CELEBRATING WORLD ANTI-CORRUPTION DAY: THE DUTY OF THE YOUTH IS TO CHALLENGE CORRUPTION

Tuesday, December, 9, 2014 marked international anti-corruption day under the theme: ''Break the Corruption Chain.'' Its message read: '' Taking Back What Was Lost through Corrupt Practices Is Everyone's Responsibility.''

Instructively, corruption had had a devastating toll on human development particularly in Africa and Ghana for that matter given that the pervasive incidence had frittered away a great chunk of society's wealth thereby grinding to halt our development pace. That the canker is a hydra-headed systemic one cannot be overemphasized serving as the insipid pimple defacing our human existence.

Admittedly, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) posits that in our case, a whopping 10% or more of our resources are lost through corruption and the human intervention processes. This is indeed frightening and worrisome. Perforce, this trend can be put down to our moral and cultural values and proclivities as a society and it is in this direction that, the British High Commissioner to Ghana's (Jon Benjamin) attempt to interrogate these matter at the 10thanniversary of Imani Ghana viz a viz corruption is refreshingly heart-warming because, a society's value systems have a significant and telling effect on the issues of corruption.

The Africa Young Conservatives Dialogue, Ghana (TAYCD-GH), reckons that if we can make any meaningful progress in dealing comprehensively with this monster, and as it were nip it in the bud or completely uproot it, then we need a participative youth front with good moral and cultural values and a mindset or paradigm swing over with a determined resolve to deal head-on or take the bull by its horns in finding solutions to this problem. Indeed, the youth of Africa cannot renege on this duty because they are directly and conversely impacted by this evil of our society.

The absence of the requisite resources would lead to poorer social investments which would help unleash their energies and God-given potentials for a progressive future. It needn't be lost on us the fact that, Africa and Ghana has a huge youth populations with greater expectations of the good life.

Kurt Cobain cannot be farther from the truth when he said: ''the duty of the youth is to challenge corruption.''

Apparently critical and central to any efforts is the role of the President of our nation who is the first citizen of the state (primus inter paris) who holds or is entrusted with all the executive powers and is enjoined by our Fourth Republican Constitution 1992 to lead in this fight. For instance, in Chapter 6, page 35 and in article 35(8) of the constitution under the Directive Principles of State Policy, the provision read: 'the state shall take all necessary steps to eradicate corrupt practices and the abuse of power.'' The onus therefore lies on the President as the head of the state to help us deal with this social-cultural deviation.

Going from the forgone, the youth must muster the moral and cultural values to urge the President to act to save the inordinate and blatant thievery and grand corruption which is further exacerbating the sufferings of the vulnerable, women and children of our nation.

The TAYCD Ghana urges all institutions of state with the mandate to help us retrieve the lost resources, to act judiciously and with dispatch (indeed as a matter of public interest and urgency) in this endeavour and to bring all those found culpable to justice. Corruption it is said affects the poor, rather disproportionately and the youth must help abate it.