Prayers alone cannot save the nation - NCCE

Accra, Aug. 17, GNA - The National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) on Tuesday said prayers alone could not solve the nation's problems and called for "educational revolution where the emphasis would not be on just producing parrots, but useful Ghanaians imbued with national patriotism".

"As a country, we should have a nationalistic approach to our socio-economic policies and strategies, accept responsibility for our national debt and with a collective national consensus, decide to resist external direction of the course of our country," Mr Laary Bimi, Chairman of NCCE, stated.

Mr Bimi stated at the monthly security expert dialoguing platform on: "Sustaining Democracy and Human Security in Ghana - A Personal View," organised by the African Security Dialogue and Research (ASDR). The NCCE Chairman said as a matter of priority, the nation should design and adopt strategic policies to ensure that democracy was sustained in the country.

"We seem to be all too glad that the ritual of elections and voting is the end of democracy. We think that certain values, such as the culture of tolerance, dialogue and compromise, cooperative living, patriotism and an lineate nature of striving for the common good are necessary for the sustenance of democracy."

The better and more structured strategy for sustaining democracy and human security according to Mr Bimi "is to have civic education for democracy to be central in our educational curricula".

He said the reintroduction of civic education would reduce the potential threats to human security of Ghanaians and urged politicians to evaluate human security seriously.

Mr Bimi said analytical study indicated that politicians viewed human security from the perspective of protection for their status, position and ambition.

The perception determines how they view criticisms and the critics; this in turn affects the course and conduct of the game of politics.