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08.07.2008 Feature Article

A Season Of Wild Promises

A Season Of Wild Promises
08.07.2008 LISTEN

My heart bleeds anytime I see these young boys and girls fighting for space in heavy traffic to draw attention to their wares.

Occasionally a few get knocked down by vehicles and disabled or if less lucky, get consumed by death.

These are children of school age who are not in part-time business to support their poor parents but are actually in serious business as street traders and are almost living independent lives even before they attain adulthood.

When we hear of armed robberies, we all express our indignation at the perpetrators of those heinous crimes and wish them instant death.

 

However, we are sometimes taken aback when we see photographs of these armed robbers published in the newspapers.

Most of them are our children who fall in the age range of between 17 and 25. These are boys and young men who should either be in the classrooms accumulating knowledge for future use or in the workshops preparing themselves as future masters in some profitable ventures.

Unfortunately, the life path of these youngsters have not been guided well by their parents and society in general, so instead of children growing full of hope and promise to build this country into a better place than they came to meet it, we have created cynical children who start life as street traders and gradually graduate into prostitutes and gangs of armed robbers who parade the streets, highways and dark alleys of our communities to wreck vengeance on us.

No society can be free of miscreants and deviants — armed robbers and prostitutes included — but good and responsible parentage and good and visionary political leadership could direct children in their critical formative years onto the path of responsible and useful adulthood.

Over the years, we have not been able to fashion out an effective youth policy that would shape the future of our children.

 

The educational system which is the first step in this direction has not been all that helpful because it itself lacks any coherent and consistent direction.

We have changed the names of our schools several times without adding any qualitative improvement to their facilities to enable them to deliver what is expected of them.

The Free and Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) does not seem to be working despite what the political praise singers will want us to believe because educational infrastructure is still woefully inadequate.

 

Where there are classrooms, there are no teachers. Where there are teachers, the pupils have tree leaves as shades and the bare hard ground as their blackboards.

The Capitation Grant and the School Feeding Programme have been songs on the lips of many government officials.

 

That is understandable. But have they brought any measurable improvement into the school system?

The large numbers of street hawkers in our cities and towns do not give credit to the educational system which is still alien to many of our schoolchildren.

Since the fall of the First Republic, this country has been experiencing serious leadership crisis and as we prepare for another baton change, the question on the lips of many is; “Are we going to be lucky with a visionary leader, or just another ruler?”

Successive governments have failed to give credit to others while trying to immortalise themselves.

 

This has affected consensus building on national affairs. So we continue to dig foundations when we should be expanding existing infrastructure.

 

Already the promises have started coming in torrents as if this nation can only survive on unfulfilled promises.

Each presidential aspirant has his fair share of promises to make and do so without any qualms because they know at the end of the day, many will not even remember them, and if some do, their concerns will be drowned in the cacophony of partisan praise-singer noise.

For now, we may continue to feed on freely available promises. The Zuarungu Meat Factory will restart operation within 100 days of Dr Paa Kwasi Nduom's presidency.

 

He has also promised to challenge the motorcade of the American President by relying on a locally-manufactured vehicle for his presidential rides.

The people of the Volta Region will wake up one day to see a giant public university in Ho, the regional capital.

 

 That is if they are able to vote for Nana Akufo-Addo to become the President of the Republic. It could also mean that if Nana Akufo-Addo becomes the President without the help of the Volta Region, the people may lose their university.

 

 That is how state resources have been turned into private resources to be dispensed with as determined by an individual.

Dr Edward Mahama has already made his promise and said among others that if it even requires that he walks to his presidential office to save scarce resources he will do so.

 

Mr Dan Lartey's laudable domestication policy is already well known. Life without hope is not worth living and promises are like the oils which lubricate the wheels of politics. We can, therefore, not avoid them at this period.

Our interest is, whether they are serious or vain ones. We have had enough promises from politicians which should have turned this country into a paradise by now and it is time we began to hold them to their promises.

Whatever the case, we want a visionary leader who will see Ghana beyond his tenure. We need leaders who will not take decisions at the spur of the moment without considering their long-term effects.

 

Government's decision in reaction to soaring prices of food items on the world market may be beneficial in the short-term but detrimental to the nation in the long run.

We reasoned that the best solution to the food problem is to reduce import tax on rice and other food items brought into the country.

 

We did not ask ourselves how we can utilise the abundant water resources available for irrigation farming.

Our immediate interest was to use an avoidable situation to enrich a few merchants who import rice and other cereals and make farmers in the United States of America (USA), Thailand, Vietnam and Brazil richer at the expense of our farmers.

We did not think of giving local farmers incentive packages that could encourage them to produce more.

 

 Instead of making it easier for them to compete favourably against foreign imports, we have rather made their work more difficult by encouraging cheaper imports.

 

We did not think of building more silos to store food during the season of abundance and release these onto the market in times of need.

 

We never gave serious thought to the condition of roads in the rural works where the bulk of the foods we consume come from.

We want a leader who will boost agricultural production with emphasis on irrigation farming. We do not want a President whose ministers will be competing with traders on the import market.

 

Such conflict of interest cannot lead the nation to progress. We want a leader who will not beg at the least opportunity for foreign support, oblivious of the huge resources and talents already at his disposal.

We have come to admire begging as something honourable so much so that we never end any overseas trip without appealing to our hosts for one form of assistance or the other. When we play host, the subject matter is the same – begging.

We want a leader who will pick his working team not as a matter of political expediency or personal aggrandisement but with the national interest at the back of his mind.

 

Ministerial appointments over the years have become gift parcels doled out to loyalists, friends and praise singers.

We have celebrated 50 years of independence with very little to show for it because over the years, we have worshipped our positions without bothering to leave any legacy for posterity.

Nana Akufo-Addo has promised to raise the police service strength to 50,000. That is good, but it will be better to remove those things which make otherwise innocent people turn into criminals.

 

I am talking about idleness and joblessness. The streets are not the place for our children.

Something positive should be done to remove that multitude of boys and girls and young men and women from the streets and put them into something more productive.

 

 We do not want to see our children squatting on the floor doing their class work while politicians drive in expensive four-wheel vehicles on our traffic-jammed streets.

We have spent a lot of our national life talking. We want a leader who will be more active attending to our problems and not the one who will spend more time praising himself or condemning all others.

The traffic lights in our cities and towns most of the time have become museum pieces, giving unsolicited assignment to tree-branch-waving young men who are more of beggars than traffic wardens.

We need a positive change not as a slogan but as a reality. Our tourism potentials have still not been developed and there are opportunities in this sector for rural developoment, youth employment and revenue generation for the nation.

As we wait for more promises to come when the campaign gets hotter, our prayer is that our political leaders put this nation's interest at the centre-stage in all their endeavours.

 

 They should not be carried away by the promise of the glow and glitter of public office and deliver wild promises they faithfully know they cannot deliver.

 

This country deserves more than it has been given so far.

By Kofi Akordor

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