Independence Day comparisons and other rhetorical questions

By kind courtesy of GTV... Sorry, sorry, sorry! In one journalism class, we were told we should not be saying "by kind courtesy of" but rather "courtesy (of) the thing or place," depending on where you want to put it in the sentence, the beginning or the end, and sometimes the middle. This is because they told us courtesy and kindness are from the same bloodline or kin. Most journalists trained at the Ghana Institute of Journalism, now an institute of the University of Media Arts and Communication (UNIMAC), forget this grammatical rule. I am one of the few (former) journalists who would try to remember the rules and follow them. However, the fact that experienced journalists or presenters always say "kind courtesy" makes those of us who remember and use the rule feel rather wrong. Under such circumstances, I try as much as I can to reference my source with the word "courtesy.". But I am not here to say what the journalism school taught us about 17 years ago, but about the state of our independence.

I chanced on a March 6, 1994, video of the Independence Day celebration on Facebook and other sibling social media platforms. The video accumulated a plethora of praise and admiration, as evidenced in the comments section. The icing on the cake was the fact that erstwhile leader His Excellency Flight Lieutenant Jeremiah John Rawlings was the president. Many criticized why the formation, drill, and marching by students had deteriorated from three decades down the line. There seems to be no seriousness in the Independence Day parade now as compared to the 1990s.

I don't think we should waste time comparing the March 6 parade in the 1990s to today. I tell you, those in Nkrumah's era were also better than Rawlings' time. There was a higher sense of nationalism or patriotism among Ghanaians in the First Republic than among any of the remaining three. The painful and most overlooked truth in this country is that nationalism, patriotism, and the urgency of making Ghana better have been waning after each Independence Day celebration. It's axiomatic that the only part of a country that makes one better is politics and, until recently, religion.

As for religion, wealth creation comes from philanthropic donations and contributions by Ghanaians to those allegedly chosen by God to do His work and take money on His behalf. There's a way any Ghanaian can win the argument of misuse of funds, affluence, or personal comforts derived by men of God at the expense of most of their congregation, whether the congregants are destitute or affluent. Unlike the churches that coax Ghanaians to fund the religious purse, politics coerces Ghanaians to fund the public purse. There is nothing as heartbreaking as a Christian leader who joins politicians to milk the state in the name of gifts from alleged prophecies on December 31st every campaign year, open campaign and songs with regards to "Dw3, dw3, dw3... dw3 dw3" (if you know, you know)

For some time now, young people with no salaried or paid SSNIT work experience just entered politics after national service because they feel the old folks are chopping the money and leaving them behind. What amazes me the most is why someone abroad (US, UK, or Europe) leaves a high-paying job in Cedi equivalent for a political job that pays half or a quarter of their previous job abroad.

There's no sense of urgency for the development of the nation. For education, the system is structured so that the majority will complete the universities with no ability to apply pragmatic knowledge to find solutions to simple problems. At the pre-tertiary level, a new curriculum has been introduced without the provision of standardized textbooks. The alleged LGBT content in a few of the pages of some subjects might have been the cause of the delay because of the abhorrence of the majority of Ghanaians on that nascent gender issue.

There is little to no infrastructural development due to the deliberate snail pace of projects. It takes, on average, not less than a decade to construct basic roads in Ghana. How can we accelerate projects when contractors are shareholders and financiers of a party in power?

In terms of housing, the cost involved is closest to those priced by private real estate agencies. The security services and a handful of government workers with better means of income through higher allowances, etc. will be the first to be thought about when there is housing. Most government workers, especially those in education and teaching, are left in the lurch.

Why must a cluster or apartment built by the government with shared privacy be far more expensive than building on your own? In such apartments, on your left, right, top, and back of your walls, there's another neighbour. I mean, walls of rooms, not houses, just like we have in the university hostel system. The only difference between hostels and these government flats is that they do not have shared bathrooms or kitchens. A single-room self-contained apartment, which they term studio apartments, is equivalent to building a three-bedroom apartment on your own. Who are these buildings built for? The poor Ghanaians and government workers?

I was among a group of teenagers during the Independence Day celebration in my district, and they argued about something I had been contemplating and convincing myself not to believe. To them, they'd prefer the colonial masters come back to run the country for us because we have always been worse off under our leaders. "How come the average Ghanaian worker takes him a salary between 100 and 400 dollars for a whole month?" they added. In addition to this, they believed that even if the colonial masters were directly controlling us, they'd have done better than this.

These are teenagers who are technically JHS and SHS students. This should tell us that it's an open secret that the more we move forward, the more we fail. Nothing makes sense. Religion, which originally gave us some solace, is just a rose by another name in terms of politics. The open secret is that there's nothing materially independent about a failed state. Until we strive to build Ghana for the benefit of all Ghanaians instead of a particular political party, in government or not, we will drown in self-helplessness. The best people to lead are either pushed out or die before their time.

As much as we blame politicians, we should spare a little time to blame ourselves for making corruption apathetic to our leaders. There are instances where "poor" teachers get into politics as Members of Parliament or government appointees, and in the first year, his people put every basic responsibility on him or, in a few instances, on her. Such responsibilities include payment of fees for wards of their constituents, hospital bills, huge funeral donations, brown envelopes for recruitment of constituents for jobs they are sometimes not qualified for, etc. If the politicians use the money for all these, what money will remain for the acceleration and completion of projects? We glorify the corruption and failure of governments because we also benefit from them. We are accomplices to those at the helm of affairs we have been blaming for the failure of the system and underdevelopment.