By Samuel LARTEY (Prof)
I never imagined that my life’s most defining lessons wouldn’t come from textbooks or boardroom manuals but from betrayal, resilience, and divine encounters.
It was fate that guided my steps from the crowded halls of the University of Ghana to the glass towers of Barclays Bank Ghana (now ABSA). But it was destiny that placed mentors in my path who would shape my trajectory and anchor my integrity.
The first was Faustina Linda Simpson, the poised and discerning Personal Assistant to the Managing Director of Barclays Bank Ghana. She saw potential in my unpolished confidence, and with gentle firmness, taught me the grace of professionalism and the discipline of discretion.
She suggested me to the Managing Director and was posted to the Managing Directors office as Acting Executive Assistant. Through her, I was introduced to Mrs. Margaret Dudu Mwanakatwe, then Managing Director of Barclays and now an influential Zambian political figure. She taught me that a strong voice and a soft heart could co-exist. Her example reminded me that leadership isn’t just about command it’s about attitude and character.
Later, in the wilderness of my professional disillusionment, I found the voice of René Carayol, a renowned and fabulous global international business philosopher and coach, whose words reminded me that resilience is not about avoiding snakes but learning to outgrow the cage. “Don’t mate with what you hate,” he once told me. That single line became a compass in a world where deception often wears a tie and envy comes bearing gifts.
This article is my journey through that world, a world of smiling sabotage, silent sabotage, and strategic survival. A Ghanaian journey, yes but also a universal story of light, scars, and rebirth.
Snakes in Suits in the Ghanaian Context
Surviving the Maze of Masks by Prof. Samuel Lartey is a compelling memoir-meets-manual that exposes the hidden dynamics of betrayal, manipulation, and unethical power play within Ghana’s corporate, academic, and social environments.
Through lived experience and critical reflection, the author narrates how polished individuals in leadership, academia, family, and friendships, those we often trust can become orchestrators of sabotage behind a façade of civility.
The Ghanaian Corporate Jungle: Betrayal with a Smile
Prof. Lartey shares how Ghana’s banking sector particularly during his tenures at Barclays Bank Ghana (now ABSA) and Stanbic Bank Ghana is rife with hidden sabotage. The betrayals most often lead to a blocked legitimate promotions, and long-term career derailment.
In Ghana, such intellectual theft remains widespread due to weak internal accountability systems and a culture that often rewards loyalty over competence. Reports from the Ghana Integrity Initiative (2022) suggest that over 68% of professionals have witnessed credit misappropriation in their institutions, yet only 11% report it due to fear of retaliation.
Jealousy with a Friendly Face: Silent Saboteurs in Social Systems
The book explores how professional jealousy and disguised sabotage thrive within Ghana’s social and institutional networks. In 2011, while managing high-value project portfolios at Stanbic Bank, a colleague who regularly praised Prof. Lartey covertly sabotaged him of non-performance.
Similar sabotage occurred in academia at Regent where whispers of being “too self-promoting” denied him a department headship after a successful international conference in 2024. These stories echo Ghana’s culture of gatekeeping, where professional growth is often stifled by insiders protecting their turf.
In-Tune Wickedness: Institutionalised Envy and Human Rights Abuses
Prof. Lartey highlights a more sinister dimension of betrayal, emotional manipulation and orchestrated isolation, which he terms “in-tune wickedness.” It manifests in faculty politics, family betrayal, and even within marriage. At the height of his professional visibility, he was subjected to false accusations, gossip, and strategic exclusion, actions that inflicted emotional distress and psychological trauma.
These betrayals, though non-physical, border on mental health violations and human rights abuses, particularly when perpetuated in workplaces that fail to provide grievance structures or psychological safety. According to the CHRAJ Annual Report (2023), over 30% of formal workplace complaints in Ghana involve psychological abuse, often disguised as performance management or institutional politics.
Financial Implications of Betrayal and Ethical Choices
Across the book, Prof. Lartey quantifies the financial cost of maintaining integrity:
- USD$ 100,000 lost in bonuses, speaking opportunities, and project commissions (2008–2025)
- GHS 40,000 consultancy turned down due to unethical expectations (2019)
- GHS 250,000 estimated cumulative loss over 15 years due to sabotage, blocked promotions, and false allegations
- Yet, his decision to protect his values yielded long-term returns. Between 2008–2022, he earned over $25,000 in international speaking engagements and GHS 120,000 from ethical consultancy projects. His story proves that in Ghana’s economy of favours, integrity is a slow but stable currency.
The Price and Payoff of Integrity
Prof. Lartey’s refusal to conform to unethical standards drew cold shoulders, missed promotions, and political sabotage. But over time, his brand of resilient transparency became a recommendation in itself.
In 2023, he was nominated to a national PPP project on institutional and technological enhancement and transparency and delivered a viral speech “Values as Currency of Transparency: The Role of the Office of the Registrar of Companies digitalisation” which was patronised by over 100 people across banking , Telcos, Fintech and academia.
This reflects a shifting tide in Ghana’s professional climate: reputation now has economic and social value especially when tied to trust.
Lessons from Jim Rohn’s Five Pillars in Ghanaian Realities
Prof. Lartey applies Jim Rohn’s Five Pillars to the Ghanaian context. These pillars provided the architecture to rebuild his life turning GCE A-Level hustle, study abroad pressures, and career sabotage into a legacy of impact.
Truth Still Shines in Ghana’s Maze of Masks
Snakes in Suits is more than a memoir, it is a mirror of Ghana’s institutional dysfunction and a manual for surviving with your soul intact. It chronicles the reality of being honest in dishonest systems, the loneliness of integrity, and the triumph of truth in a country where betrayal often hides in plain sight.
In Ghana where formal employment hovers around 2.3 million public sector workers in a labour force of over 13 million (GSS, 2023) institutions must prioritize emotional safety, ethical leadership, and systemic accountability if we are to retain and grow trustworthy talent.
Prof. Lartey’s story is a reminder that the price of integrity is real, but so is its legacy.
When the Smile Bites: The Corporate Jungle in Ghana
In 2008, as Technology Business Development Manager at a Consortium I worked in, I was entrusted with designing a $5 million SME loan programme. I worked day and night crafting the framework. On the day of presentation, my boss asked to “polish” my slides. A week later, I sat in a boardroom as he presented my entire work without mention of my name.
My success fee USD$ 50,000 was redirected. My motivation, redirected. My sense of worth, rattled. That moment taught me a fundamental lesson: in Ghana’s corporate jungles, betrayal often arrives with polished shoes and PowerPoint slides. It is not always the weak who are eaten, it is often the unaware.
Friendly Faces, Jealous People: Ghana’s Silent Epidemic
In 2023 I was recommended to an organization seeking to enter into a PPP for a World Bank Digitalisation Project in Accra. The project sum cost that came to the organization was $6.4m, I exceeded my targets and became a darling of upper management. One senior colleague, a self-proclaimed fan of my work, praised me in public but undermined me in closed-door meetings. He refused to give me my agreed share, my salaries and subtly poisoned leadership against me. My senior colleague and CEO of the organization succeeded. On the other hand my credibility fractured.
It reminded me of a deeper cultural truth: in Ghana, some enemies don’t fight you, they narrate you into non-existence.
Later, the same patterns re-emerged in academia. After an international conference, I was denied a Vice President role. Whispers labelled me “too self-promoting.” The whisperers? Colleagues I had helped succeed.
When Love and Loyalty Wear Masks: From Altar to Allegations
Not all betrayal came from the office. Some came from places I once called home. After the 2014 banking crisis, while managing external pressures, and around July 2023, I faced emotional neglect in my marriage. Affection became seasonal, warm in prosperity, cold in scarcity, mother in law became a part of the marriage.
Some friends I had financially supported turned against me. While raising GHS 50,000 for a resettlement project, they planted rumours of rebellion and arrogance on my part without ever confronting me.
Some relationships in Ghana are parasitic, they love you until you pause to rest. Then they whisper your downfall into existence.
Bleeding in Public, Healing in Silence
Between 2015 and 2017, while leading turnaround projects worth GHS 5 million for a friend and client, I was internally breaking. High stress levels, deficits exceeding excesses all from smiling through pain.
One moment stood out. In May 2016, I delivered a keynote at a banking conference, hours after a personal betrayal and an anxiety attack. The applause was thunderous. My soul was trembling.
My healing began when I admitted: success without sanity is self-harm. I began journaling, publishing feature articles for Newspapers, Intellectual Articles for High Impact Journals, and practising silence and seclusion. At a private retreat in Prampram, I wrote to my younger self: “You are not weak for bleeding. You are strong for still walking.”
Turning Pain into Purpose
Pain became my curriculum. In 2018, I launched the Leadership Ethics and Emotional Intelligence Series at Inspired Leaders Network, Ghana. Over 300 network work members found safe spaces to speak. In 2019, I co-designed the “Integrity in the Boardroom” seminar with the Private Education Foundation, Ghana.
By 2022, my platform had taken me to four international summits, earning over $15,000 in honorariums, not from power, but from pain.
At the Chartered Institute of Bankers, I joined a team of experts to redesigned the Professional Banking Ethics module using real stories, anonymous versions of my scars. Students loved it. For them, ethics became lived truth, not classroom theory.
The Price of Integrity, the Rewards of Resilience
Integrity cost me GHS 40,000 in 2019 when I rejected a consultancy filled with inflated invoices. It cost me allies at AB Technology Consulting Limited when I blocked a corrupt contractor. I was labelled “difficult.”
But in 2022, that label became a badge. I was appointed to a regional ethics task force. My lecture, “Values as Currency,” hit over 500,000 views online.
In 14 months, I restructured SME loan systems for Seedling and Resource Design Real Estate businesses earning GHS 120,000. Integrity is slow currency but it never devalues.
Snake-Proofing Systems: Designing Resilience
At Regent, I launched anonymous staff feedback mechanisms, staff morale rose by 23%. In 2024, I launched Ethics by Design. One company reported a 32% drop in turnover in 18 months.
Snake-proofing is not suspicion, it is system-building. Culture beats slogans. And real systems digest both.
The Five Pillars That Held Me Up
When I encountered Jim Rohn’s Five Pillars, they weren’t theory. They were life jackets.
Philosophy: I reframed betrayal as a teacher. Pain became curriculum.
Attitude: I chose dignity over drama. Joy over gossip.
Activity: I mentored 170+ professionals between 2013 and 2025.
Results: My mentees now lead departments. My UPSA graduate students’ success rate rose by over 90%.
Lifestyle: I returned to authoring, squash tennis, and spiritual rest. I began living not just performing.
Conclusion:
Light in the Maze
From GCE O-Level struggles in dusty classrooms to the grand halls of the University of Ghana. From late-night reports at Barclays to various boardroom and council tension at SME, Large Corporate Advisory. From academic isolation to applause at various graduations, conferences and seminers, I have seen masks of all kinds.
I have lost over GHS 250,000 in career sabotage and ethical stands. But I’ve gained peace, clarity, legacy and truth. In 2024, standing before over 1500 graduates, I said, “Success is not how far you go, but how honestly you walk.” The applause wasn’t for perfection. It was for survival.
To every Ghanaian navigating betrayal in the boardroom, in marriage, or in ministry: you are not alone. Snakes in suits exist but so does your light.
Build systems. Guard your peace. Honour your values. And keep walking. Even in a maze of masks, truth remembers its way home.
