GANGSTERS' PARADISE

Once upon a time, a new democracy was born in sub-Saharan Africa, from the union of the then Gold Coast and British Togoland, a country which we call Ghana. The motto we chose for ourselves was “Freedom & Justice”. The Ghana Nkrumah left from us is fast metamorphosing very fast, in my point to view, to something that will not benefit any of us in the near future.

God blessed us with a lot of “learned” and “intelligent” men, but instead of these men uniting and leading us in building a great nation to the benefit of all, they use their intelligence to rob and play all kinds of tricks on us to enrich themselves. These people, who one way or the other end up in political power, use all kinds of means leech the poor tax payer of what belongs to him. Parliament can unanimously agree to increase the conditions of service of the Executive. To return the favour, the Executive quickly agrees to do the same for Parliament. “Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours”. Any other issue that goes to parliament will be twisted unnecessarily because of mischievous political motives. Public sector workers are crying foul because the government doesn't want to pay them a couple of months of arrears owed to them, yet the legislature and the executive agreed very quickly and easily to increase their own salaries and pay themselves arrears from 2009! Recently, the amount of money to be issued out to MP's as rent allowance made news. You don't have to be that intelligent to know this is daylight robbery by someone (or group of persons) who know(s) what he is doing, i.e. is making themselves rich with the few coins we have as a nation. It's very obvious this is a terrible solution to a genuine problem MP's may have. Our government cannot tell us it never occurred to them this was clever solution.

Many of those who we elect/appoint to certain positions do very little to solve the problems they were put there to solve in the first place. You don't have to look far to know who I'm referring to. All these people do is to make up one excuse after the other or flatly deny the existence of a genuine problems. I remember from my days in J.S.S that the first step in solving a problem is identifying that problem (Scientific Method). Is it that those we pay to solve our problems don't know this basic fact? Instead of collaborating with each other to solve our problems, we a divided between very artificial and unreasonable lines working towards the downfall of one another; what we refer to us Pull Him Down (Ph.D.)

Another problem we face is the way our leaders insult our intelligence. Skilled workers complain about conditions of service, and a politician wants to be more intelligent than a teacher/doctor etc., and plays all manner of tricks so as not to pay the labour that truly builds this country. These politicians I'm referring to don't drag their feet because there isn't money, but rather to guarantee there is enough money for them to divert into their pockets later. “You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” (Abraham Lincoln).

Borrowing money to solve our problems is not a wise way of doing things, in my opinion. If we elect someone to an office and he goes to borrow money to build roads, schools etc., then why must that person be there? Anyone could have borrowed money to do the same things. Do you deserve to be where you are? What can you do that no one else can do? We find the same phenomena all over the place. That is why when you go to an office to get a problem solved, they frustrate you with a lot of unnecessary hurdles. Round pegs in square holes.

In our Ghana, it's possible to airlift 80 million dollars worth of gold for laboratory analysis in a foreign land, while we buy a presidential jet whose cost is less that, on credit. We can also pay several million dollars of judgement debts under strange circumstances. We buy aircraft to airlift our soldiers, yet when the time comes for them to travel the aircrafts are nowhere to be found. How can an airplane just be nowhere to be found? We can ship hundreds of our compatriots abroad in the name of scholarships and leave them starving for months or even years! Problems that could have been solved with money that was budgeted for. Yet, only God knows where the money is and the problems still persists. “To oppose corruption in government is the highest obligation of patriotism.” (G. Edward Griffin).

The long and short of all these is that, in our country, we do things in a chaotic manner. Our institutions don't do what they were established to do. Why? Because we “think of our stomachs first!” If we allow things to work the way they were designed to work, a lot of our problems will be solved. If we keep doing what we like, we'll end up nowhere. Our story will not be different from other older third world countries if we don't change our ways.

And lest I forget, “those who foolishly sort power by riding the back of a tiger, end up inside”. (JFK)

Yawa K. Dogwood
[email protected]