#FixTheCountry: A tug of war between government and citizens

Fix the country has become a tug of war between those in authorities and the citizens in the country. The government officials are directing the citizenry to fix themselves by changing their attitudes, on the other hands, the citizens are also putting it to the government that when the system is fixed, the attitude of the citizenry will automatically be fixed.

Now, who carries the weight to change the system? Yes, attitude changes are very important because it is the only word that has a hundred per cent (100%) hidden in it when you add its position in the alphabet. Perhaps, when there is a change in attitude it yields positive results, progress and development.

What is attitude?

According to Gordon Allport, “An attitude is a mental and neural state of readiness, organized through experience, exerting a directive or dynamic influence upon the individual’s response to all objects and situations with which it is related.”

Frank Freeman also said, “An attitude is a dispositional readiness to respond to certain institutions, persons or objects in a consistent manner which has been learned and has become one’s typical mode of response.”

According to N.L. Munn, “Attitudes are learned predispositions towards aspects of our environment. They may be positively or negatively directed towards certain people, service, or institution.”

According to Wikipedia, we have three bases of attitudes and these are:

Compliance

This refers to a change in behaviour based on consequences, such as an individual's hopes to gain rewards or avoid punishment from another group or person. The individual does not necessarily experience changes in beliefs or evaluations of an attitude object, but rather is influenced by the social outcomes of adopting a behaviour change.

The individual is also often aware that he or she is being urged to respond in a certain way, Target may or may not recognize that they are being urged to act in a particular way.

Identification explains one's change of beliefs and affects to be similar to someone admires or likes. In this case, the individual adopts the new attitude, not due to the specific content of the attitude object, but because it is associated with the desired relationship.

Often, children's attitudes on race or their political party affiliations are adopted from their parents' attitudes and beliefs.

Internalization refers to the change in beliefs and affects when one finds the content of the attitude to be intrinsically rewarding and thus leads to actual change in beliefs or evaluations of an attitude object.

The new attitude or behaviour is consistent with the individual's value system and tends to be merged with the individual's existing values and beliefs. Therefore, behaviours adopted through internalization are due to the content of the attitude object.

Sir Winston Churchill also said that" Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference". It is very important to know about different types of attitudes because of their importance in our life.

Attitudes are primarily our response to people, places, things, or events in life. It can be referred to as a person's viewpoint, mindset, beliefs, etc. Our attitude towards people, places, things, or situations determines the choices that we make.

The various above definitions and views indicate that our leaders have the greatest responsibility to play in changing people’s attitude. Human beings are lawless by nature so where the rules and regulations are very weak like Ghana people will behave like animals.

Have you asked yourself this question that when Ghanaians travel overseas they respect the rules of the land but practice otherwise in Ghana?

This tells you that, when our leaders enforce the laws of our land, people will obey rules and regulations.

BAD ATTITUDES OF SOME GHANAIANS

Majority of the houses we see along the roadside channel their toilet outlet into gutters and open it when it is raining at the expense of other people.

Some people also intentionally package their refuse into sacks; plastic bags and either dumps it on the pavement of the road, gutters, nearby bushes or dump it into gutters when it is raining so that the running water will carry it away without thinking about the effect of flooding.

Most trotro drivers and even private car users park at unauthorized places, the worse thing and most dangerous one is Tema Motorway. While others are cruising at hundred Kilometres per hour (100 km/h), others are also busy making wrongful U-Turn on the way Motorway.

The majority of drivers in Ghana do not respect the road signs and road marking which has resulted in a lot of accidents over the years. The problems are many and countless.

But I don't blame the people because the system is like 'this is what we do here and this corresponds to the part of the definition of N.L. Munn, which states that “Attitudes are learned predispositions towards aspects of our environment, perhaps the people start to develop these attitudes from infancy because there is no law to regulate them.

Should we blame the government?

To me, the current and the previous government (Pre-Colonial to date) over the years have failed the country to execute the various laws in the country. When the laws are being enforced it will automatically change the attitude of the people.

One typical example is, during the peak of the coronavirus, the president ordered a partial lockdown and everybody respected the decisions of the president because compliance attitude has taught us that people comply with the certain situation just to be awarded or to avoid punishment.

However, it is the responsibility of our leaders to come out with cogent measures to deal with such attitudes.

Perhaps fixing the challenges of the country does not need the attitude of the citizenry but when square pegs are put in a square hole, it will automatically change the attitude of the people.

In addition, the government should strongly accept the “#FIX THE COUNTRY” challenge.