The Development of Ghana is a Mirage if Without an Acceptable LongTerm Development Plan in Place

Following my previously published article on how best Ghana can be developed, I have come back to emphasise the need for having in place an acceptable long term Development Plan. Without such a plan, but rather going by our successive governments’ knee-jerk national development plans or policies coupled with the official corruption, embezzlement of funds and State assets, Ghana will continually remain a shithole.

In my said previous article, I suggested a 30-year Development Plan where every successor government will have to keep to the same plan; continue to completion national projects already started but could not be completed by the outgoing government. This will enable the nation realise more projects than keep abandoning uncompleted projects started by a previous government to start new ones by the incoming government. For at the end of the day, it is the nation and the citizenry that suffer losses when projects are often abandoned by myopic governments.

Most of our short-sighted politicians wearing opaque partisan lenses, often keep accusing a new government of having no ideas of its own when it decides to complete the projects started by the departing government. Subsequently, the incoming governments may decide to start something new of their own to prove to Ghanaians that they have their own ideas for developing the nation. This cycle of starting and abandoning projects by our Ghanaian governments costs the nation dearly and is the culmination of the short-sightedness, if not the total stupidity, of the governments.

For the fact of not having a long term national development plan, you see our presidents promising to execute or carry out projects which are not captured in our announced annual budgets, whenever requests are made of them by chiefs and communities when they are touring the nation. Very often, their response to such untimely requests is, “Yes, I shall”. They fear the backlash against the government should the president say, no I can’t because there is currently no money earmarked for this requested project.

You either choose to become a “King Promise” without actually having the means to fulfil the promises but hope to cleverly get away with them since “a promise is a debt to pay but not the debt itself”, or you say no, only to face the anger of reject by the particular people or community at a future general election. The president at this juncture finds himself in a dilemma; wedged between a hard surface and a rock.

Look at this clear example which typifies the dangers of having no long term national development plan. In Dr Kwame Nkrumah’s Conventional People’s Party (CPP) government’s era, the Ghana Education system was as follows; six years of Primary school education, four years of Middle school education (making a total of ten years of Elementary education), five years of Secondary school and two years of Sixth Form before proceeding to the University.

In Dr Kofi Abrefa Busia’s Progress Party (PP) government’s period, the education system was the same as Dr Nkrumah’s. However, he had plans to introduce the British system of education to Ghana where the Middle school would somehow be done away with. His government could not even survive its first term in office when it was unfortunately booted out of office by a military junta led by the late executed Head of State Colonel (later to become General) Ignatius Kutu Acheampong.

In General I.K. Acheampong’s Supreme Military Council (SMC) government’s time, the education was same as under his predecessors but with a pilot scheme of Dr Busia’s vision started somewhere.

However, when Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings took over the reins of government, especially when he craftily changed from his military uniform under Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) into a civilian government under the National Democratic Congress (NDC), he rolled out the Junior Secondary School (JHS) and Senior High School (SHS) throughout the country without better preparation.

The new system was as follows. Six years of Primary school, three years of JHS, three years of SHS and then bingo, University.

When former President Kufuor with his New Patriotic Party (NPP) government took over in 2000, he changed the three years SHS to four subsequent upon the poor performance by students as a result of not having enough years in the SHS.

When the late President Evans Arthur Mills with his NDC government took over in 2008, he changed it back to three years. It was purely to satisfy his party’s agenda of being the masters and are those in power so a policy started by the founder of their party should not be changed anyone but to remain as it originally was.

If Ghana were to have a long term development plan with our education system fully captured in, would we be witnessing the confusion about our education system as just explained above? No!!

In Dr Busia’s time, he is understood to have devised a plan to develop Ghana going by region to region. This gave rise to a region ending at the bottom of the development hence myopically mocked as No. 9. At least, he had a viable plan in place but not the later to be envisaged jumbled knee-jerk plans by the succeeding governments.

In my previous article, I suggested a 30-year Development Plan but for Ghana to successfully emerge from her underdevelopment, we need a solid 50-year Development Plan in place to guarantee continuity by successive governments.

Again, let us please do away with the ruinous short-sighted four-yearly payments of ex gratia and government-guaranteed car loans to our Members of Parliament. Can’t we use such monies to construct classroom blocks for those primary schools pupils sitting under trees and are without furniture but sitting on the floor and writing on the floor? The pupils use the floor as their writing exercise books and their fingers as pens. Shame on us as a nation where parliamentarians are taking double-salary, four-yearly ex gratia running into hundreds of thousands of Cedis and soft government-guaranteed car loans.

Rockson Adofo