The Chronic Rhetoric Speeches And Matching Are Not Enough To Celebrate Our Independence Day Yearly.

I never wished anyone a Happy Independence Day today simply because; I doubt if there is any day like that to celebrate in this country. What sort of Independence did Ghana gain, yet our leaders move around with big bowls begging? I can't be part of such nonsense!

Perhaps our colonial masters should come back and define the kind of Independence they granted us. It's my strongest conviction that we were only granted political independence, hence this economic dependency. I sometimes wonder if this country ever gained independence at all.

Nkrumah will weep blood if he comes back from his tomb to see the country he fought tooth and nail to gain access to freedom with this level of economic encumbrance. What don't we have to make this country work towards development? If it is natural resources, we have almost all if not all. Tell me what else we need as a country to develop that we don't have. Oh okay! I now remember. We lost track of leadership at a point in time and we never regained that. Then why don't we ask our colonial masters to come back and rule us instead of going back to them to beg like beggars on the streets?

For me, it's absolutely nonsense to keep celebrating this day without anything to show it. Don't tell me the freedom we have as a country is all we need to celebrate. Was the independence just fought for that purpose? Nkrumah believed and said the black man was capable of managing his own affairs. But I must say that was then not now. It can't see any management apart from mismanagement. Corruption is now pervasive and accepted as a normal practice in society.

Politicians don't longer stand for election to contribute towards the development of the country but to merely enrich themselves. This is what has created a dichotomy between the ruling class or politicians and the ordinary Ghanaian. The agenda of getting rich quickly has pushed a lot of fine brains in other sectors of the economy to join the political train. We are now losing lecturers, doctors, nurses, teachers, and other technocrats to politics. Everybody knows that it's only through politics one can become a millionaire within no time. People we know who couldn't even buy a bicycle tyre or put up a one-bedroom apartment are now owners of a fleet of cars and mansions not only even in the country but abroad.

Why should I then join the political armed robbers in the display of their wealth during other national events like the Independence Day celebrations? Why should I? They usually come to the ground in their luxurious cars and dressed like saints and angels but they are the cause of our economic woes. If they don't rob us in our faces, they hide under some weird laws like Article 71 in our Constitution and the rest to rob us. How can someone work just for four years and his or her end-of-service benefits ( ex gratia) will be a thousand times more than the ordinary hard-working teacher, driver, nurse etc who has been working for close to two if not three decades in public offices? This is a completely broad-day robbery.

Someone should just explain this to me. Do article 71 holders work and sleep at their offices every day even during holidays? The DCE, who comes to meet the coordinating director, the finance officer, the driver, the security man, the office cleaner, etc. at the end of just four years, goes home with huge sums of money leaving those very people she or he came and met still collecting meagre salaries. Is it this system of cheating the poor in a society that we must celebrate or what? I can't be part of this stupidity. We should be celebrating our achievements but we rather have none to celebrate.

Yes! We have nothing to celebrate, because if 66 years after gaining independence our leaders are seen everywhere in the world begging for money, then what are we celebrating? I know counties borrow to survive, I don't doubt that. But I also know many countries which don't have even a fraction of what we have here in terms of our natural resources, but their level of indebtedness is comparably lower than this country called Ghana. I often ask myself that without those who lend us the money have our development at heart. Because; we can be borrowing all the time and have nothing to show for it. The IMF, World, and other donor countries need to raise red flags about the way we borrow in this country and certain communities still compete with animals to drink muddy water which is the only source of water available.

As for the other areas like health care delivery, roads, schools, etc. the least talk about them the better. This is why I want to believe the World Bank, IMF, and the other developed countries that colonised us before wish you see us under this form of colonisation thus, economic dependency. So that, when they need us to accept and endorse certain stupid regulations, they won't suffer to cow us into submission. If this isn't the case, then tell me why a body or a country will use grants or loans as bait to get another country to accept and implement laws that are against their morality and culture. Gays' rights immediately come to mind!

I can't readily remember, but I know there was a year the government said we couldn't celebrate this worthless event owing to a lack of funds. Did anything happen to anyone because we didn't celebrate it? At the moment, we are told the country is on the verge of collapse or not collapsed financially. So, what informed us to celebrate our none performance this year as Independence Day? We are just not serious as a country. We keep setting wrong priorities and being reactive instead of proactive. And I think we do these things deliberately because those who do them, stand to benefit from those misplaced priorities and policies.

In the nutshell, I must say this Independence Day celebration should be cancelled or postponed till such a time that we can celebrate with enough Merrymaking. It's also imperative to channel our resources to the development of our country and not a selected individual - politicians. The waste in payment of ex gratia to article 71 holders must also stop now. Let's set the right priorities through feasible policies that can move the country out of its current messy state. Corruption in political positions shouldn't be attracting our best brains from other sectors of the economy.

Ghanaians are watching!