The Country We Live In - What Comes To My Mind When I Think Of My Country Ghana!

On the Super Morning show (Ghana's most educative and informative morning show) on Joy 99.7 FM this morning, the host Kojo Yankson brought up an interesting and educative subject for discussion - What comes to mind when one thinks of Ghana.

His panelists Kofi Blankson Okansey, Sedem Ofori and Evron Hughes all gave very interesting views of thoughts on their nation Ghana, but one that struck me most was Sedem Ofori's description of our beloved country Ghana as a 'NATION WITHOUT A PLAN'. I cannot help but agree with Sedem that the country we live in indeed has no plan.

There's this quote by Benjamin Franklin that 'IF YOU FAIL TO PLAN, YOU PLAN TO FAIL' and that is why we are where we are - sinking deeper into a quagmire of poverty, lawlessness and massive, massive, massive corruption. 57 years of independence, I believe has yielded no commensurate dividend for the people of this country because successive goverments after Nkrumah's government has failed to make an elaborate plan of where we came from and where we aim to be in the future.

Over the years, even before independence, we've had a number of development plans prepared by the various successive governments which have had very minimal impact in the lives of the Ghanaian people. Many have argued that, the implementation of almost all these development plans were truncated due to the paucity of resources after the initial investments and changes in governments.

After we finally returned to constitutional rule in 1992, Government in 1994 set up the National Development Planning Commission by an act of parliament (NDPC Act 479) to be at the apex of the national development planning, charged with the responsibility of ensuring consistency and continuity in the framing and execution of a developmental plan and policy for the entire country but 20 years after the establishment of the NDPC, what can we show for it? Where is the national development plan?

I think that the NDPC who is tasked to develop a national plan/blueprint which all Ghanaians can rally around and identify with have failed not because of the paucity of resources and changes in governments (this is a secondary issue) but either because of the rapaciousness of those who instituted the NDPC or incompetence on the part of those who framed the NDPC, otherwise, how do one reconcile that a sensitive institution tasked with the responsibility of evolving credible medium and long term ideologies for an entire nation is headed by political appointees knowing very well that political appointees can easily be influenced by their paymasters?

One of the major problems facing this country and Africa as a whole is the observation made by Professor Kwame Gyekye in his book 'The unexamined life, Philosophy and the African Experience' that 'African nations are faced with the problem of evolving viable and appropriate democratic institutions that will be impervious to the imperious will of a corrupt and tyrannical ruler (corrupt and rapacious leadership in our case).

CONCLUSION

When I think of my Beloved Ghana, I see a country that has no effective medium and long-term plan, a sick and stagnating country, a country sinking deeper and deeper into a quagmire of poverty, lawlessness and massive corruption, a country that is surviving and not thriving But I'm Hopeful.

I believe that we can only turn the fortunes of this country around if we begin to think and evolve appropriate and credible ideologies and policies (plans, blue print.call it whatever) for ourselves, developing credible institutions and strengthening existing ones like the NDPC.

I have hope that we have spurts of civilian movements spearheaded by the likes of Kojo Yankson, Sedem Ofori, Evron Hughes, Kofi Blankson Ocansey, Michael Jarvis Bokor, T.F Togobo, Franklin Cudjoe, etc. who are bringing the issues up for discussion only that the cynic in me makes me wonder if these people would bring about the revolution we need.

God Bless us All!!!!
BETTER LUCK TO THE BLACK STARS!!!!!!!!!!!!