Are Ghanaians Still “Their Obedient Servants” or not?

Looking at the degradation of lands and rivers in our communities and our inability to solve this problem in 2022 brings bitter memories and questions if we Ghanaians and black Africans overall are really free!

This is where I wish we as a society had borrowed some ideas from America about how to go to court to resolve such societal impasse!

1. We have a land and rivers and resources that belong to all of us.

2. We elect a group to take care of the resources for us and be custodians (if you want to use the big word).

3. There is a responsibility involved in this charge and some benefits, such as women laying down their cloth for the Chief to walk on, or the President using our moneys to buy huge mega vehicles and an entourage and sirens, etc when he goes places!

4. If the contract is breached by the elected or appointed or chief, should it not be natural Justice for us the people to be able to call on these men we call Honorables we created, and whose salaries and lifestyles our tax moneys pay, and seek a resolution or enforcement?

- Is this too hard a puzzle for educated people?

- do we need to wait for a Revolution? For some soldier to take a gun and come tell us what to do?

- do these lawyers spend all these years studying only to lose common sense and be quoting only from what had occurred before in England or Ghana for us to manage our society?

I cannot express my amazement to find a Lawyer with a good reputation being followed by a brilliant Lawyer GLU sponsored, would lead me on for 4-6 months and fail to come out with any solution we are willing to pay for!

Two other Lawyers appeared hopeful, only for one to write to me that anything relating to public issues would expose her to the powers that be and she is not a “big name Lawyer” up there yet to withstand the heat. Ei!

Another Lawyer was so nice and reputed to be a radical lawyer-type only to give me hope and still not a word even if you send messages!

I was born in Ghana and my whole soul and mind has been with and in Ghana trying to solve problems others have solved to make their society beautiful, clean, organized , services reliable and workable, good roads and highways and laws optimally enforced, all what goes into the modern civilization some of us and our children and nephews and grandchildren and grandnephews aspire towards!

WHAT WENT WRONG?

I have seen a lot of changes in technology and in society in America in the last 54 years! And I ask myself for Ghana: Where did we go wrong?

It was the education!!

Any of you who has lived, been educated and survived overseas, please think deeply about the change in experiences and your own experience and then remember: our brains were moulded to be “Yours obedient servants”!

YES! YES!! YES!!

CASE EXAMPLE:

I have heard enough from those who went to Public Universities in Ghana and their experiences overseas. One of my friends who returned to Legon to do a Masters in African Studies after BA in Philosophy told me his painful story.

He was failed in one course or subject and asked to come back the following year. This after spending 1-2 years in rural research; and his crime was in “challenging” the Professor in class!

He was supposed to be “An Obedient Servant”- even in a Philosophy class.

So even in education students cannot even challenge ideas. I have also experienced a sense of “liberation” and self-expression when as a young student in a Math class a Professor at the University of California at Berkeley chastised me once- “Why didn’t you raise your hands since you had the correct solution to share”! I was too scared to challenge him when he was struggling with a Math problem that we had solved in 6th form at Prempeh College.

Folks- we have a long way to go to build a nation! 65 years of Independence may seem like a long time but it is not! We are still *COLONIAL SUBJECTS!* Their “Obedient servants.

- Unable to stand up for ourselves!

- unable to negotiate fair deals for our own minerals and

- worse still unable to know we can hire people with expertise and pay them globally competitive rates to come and drill our oil or minerals and process them and package them for us!

My friends- we have work to do to obtain true Independence and global respect among equals as human beings. Reports are that even the Chinese don’t respect us and I say because of the corruptible leadership we have had. It will take a lot of planning and strategy; and some small financial commitment if we are serious to save our nation.

Dr. K. Danso

Int’l President- Ghana Leadership Union (GLU)