National Priorities And The Glaring Paradox Around Us

Sixty years and counting, it beggars belief that, we’re still battling with basic problems that range from infrastructural challenges and policies that have to do with national priorities.

Specifically: there’re no beds in our hospitals; the citizens of this country have to sit in plastic chairs to be treated; poor ambulance services nationwide; poor infrastructure right from early childhood to senior high school levels; poor road infrastructure as well as the continuous construction of two lane roads instead of six or more lanes, especially roads that lead through various towns to our neighbouring countries; poor planning of our cities and towns and its consequences during floods; and, little or no budgetary allocations to government agencies to perform supervisory roles in the various regions.

While it seems that we’re making strides in development; and, bask in the mediocrities of attending to otherwise perfunctory functions, one cannot help but see glaring paradox of inadequacies and deficiencies in our approach to prioritising development.

It gets intriguing and paradoxical when one hears the profiles of those who have been in the helm of national affairs over the last twenty five years. It is either they have had one form of education or the other in one developed country or the other, where they learnt about how these countries have designed, implemented, monitored as well as evaluated development in various sectors of their countries and yet these people can’t find the clue that hinders our development and solve it.

Governments over the last twenty five years have been establishing new agencies that are meant to be the agencies of development. Recently, there’re various development funds and authorities that have been launched to pursue development in Zongos, Northern, Coastal, and Middle Belt areas of the country. What has happened to the reason and existence of the Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs)?

If the national priority is to ensure that development reaches the grassroot, the institution that is supposed to be resourced is the MMDAs and not the establishment of new agencies. Chapter Twenty, “Decentralisation and Local Government” (Functions of District Assemblies), Article 245 paragraph (a) states: “Parliament shall, by law, prescribe the functions of District Assemblies which shall include: the formation and execution of plans, programmes and strategies for the effective mobilization of the resources necessary for the overall development of the district.”

Local Governance Act 2016 (936) defines explicitly the functions of MMDAs: it encompasses the holistic development of their jurisdictions. Thus, redressing the balance in development at the grassroot level across the length and breadth of this country is a matter of resourcing the MMDAs, and monitoring how these resources are utilised in their various jurisdictions.

The current situation fits into the popular saying: the more things change, the more things remain the same. On another level, heads of institutions and ministers of state jolt into action when there’s a flood, a fire, or a deplorable school building collapses and kills pupils. Can we ever be proactive in this nation?

Is it not sad that when Mr. P. V. Obeng had a health crisis, he was put in a taxi and, recently when Mr. Kwesi Amissah Arthur also had a crisis, reports indicate that he was put in the bucket of a pick-up? Meanwhile, at the venue of the incident there were packed fifty new ambulances.

It looks as if the leadership that we’ve had in this country over the last twenty five years have been one that has not been interested in pursuing a development agenda that’s aimed at the needs of the next generation; instead, they live in a mediocrity of praising themselves for performing perfunctory political mandates.

In his column, “The art of leadership” Dag Heward-Mills in a piece, “More revelations of the leadership of a child” (Daily Graphic, Saturday, April 14, 2018 edition, page 10) stated: “Many heads of Third World countries have presidential palaces and castles with good roads leading to them. They have running water and electricity. They have their health needs met by foreign doctors and super specialists. Their children go to school in the best schools of Europe and America. But they are unable to provide schools for the common people of that country.”

Do the basic problems reflect the kind of leadership we’ve had in the last twenty five years? Let’s pause for a moment. Let’s analyse where we stumbled; then chart a new path of doing things.

We’re in our 60s as an independent nation and a republic; let’s begin to prioritise our development such that the paradox that prevails today will be an exception and not a norm in the next sixty years of our existence.

The writer is a freelance journalist. [email protected]/[email protected].