Stop the foreign aid dependency: it?s hurting our image abroad.

Someone said to me the other day that when you have a forty seven year old son and continue to feed him, pay up his monthly bills even though he?s married with children, and never try to encourage him to stand up on his own feet like a man, you?re doing him a great disservice, because if you disappear suddenly or your regular aids dried up, he could find himself in big trouble.

The above anecdote is the situation in which the Europeans find themselves with Ghana today. For decades, they pampered us with their financial aids, grants, and loans without demanding that we meet our minimum national productivity targets or even put our disorderly fiscal policy in order. Thus, creating an addiction in us to the extent that we run out to seek foreign assistance for any project we embarked upon without pausing for a moment to consider the consequences to our national image abroad.


Questions such as: what if the foreign aids ceased coming? What if our expectations for a particular year didn?t materialize? What if the world economy crashed unexpectedly and global aids from donor countries stopped abruptly, do not cross our minds.


I read the other day that Japan and some European countries have promised to finance our impending general elections in December and my own questions are: how could a sovereign country like Ghana allows foreign governments to interfere in its domestic elections that way? Don?t our leaders know that letting foreign governments participate indirectly in our local elections with their monies could potentially compromise our national security in future?


By the way, how do our elected leaders understand the term ?upholding our national security interest?? Do they think that creating clandestine police force to check on local political dissents or by monitoring the daily activities of celebrated coup masters/plotters fall into the same category as protecting the nation security interest?.


No, and big no. It?s by protecting our national political discourse from foreign influence whose so-called monetary assistance could aid them to manipulate future political discourse or events inside the country.

We?re a sovereign country for Christ sake and if we?re already collecting a hefty 40 percent of our annual budgetary requirements from foreign source, why not appropriate some of that money to fund our local electioneering campaign in order to protect our national integrity and security? Why do we have to shamelessly beg for everything from foreigner donors?


The United State prohibits foreign money in its local politics because it considers that a serious national security breach. Thus, when the Indonesian and Chinese monies found their way into its 1996 general elections campaign, various investigations were launched to determine those responsible and punish them accordingly.


If the most powerful nation in the whole wide world view outside money in its local electioneering campaign inimical to its national security interest, why not Ghana emulate that for the sake of its own national security interest?


Someone may disagree with me that we should not compare ourselves with America since they have the means to organize their elections and we don?t. But that?s simply not true. First, if we?re aspiring to become like them tomorrow then we ought to start acting like them today. Second, we can afford to finance all of our local elections if our elected leaders stop embezzling or misappropriating our resources.


Sometimes, I wonder why our leaders do not recognize the implications of Ghana being perceived as a beggar nation by white folks. Perhaps, it?s because the majority of them did not live on foreign soil nor lived there long enough to understand the position that beggars hold in western societies. They command no respect whatsoever!

We?re less than 20 million people on one of the safest countries in the world, with one of the best natural resources: our human character. We also have abundant physical resources with plentiful water as well as sunshine, yet continue to solicit for food aid from people living in temperate zones. We were formerly known as the ?Gold Coast? but alas continue to trot the globe begging for monetary assistance for anything including running our own local elections. Why? Please tell us why?


If you remove Ghanaians from that country and replace us with few white folks, they?ll turn the place into a paradise and then celebrate for a century for the opportunity given to them. We?ve no cold weather, no harsh winters, no stress, and no prevalent strife such as tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, and etcetera, that bedeviled many western countries in which the majority of Ghanaian citizens are currently residing.


So why are we suffering? Maybe every Ghanaian citizen living in abroad may need to go back home to help build our country before it?s too late.

Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.