Editorial: Ghana’s 53rd Birthday

Ghana is 53 years old. As a matured adult, it is necessary to constantly take stock of one’s life to determine what is working and what is not working. After evaluating one’s life, one improves on those aspects of life that have worked and certainly do away with those that have not worked. In our African context where old age is associated with wisdom, we believe that the older one gets, the wiser he/she gets. It is hard to apply the same adage and belief to the Ghanaian nation as it gets older past 53 years. So many things have not worked in our lives. We wonder whether we have learnt any lessons from those things that haven’t worked for us. We even wonder whether we have learnt to improve on those things that have worked.

Typical examples of things that have not worked or being destructive in our life as a nation can be divided into domestic and foreign: into those that were/are beyond our control and things/mistakes that could have been avoided. Some of these are constant military interventions, political intolerance of opposing views/ideas, indiscipline, negative attitude/apathy to public work and public property, uneven development and distribution of resources across the nation. Others are the total failure to develop the industrial base of the economy and failure to create a middle-level income population, which is the engine of growth of all stable economies.

After 53 years, we are still grappling with finding a stable educational system that can train reliable and efficient manpower for the various sectors of our nation’s life. We are constantly experimenting with the lives and futures of our youth in the education sector.

Our politics is also driven by a vengeance mentality under which one group seeks to undo everything the other does while in office even when those things were good for the nation. The distribution of the nation’s resources, opportunities and privileges is still driven by nepotism and the “whom-you-know” syndrome.

On the foreign factors, we continue to almost totally depend on foreign aid and handouts for our development. We seem to have been permanently afflicted with the dependency and beggar mentality where we constantly look up to foreigners for aid to prop up our economy. The greatest threat to our domestic development and progress is the indiscipline referred to above. Our attitude to public property and public works is so abysmal that we should seriously resolve to change this attitude if we have to make any progress as a nation.

At 53, we are old enough to give advice to the younger nations instead of us constantly receiving advice. We seem to fit into the adage that if you see someone being constantly advised, the person may either be a child or poor. Which category does Ghana fit as a nation: the child or the poor?

On the occasion of the celebration of our national day on March 6, we wish to salute all those whose toils, efforts and sacrifice have brought the nation to its positive existence. To those that are constantly tearing the nation apart and engaging in negative attitudes (and these are in the majority) we wish to advise all to change their attitudes for the better. By the time we reach 60 years of age, we should be able to write or say something more positive than the present assessment.