spent £400m and Telecom Italia next to nothing, questions will have to be asked."

To which, Kaletsky added: "The most astonishing aspect of the whole Y2K hysteria was that nobody was ever called upon to explain what harm the millennium bug might actually do to human life or Western civilisation. At first, in fact, most people...treated Y2K largely as a joke. But as time went on...people started taking Y2K seriously because many others seemed to be taking it seriously. They worried about the bug because everyone else did.

"To question the bug's existence or its seriousness was to risk appearing an ignorant fool. In other words, the millennium bug became a classic example of mass hysteria, a case of the emperor's new clothes.

"Therein, I think, lies the chief political interest and possible long term significance of the whole Y2K debacle. The bug may remind us how easy it is for whole societies to descend into crowd psychology and how costly the consequences of such mass hysteria can be.

"It illustrates how easily pseudo-science can deceive businessmen and officials (especially in a society such as Britain where the ruling class is notoriously ignorant of technology and science). The critical faculties of tight-fisted finance directors and Treasury ministers are no match for technological [and I, Baffour, dare add, scientific] mumbo jumbo."

Now it's my turn to ask: Does the Y2K debacle not resemble what is called Aids in Africa and the Establishment's "mumbo-jumbo" figures, recently released, and now bought hook, line and sinker by the UN Security Council without as much as an eyelid being butt? I know I'm going to be crucified for this, but I will still ask it: Are we not being Y2Ked?

As I was mulling over Kaletsky's article, my eye caught a press cutting on the Christmas eve coup in Abidjan. "Africa's good coup", said the Time magazine's headline. The previous day, an "expert" had said much the same on the BBC: "Africa," he said, "might be going back to the days in the 60s where 'good coups' overthrew dictatorships."

So, after all the talk and beating of chests in Western capitals about moving Africa on the road to democracy, there is something called the "good coup"? Democracy, you are a pig!

And did I hear the Ecowas executive secretary, Lasana Kouyate, stammer something? "We...hate coups...but we have to be realistic."

Now, where does that leave the OAU? France and the other powers say Abidjan's coup is a "good" one. What next OAU? Haven't you been Y2Ked? Where do you draw the line? A good coup? A bad coup? Or no coup?