Who Is A Ghanaian?

By: OBUORBA ASANTE TAADO

My Countrymen, Kindly give me a little of your time to comment on an article on Ghanaweb of Friday 13 Nov.2009,which was titled J.J.Rawlings and J.A.Kuffuor:Are they Ghanaians?.

I personally consider the article as “cheap” and meant to score cheap points.Instead of the writer telling Ghanaians who we are as a people, he just dwelt on true (full blood) Ghanaians in diaspora with “paper” citizenship of other countries. Whether we like it or not, our brothers and sisters in the diaspora are true (full blood) Ghanaians and should be accorded their due rights as citizens of Ghana. The article did not delve into the problem but only scratched the surface.

Now I pose the question again :WHO IS A GHANAIAN?

“IUS SANGUINIS” a latin word which means right of blood (ius=right to, sanguinis=blood) defines someone with the right of citizenship of a country through blood relations, for example a child born to two (full blood) true Ghanaians in Ghana or anywhere in the world has the sacred right to a Ghanaian citizenship. Then there’s the “ius soli”(,the right of one),ie the right of a child born to parents with different nationalities. For example a child with one parent being Ghanaian can claim citizenship through the parent who is Ghanaian. Then there’s the naturalization law, or citizenship through adoption which varies from country to country. The fact that some Ghanaians have acquired citizenship (naturalized) of other countries do not make them true (full blood) citizens of that country and for that matter cannot hold certain sensitive positions in the countries that offered them the “paper citizenship”. If Dr Nkrumah granted automatic citizenship to all people living in Ghana on the eve of independence, when Ghana’s borders were marked, this does not make a child of a neighbouring country or simply any foreigner born in Ghana after independence an ius sanguinis. This child should be given a “paper citizen” of Ghana and should not be allowed to hold any sensitive position in Ghana such as becoming president, army/navy or police commander, Governor of Bank of Ghana, Supreme court Judge or speaker of parliament. The reason is, this child of a non Ghanaian born in Ghana can easily denounce his Ghanaian citizenship and go back to the land of his ancestors or betray the country in times of war .My worry now, is when Ghana’s borders were marked out, all those who found their way to Ghana should have been controlled by a legislation ,with permits to stay in Ghana which they will have to renew from time to time depending on what they are doing and the contribution they are making towards the economic growth in Ghana. One may argue that there are some ethnic groups or tribes with their other halves living just at the other side of Ghana’s borders after the demarcation, but this does not mean we should accept everybody into the country without questioning the negative/social impact on our meager resources just because their other halves live outside the borders. Ghana first, our tribes second. Someone may accuse me of tribalism/ethnocentric and all that. No we must protect what belongs to us and our children .We have a situation where people come to Ghana, learn one of our local languages and quickly claim to be Ghanaians. This is wrong and should not be the case. We have allowed things to go too far and if we do not take care, we will have a situation where the true sons of Ghana will one day be denied what rightly belongs to them. What happened in ex Yugoslavia must be a lesson to us. Someone may ask:” oh what’s in Ghana to protect”?.Today we may be poor but tomorrow will be different and when the hour dawns we will have behaved like the biblical Esau. God bless Ghana.

BY: OBUORBA.

e-mail:obourba@ymail.com