The HOMOSEXUAL ISSUE in Ghana and Africa!

Several African nations seem to have woken up this past week when US Vice President Kamala Harris visited Ghana and some other Africa nations and brought this controversial topic of LGBQT.

The sense of media attention this issue has brought depicts the priorities in our nation! Not that people should not stick to their traditional values; however, these MPs in Ghana and their sense of values and responsibilities to the nation seem so thwarted!

As a nation Ghana is on the edge of economic bankruptcy or perishing, having resorted to massive borrowing from the World Bank and IMF - seventeen times in 60 years, and shown extremely poor discipline and irresponsible financial planning! It is pathetic indeed our children and grandchildren cannot find jobs in Ghana when they graduate from Universities!

My grandnephew wrote me today having graduated in Science with very good grades at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, working for government in some important medical research work as his National Service in some establishment; and he has not been paid in 5 months!! “Grandpa, you have not sent me any dollars lately”- he said in a joke.

What the heck is going on in the minds of these elected officials! To quote a younger Medical Doctor friend on the GLU forum, are these people thinking?

And the only time these people in parliament seem to think and have come together as one body is on this Homosexual issue!

When it came out that the Akufo-Addo government had failed to balance the budget and were planning to seek external funding in addition to the more than $3.2 billion already borrowed in a short span of 5 years, members from both parties seemed to have come to an agreement to seek the resignation of Finance Minister Ken Ofori Atta. However, after a meeting with the President, it seems he had charmed them to silence and acquiescence! Some suggested money in envelopes were the traditional means of silencing dissent!

Oh! WHAT PRIORITIES these people have!
Ghana loses 100,000 of our people every year to preventable diseases like malaria; and

- We lose about 3,500 or so from poor roads and highways.

- the Under-5 mortality rate is more than 90-97 per 1,000 live births- meaning 9-9.7% of every 100 babies born in Ghana do not reach age of 5 because of these preventable diseases and illnesses!

These have not been important enough in Parliament to see a United discussion and debate to find solutions!

Our water system in even some of the most affluent areas in our city are unreliable and almost every home has to invest another $5,000 to $20,000 in purchasing and installing huge water storage tanks called poly-tanks, and Power Generators! Some of them are like small power plants costing over $20,000!

Within the last 6 months alone our big Polytank in East Legon house has failed us many times and we have had to buy water from tankers! This system was alleged to have been set up by some executives of Ghana Water company as a private arm to supply water to customers in trucks! What a disgrace!

We as a people cannot think and execute any projects led by the people we elect! It has been suggested by one member who worked for decades in Canada, that the core reason for this shameful leadership outcomes in Ghana and most African is not lack of intelligence but the selfishness and greed of elected and appointed officials!

How dare these people waste time discussing some ideas being imposed or suggested for us! It makes no sense!

I find it unfortunate for US Vice President Kamala Harris to have even brought up this topic since it is irrelevant and nobody can impose acceptance of American values on Africans just as Africans do not demand Americans to change some of their values about the use of guns!

It is more valuable in the minds of most members on our Ghana Leadership Union (GLU) platform to focus on priorities such as employment creation, healthcare services to the poor, cleanliness of our cities, elimination of the ugly open gutters, and how to attract foreign capital and provide guarantees to attract capital in general, as well as better services of water and electricity. Let our leaders leave such irrelevant issues about other people’s sexual preferences, be they Biblical or not, aside for Americans and other nations to decide for themselves! It is a major distraction and Americans should also learn from this!

Long live relationships between Ghana and America and other nations, and let everybody mind their own businesses and forget what others do in the privacy of their own homes!

We have more important priorities as a people!

Kwaku A. Danso, PhD,
Intn’l President, Ghana Leadership Union (GLU).