At a time when Ghana desperately needs productivity, discipline, sacrifice, and national focus to rebuild its struggling economy, the decision by workers of the National Identification Authority (NIA) to embark on an indefinite nationwide strike raises serious concerns about the direction of our national thinking and priorities.
No reasonable citizen will deny that workers deserve fair conditions of service. Every worker has the right to dignity, proper remuneration, and professional respect. However, the deeper question confronting Ghana today is this: Can a nation survive if every group focuses only on its immediate interests while ignoring the broader condition of the country?
This is the dangerous mindset slowly destroying Ghana — the mentality that says: “As long as my group is satisfied, the rest of the nation can suffer.”
The NIA is not an ordinary institution. It is one of the most strategic national institutions in modern governance. The Ghana Card affects banking, SIM registration, passport applications, healthcare access, taxation, social services, and national security systems. Halting such a critical institution indefinitely does not merely inconvenience government; it punishes millions of ordinary Ghanaians who rely on these services for their daily survival and economic activities.
The painful reality is that Ghana’s economy is already fragile. Businesses are struggling. Youth unemployment remains alarming. Investors are uncertain. Public confidence in institutions continues to decline. Under such conditions, one would expect all sectors of the nation to rally around productivity, efficiency, and national recovery. Instead, what we increasingly witness is sectional pressure politics where every institution fights only for itself without considering the collective national impact.
This is what I describe as the “I” mentality — the mindset where personal or group interest becomes more important than national development.
A nation cannot progress when every sector operates in isolation from the broader national condition. Development requires shared sacrifice and long-term thinking. Unfortunately, Ghana is increasingly becoming a society driven by short-term demands rather than long-term national vision.
The tragedy is that while countries around the world are aggressively focusing on innovation, industrialization, digital transformation, artificial intelligence, manufacturing, and economic competitiveness, Ghana is repeatedly trapped in cycles of strikes, political blame games, institutional paralysis, and public frustration.
Who is thinking about productivity?
Who is thinking about national competitiveness?
Who is thinking about how Ghana can become economically strong in the next twenty years?
Too often, these conversations disappear behind demands for allowances, conditions of service, partisan politics, and institutional battles.
This is not to condemn workers alone. The government also carries responsibility. Many strikes emerge because authorities delay negotiations, fail to honor agreements, or neglect critical sectors until tensions escalate. Poor leadership and weak institutional responsiveness create frustration among workers. But even within legitimate grievances, there must still be a balance between workers’ concerns and national responsibility.
An indefinite strike in a critical institution should never become the first language of national engagement.
Ghana must begin to rethink its development culture. Nation-building cannot succeed where collective responsibility is absent. A society where every institution prioritizes its own immediate gain over national stability eventually weakens itself. The economy cannot grow in an environment of constant disruptions.
The deeper crisis facing Ghana today is not only economic. It is a crisis of mindset.
We have not yet fully developed the consciousness that national progress is interconnected. When institutions collapse, everybody suffers. When productivity declines, everybody suffers. When investor confidence weakens, everybody suffers. When governance becomes unstable, everybody suffers.
No group can prosper permanently inside a failing national system.
This is why Ghana urgently needs a new development ethic — one that places nation before narrow interest, long-term transformation before short-term pressure, and collective progress before institutional selfishness.
Countries develop when citizens understand that they rise or fall together.
Until Ghana embraces this truth, our institutions may continue fighting for separate victories while the nation itself quietly loses the larger battle for development.
Isaac Yaw Asiedu PhD
Author: Shifting Mindsets for Sustainable Development in Africa: Political Economy Perspective
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK 2025
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