LET’S GET SERIOUS!!!! Ghana: beyond big words, little action!

What kind of place would Ghana be if all its great laws passed by Parliament, and fantastic policies, advocated by its policy makers, were rigorously implemented.

Paradise!
When I was young, growing up in Agona Nkwanta, I used to hear my elderly friends telling each other “you are a man of big words, but do little”. I did not understand this until lately. People can speak about doing huge things, but end up doing just nothing at all.

Sometimes, I wonder what kind of comments people from other countries pass about my beloved, Ghana. For some of the comments that I hear about this sweet home of mine, I cannot help, but cry silently.

Ghana is a nation full of laws, but very little enforcement. As my ninety-three years old grand mum in my little village, Busua, would put it “we have laws from Kojo-hoho to Kwabena-hehe”, yet only a few of them have been implemented and successfully enforced.

Since I was born somewhere in the nineteen-eighties (1980's), there have been several laws that have been passed in this country, but shortly after their passage into law, we hear of them no more. We spend the tax payer's money in paying those who formulate the laws, pay those who debate on them to have them passed, as well as those who enforce it. But what do we see? The tax payer's money is used to do all these with minimal benefit being derived from that investment. The wonderful brains that are used in formulating and passing these laws are also used in vain.

So do we, as a country, have a law enforcement unit at all? Why do we continue to pass laws in this country when we cannot enforce them?

I seriously started to follow proceedings from our honourable Parliament House not long ago, and I can cite quite a number of laws that have been passed but woefully implemented and enforced. Some of the laws passed by our parliament include Copyright Act 2005 (Act 690), Copyright Act, 2005, Layout-Designs (Topographies) of Integrated Circuits Act, 2004, The Patent Law, 1992, Environmental Assessment (Amendment) Regulations, 2002, Road Traffic Act, Act 683 2004, Ghana Maritime Security Act, 2004, The Electronic Transactions Act of Ghana, Act 772 of 2008, The National Information Technology Agency, Act 771 of 2008, National Health Insurance Act 2003, National Health Insurance Regulations 2004, The Computer and Computer related Crimes Act 2005, among a host of other laws.

One cannot forget the popular Representation of the People's Amendment Law (ROPAL), which was passed into law by the then President of the republic, H E John Agyekum Kufuor, on Feb. 27, 2006. This law was to allow Ghanaians living abroad (GLAs) to vote abroad in Ghana's parliamentary and presidential elections.

As I write this article, I am not privy to whether this law is even on the consideration table for implementation. Just recently, a law banning smoking in public was passed. I, in particular, was extremely happy upon hearing of the news, and thought this will put an end to the discriminate public smoking that we have been experiencing since…….. only God knows when.

I might not be correct, but what I know is that when a law is passed by parliament, and with the president's assent, it begins to take effect immediately especially after the legislative instrument guiding its implemented is outlined. Perhaps the existence of laws without legislative instruments could itself be one of the root causes of the non-enforcement of those laws. This made one think that smoking in public was going to stop. But that has not been the case.

At the same time that the law concerning banning smoking was passed, I also heard of the passage of another law banning drivers from receiving or making telephone calls whilst driving. It was a piece of relief for me and some of my colleagues since we have been ardent campaigners for this law. To my biggest surprise, however, some drivers even receive calls right in front of police officers.

This attitude of ours, Ghanaians, is not peculiar to laws, but also policies and projects. Once, a Nigerian friend of mine by name; Okechukwu, told me that Ghanaians seem only interested in attending 'big' conferences and seminars to formulate policies, and dumping them on shelves in our offices, whilst they (Nigerians) come for those brilliant ideas and implement them. Indeed Okechukwu made me feel ashamed of my people, at least temporarily. But Okechukwu did nothing wrong but to tell me the truth, because that is the hard truth that we, Ghanaians have to live with.

We are people of big words with little action. In other words, we are “speak big and do little people”. This is in fact our attitude. Whenever I have had the opportunity to sit in seminars that are meant to come out with something to help develop Ghana, I feel proud to be Ghanaian, and shortly after, all my pride dissipates. This is because people present brilliant ideas which we put together into great policy documents, hoping for their rigorous implementation for all Ghanaians to benefit thereof. Many of these documents never see the light of the day, but rather languish on the desks of some people with either a clear mandate to oversee their implementation or follow it up to the appropriate quarters for implementation.

One of such policies is the Ghana Youth Policy. As I write, I do not know what has become of the policy after its launch in Elmina. Meanwhile, the issues like, a, b, c, for which solutions have been proposed in the youth policy continue to exert their deleterious effects on a daily basis. Do we always have to allow our policies to rot? The fact of the matter is we spend huge sums of money to pay for the accommodation, feeding and other honorariums for people to come up with such policies only to abandon them to someone's desk to collect dust.

We must bow our heads in shame, and start to think again. As a nation, have we been fair to our tax payers in terms of laws and policies? Let's learn from our past and begin to improve upon our implementation and enforcement ability, as a nation. Much needs to be done.

Samuel Kojo Brace,
[email protected].