“At long last, the battle has ended! And thus, Ghana, your beloved country is free forever! And, as I pointed out, from now on, today, we must change our attitudes and our minds. We must realise that from now on we are no longer a colonial but free and independent people. That new Africa is ready to fight his own battles and show that after all the black man is capable of managing his own affairs. We are going to demonstrate to the world, to the other nations, that we are prepared to lay our foundation.”
The above quote is a very popular one taken from the Independence speech delivered by Ghana’s first president – Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. I can envisage how happy Ghanaians were at that particular time, simply because they were unshackled from foreign rule.
I am of the belief that, today, majority, if not all Ghanaians, are very miserable by the way thing are going in the country; perhaps as the outcome of self-rule.
Ghana is indeed constrained forever, as opposed to Kwame Nkrumah’s view of Ghana being free forever. The excitement at that moment might have clouded the vision of the leaders to foresee what the future entailed.
Since 1957, it has become very apparent that we are still dependent on foreign countries for virtually everything. Although, Ghana is an independent country, it is still being ruled indirectly under the auspices of neo-colonialism.
After a solid fifty seven (57) years of liberation, we have proven that we are not capable of managing our own affairs at all, in contrast to what Kwame Nkrumah made known. In fact, we are experiencing the exact opposite of the quote above. If by miracle Kwame Nkrumah is resurrected today, I am sure he will ask whoever raised him from the dead to send him back to his grave.
I feel ashamed to write (not even knowing where to start from) about the current state of affairs in our country. If indeed we are capable of managing our own affairs, we wouldn’t still be finding it difficult to generate enough electricity power for supply.
The rate at which load shedding is taking place in this era definitely defines our incapability to manage our resources. There is no single day that lights do not go off (without schedule) in this country. I guess the constant light outs might be as a result of VRA, GRIDCo, and ECG using their outfits to practically teach national service personnel how to ON and OFF lights to equip them for the future.
Ever since the Akosombo Hydroelectric Dam was conceived by Ernest Kitson, and finally constructed in 1963, it has remained our main hope and source of electricity supply. No other means of generating electricity has really been explored by our so-called leaders. For how long are we going to live in darkness, embarking on needless load shedding in order to conserve power?
As it stands now, the Ghanaian economy is on the verge of collapsing. I’m confident that it will eventually flop if nothing is done about it. From the look of things, there seem to be no remedy for the dying economy at the moment. All we can do is to observe it die since a vast number of our leaders have problems with their thinking faculties.
I am more mystified by the fact that in this our 21st century, we as a country are still battling a disease called cholera. Common hygienic practices too we are not able to exercise them, thereby causing this disease which is killing many Ghanaians.
There are countless towns in Ghana that have very poor roads and lack basic social amenities like good drinking water, etc. People still share drinking water with animals in this period of ours. What a pity!
As for our educational system, we do not even know how to go about it. My heart saddens whenever I hear of or see school children learning under trees (that’s their classroom), sometimes without teachers in the school.
The fortunate ones who have block buildings as their classrooms will one way or the other have problems. It’s either they close from school anytime it rains (because of leaked ceiling) or might not have study materials. How do we expect such ones to critically analyze issues when the need arises?
Currently, government has laid embargo on all government works because of the present situation of the economy. In effect, the government is making Ghanaians understand that there is no money to pay people who will be employed.
How will there be money when all we do is to import commodities, forget that we can likewise manufacture goods and export as well? Talking of manufacturing good, where are we even going to manufacture them since all our factories have been abandoned?
The Meat Processing Factory at Zuarungu, the Northern Star Tomato Processing Factory, Sack Manufacturing Company, the Vegetable Oil Mills Factory, and the Food Distribution Corporation have all been neglected. Mind you, these are only few of those I can remember presently.
What happened to all these factories that could serve as employment avenues for most of the graduates we have in town – unemployed? Some years to come, the existing ones will be well neglected just as the old ones have been abandoned.
Ordinary products that can be manufactured by our local factories are now being imported; all because we have collapsed almost all of our industrial units.
Is this what we call independence? Or is this how we demonstrate how capable we are to manage our own affairs? Our capability to manage our own affairs is the ability to squander state’s resources. It’s rather unfortunate that the leaders themselves are the culprits, oppressing the vulnerable citizens for their selfish gains.
Although Kwame Nkrumah and his associates wanted the best for Ghanaians, they really did us a disservice by gaining liberation for us. Since 1957, I am not in any way convinced by his statement that the black man is capable of managing his own affairs. At our very best, we are rather capable of mismanaging our businesses.