Ghana @ 53: What’s There To Celebrate?

My beloved country Ghana is 53 years old after gaining independence from the British on 6th March 1957. Celebrations have taken place all over the country, with the major one being a parade of school children attended by our president J.E.A Mills.

As a young man who was nowhere when we gained independence, I always ask myself and others who were around what we have been able to achieve as a country. I ask these questions because I fervently believe that we are not as independent as we claim we are.

If we were, how come most of our development budgets are funded by the same colonial masters we pushed out of our country to achieve independence? How come our annual budgets are drawn either wholly by or in consultation with these colonial masters before we present to our people?

If we were, how come we are still unable to cultivate enough food to feed our small population? How come we continue to import basic items like needles, toothpicks, handkerchiefs, children's toys, matches, candies, candles, underwear, pencils, etc?

The above is just a fraction of the litany of items we depend on our colonial masters for before we can survive. How do we say we are independent if we cannot do simple basic items for ourself? When you even check the business sector in Ghana at the moment, the majority of key institutions (including some parastatal organisations) are mainly managed by foreigners. Now we have foreigners ( especially Indians, Lebanese and Chinese) engaging in even petty trading, which is normally reserved for the indigenes.

I feel quite sad each day when I see young men and women queuing at odd times at various foreign embassies in our country trying everything possible to flee the country for greener pastures. I feel the more sad because they are the youth who are needed most to stay in the country and make their contributions towards the fulfilment of national economic and other goals. But who can blame these young ones? Many of them have come to the realisation that there is no opportunity whatsoever for them and as such have lost any hope of staying in the country. There are no jobs for even the few who are able to access tertiary and other allied education. The least said for those who have not got any form of education, the better.

For me as a Ghanaian, I feel proud that we are managing our own affairs as Nkrumah posited that we are capable of managing our own affairs. However, I feel we have not been able to manage our own affairs as we should have done. Most of our past governments have paid lip service to our development goals and not until we realise this and together as a nation change the way we do things, I am afraid year after year we are going to ask ourselves the same question: Has our independence made us really independent?

Abednego A. Otchere
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