A Response to Seeing Ghana Beyond Accra

As someone from Sekondi-Takoradi, I was surprised to find myself disagreeing with the author of “Seeing Ghana Beyond Accra”. My disagreement with the author wasn't the fact that I disagree with his general premise that there is more to Ghana than Accra but that he tries to suggest that unity and cohesion can be achieved by simply changing the way the private and governmental sectors of Ghana go about their day to day business.

“Seeing Ghana Beyond Accra” suggest that the GFA can do more to promote unity and cohesion in Ghana by scheduling the Ghanaian national team to play around the country. GFA job is to make sure that the national teams are comfortable and successful and not to promote national unity. Henceforth if the FA needs to play all their matches in Accra to ensure that the players have less “mile” on them in other to be successful on the playing field, then so be it. Also, when did Ghana Education Service (GES) become the Tourism Board? It is not GES job to promote unity and cohesion in the country by basically relocating high school kids across the country to learn about other societies and culture. As all Ghanaians know, most of us know the high schools we want to attend if we do great in the BECE even before 6 grade. I for one knew that I was supposed to attend Mfantsipim even before 2nd grade, this is because my grandfather was a MOBA and so are most of my emes and elder brother. Henceforth imagine being thrown into Yendi by GES for the sake of national unity and cohesion, I don't know about you but that will make me hate everything about and the government, because I didn't sacrifice sleep in junior high school to be thrown into Yendi.

The author of “Seeing Ghana Beyond Accra” used South Africa as a prime example of how having different capitals for different branches of government might help Ghana promote unity and cohesion. A Ghanaian need not look any harder to know that having different capitals does nothing to promote any unity. Our friends to the west, Cote d'Ivoire have such an arrangement, with the Abidjan been their commercial capital with their administrative capital in Yamoussoukro, but I haven't seen any country that the north want to kill the south when giving the chance except Nigeria. Oh by the way Nigeria as a country also have two capitals with Lagos been the commercial capital with their administrative capital at Abuja(Aso Rock). And for those of you who are not aware, Abuja is a planned city, specifically built in the center of Nigeria to help soothe the tensions between the north and south.

I know I sound as a bearer of bad news, but all I want all who read this to know that Ghana doesn't have a unity problem. It's an election year and tensions are running high. In my view it's great that tensions are high. I would be more worried if are all loosey-goosey during an election year. Tensions in an election year signifies that we put a premium on our democratic process and we do care about we ends up having to run the country the next four year. Yes we have to do more to build other parts of Ghana not named Accra, but please do not cloak the debate about building developing our nations into one of Unity and cohesion. This is because Ghana does not have a Unity and Cohesion problem.

A Response to Seeing Ghana Beyond Accra
By Kwamina Nyan Wallace
Buffalo, NY.