Comment: Can we stop begging donors for help?

We on Today believe that it is high time we stopped depending on foreign countries and international agencies for support. This is because Ghana or the entire Africa continent has all that it takes to enhance the livelihood of its people.

But the sad thing is that instead of pushing out of our cocoons by ourselves, we go out and beg for others to come and help us. In the process we have become a crippled people. It is unfortunate that when you look around us as a country all that one can see is a country crippled like a butterfly. Our farms are crippled. Our rivers are crippled. Our environment is crippled. Our industries are crippled. Our schools are crippled. Our local talents are crippled. Yet we look for help from outside

The essence of our 57 years of independence was to manage our own affairs and run our governance and economy to the betterment of the whole country and not continue to rely on our colonial master—British. But 57 years down the lane, Ghana is still crawling and always begging for alms in spite of the numerous natural resources we are endowed with which should have by now made us one of the economic giants in Africa, if not the world.

What saddens we on Today is our total dependence on foreign assistance. It is a “BIG” shame that our national budget is yearly supported with about 50% donor funds before as a country we can execute all our national programmes and projects. Our woes are as a result of bad governance and poor economic policies which over the years the country has suffered in the hands of successive governments. Our leaders need to sit up and think through the economic policies that they roll out to bring relief to the citizenry.

It is important we all join hands in the fight against foreign dependency which is killing our spirit of nationalism and thereby reducing our sovereign status in the eyes of the developed world. The country cannot continue to rely on foreign support for all its national projects while there is abundance of wealth here.

What our leaders need to do is to think about the country first by judiciously making use of the resources in the country to better the lives of the people. If the leaders can avoid the temptation of amassing wealth at the expense of the poor tax payer, Ghana will be better place for all of us.

The citizens must also contribute their quota by paying their taxes and giving off their best in terms of work output to help economic growth which will help us to get to our economic destination and eventually break the cycles of limitations we are encased in and completely reject dependency.