Misconduct Of WASSCE Candidates: A Ticking Time Bomb

Over the last few days, Ghanaians have been jolted out of inertia and slumber. We woke up to incidences of vandalism, chaos, threats of the lynching of examination officials, hooliganism, and blatant disregard for the law, order, and candour.

The height of it all is the effrontery of over-pampered senior high school final year candidates who took to social media to vent their spleen on the number one gentleman of the land. To insult and disrespect the elderly is bad enough but to proceed further to hurl insult and curses on the sitting President is unheard of and abominable to be charitable.

These acts of irresponsibility and defiance on the part of the have been condemned and sanctioned by GES and rightly so but the critical question is: How did we get here?

For a long time political leadership has played ostrich with the issues of national significance including security, agriculture, education and health. Rhetoric and political assurances are not enough. We need to weep as a nation because our society is sinking fast before our very eyes and our hearts are in our mouths. There is an increasingly alarming rate of crimes, hooliganism, vandalism, radicalism and brazing defiance/impudence across the country with preposterous consequences. We have as a nation sowed the wrong seeds and we're beginning to reap inevitable fruits we are not prepared to harvest. We are sitting on thorns and thistles and the briers are beginning to pierce us on every side.

Largely, there is seething intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy in Ghana because those in academia have been hypnotized into mental inertia or social alienation by the political class. The same rod has hit the clergy, the traditional leaders, and the silent majority. Everyone is silent not because everything is right or that everyone is happy but they simply want to avoid castigation and mudslinging. They don't want to offend and ruffle the political hyenas, wolves and hawks who are ever ready to tear apart and suck the blood out of anyone who speaks up.

However, our collective failure to speak against and fight impropriety and evil in the society will ultimately spell doom for Ghana.

I think the intellectual community has generally disappointed Ghana more than any other group of people. Astute professionals and technocrats are seeking to please their paymasters in utter disregard for the national interest and the common good. Those responsible for managing our educational system have often sought to be politically correct rather than professionally and culturally correct.

This is akin to allowing a terminal sore to fester and kill you because dressing and antidoting it will cause discomfort to you. In an attempt to cover your sore with cloth in order to avoid pain and public ridicule, you only end up inflicting even greater pain and death on yourself. Our collective failure to speak against and fight impropriety and evil in the society will ultimately result in our collective failure and destruction, thus ruining every gain and legacy of society.

We owe it a responsibility not just to ourselves but also generations unborn to stand up and stand out for what is right, noble and excellent. We need to challenge ourselves to live according to our conscience underpinned by sound moral values and principles. Our generation, unfortunately, lives in and by convenience. Ours is a generation that understands only one vocabulary; consumption, consumption and consumption. We live in the now, for the now and by the now. We are fast becoming self-seekers, greedy and pleasure lovers. Self-sacrifice and self-denial are not principles within our reach anymore.

What would be our gain if only succeed in satisfying ourselves by impoverishing future generations?

I hereby call on the silent majority, the elite, the religious and traditional leaders, and more especially the youth to come aboard the caravan of reason, conscience, principles and values to take responsibility and fight for Ghana's development and future. Let's all remember that our independence couldn't have been won without the indispensable contributions of these groups.

Ghana sits on a ticking time bomb if the same youth who are beating us up and denigrating the President are the same crop of people who are to take up the mantle of leadership and control in Ghana in few years to come.

(CLEMENT ADJEI SARFO, THE CRUSADER, [email protected])