Why The Ruling Government Has Not Demonstrated Enough Leadership During This Pandemic

The novel coronavirus has adversely affected developed countries than on African and Ghana as a country. Cumulatively, its death rate in Africa can't be compared to that of Italy, Brazil or some of the European countries.

The Ghana government has not demonstrated enough leadership because;

1) We had reports from senior citizens that the government of Ghana did not close our borders at a time they advised government to prevent importation of the virus since it was in some of our neighbouring countries. We as a country regardless of the outbreak of the virus in other close countries still went ahead to celebrate Ghana's independence day when we knew very well that we had invited the diplomatic community to join us for the celebrations.

2) The lockdown of the two major cities, i.e Accra and Kumasi were not properly done. Instead of a total lockdown of these two cities, we made it partial this demonstrated government's unwillingness to bear the feeding and upkeep of the population within these cities to ensure that the virus didn't get out of these two cities to enable us contain it . Besides that, there was still movement within these two cities which was rather making it easy for others to come into contact with those who tested positive. Government failed right from the president's first address and the announcement of the closure of the boaders, the lockdown and the distribution of government hot meals.

3) The politicisation of the fight against the pandemic. Government failed to give the experts the opportunity to lead the fight against the pandemic, what we saw was politicians who have little or no health backgrounds lead the fight, which we all know that government will not be properly advised based on scientific and technological expertise.

Below are some of the members of government team;

Hon Kojo Opong Nkrumah, Hon Pius Enam Hadzide, Hon Dr Mathew Opoku Prempeh, Hon Agyyemang Badu, Dr Sarkodie Badu, the presidential advisor on health etc. With the exception of Dr Badu Sarkodie, non other person (s) has knowledge on human biology among the list.

4) The registration of the voter identity cards has shown the interest of government. It was a poor decision for government to start the compilation of a voter registration when the numbers of coronavirus cases were skyrocketing.

Government could have demonstrated enough leadership by not allowing the compilation of a registration exercise.

5) The reopening of schools without the proper measures to ensure the safety of the students.

Good Leadership should have ensured that all the necessary requirements for the safety of the students should have been kept in place before announcing the reopening.

The Nigeria minister of education said, he is not a bad/ wicked person to ask students to go back to school when the numbers of coronavirus cases are on the rise.

Like many Ghanaians said we can postpone the exams for another year but we can postpone the health of the children.

In conclusion, Government promised to accommodate all students including day students who were due to take their exams for the exams period to guarantee their safety, but government failed and hence expose the vulnerable children to the disease as many day students remained day students and had to move from their homes every school-going day to and fro.

Samari Samson Eliasu