Indiscipline In Ghana: Where Does It Take Us?

Do we pause a moment to ask ourselves as Ghanaians where our indiscipline is taking us? We live in a country where doing the wrong thing rewards than doing the right thing. As a result, those who do the right thing entertain fears doing so and are often compelled to join the wrong doers! The irony sometimes is that, those compelled to join the wrong doers are often punished while those who indulge in that act often do it and go off the hook. The question is whether such people have the license to do wrong. For instance, there are cases where some people drive or park carelessly but nothing happens to them. Others do so sometimes by mistake and people calling themselves Metropolitan or Municipal guards clamp their cars!

My friend Nitiwul and I were victims of this in Accra in 2008. As political allies who had not seen each other for so long, spotted each other in traffic and out of excitement, we stopped over at the Tetteh Quashie interchange to fraternize. Just minutes after we engaged in a chat, our vehicles were clapped in front of us and carried to AMA where we had to pay before they were released to us. Yet, in front of the same AMA guards, taxi and trotro drivers commit the same offence without any punishment if what we did was an offence.

In my university days in the late 1990s, I met a friend at the Legon drama studio in a queue who asked me to join him in the queue. I felt it was wrong to jump the queue so I declined and followed the last person in the queue where I felt was my rightful place. He became offended and told me that if that was the kind of attitude I was going into life with, I better be careful because that is not the norm in Ghana. Although I was not happy for making him feel bad for doing the wrong thing, I was satisfied for doing the right thing.

Has this situation changed since then? No! That has been the norm today as there are countless incidences of that nature in our society. For me, it is the reason why indiscipline has become the order of the day in our society as there is no punishment for wrong doing. For instance, a few months ago, one of the two lanes leading to my house in Tamale was blocked by a landlord who claimed that the place was part of her plot and not a road. Efforts to get the Sagnarigu Municipal Assembly to address the situation yielded no results.

It is a usual practice for motorist to drive into main roads or streets in Tamale without stopping to check whether it is safe to do so. While this was mostly a practice by motor riders, vehicles have also taken to that practice because there is no punishment for doing so. For motor riders in particular, their behaviour on the road seem to suggest that road traffic regulation are only meant for vehicles users. So it is a common practice for them to ride and cross on-coming vehicles recklessly. While the emergency unit of the Tamale Teaching Hospital is often full of accident cases involving motor riders, they seem not to learn any lessons from their reckless behaviour on the road.

What is even worrying is the show of sympathy for victims of such reckless accidents. The last time a motor rider ran into my vehicle and I wanted to take him on, onlookers quickly came to his aid by begging me to let him go. When they realized I was serious about taking action, they colluded to get him run away with his motor bike. That is the kind of society we live in today in Ghana.

What about the students that we are training to take over from us as future leaders? The least talk about them the better! A student misappropriates students’ funds or commits an offence and you want to take him on and then you become alone against the student and his fellow students as they will sympathize with him. This is not an imagination but real as my dealings with students prove.

As a country, we have an agenda of improving upon our lives or changing the fortunes of the country for the better. Can such attitudes achieve this? No wonder we continue to so many development challenges. Some may think what they experience in one part of the country only pertains there. No! We are the same people so we have similar treats. Besides, we are bound by the same rules and regulations as a country.

We need to change our attitudes by doing the right thing. Nobody achieves different results by doing what they do all the time. You do not achieve anything meaningful by staying in your ‘comfort zone’. You need to leave that comfort zone and veer into the unknown and out of confusion, frustration and difficulty, you discover or learn something new that adds to what you know already and by so doing you add value to yourself. That is how development or change or innovation comes about.

Therefore, for us to achieve desired outcomes as a country, the government needs to leave its comfort zone not taking decisions that may cost it of the next election and crack the whip on the citizenry who will not do the right thing. The opposition also needs to leave their comfort zone of criticizing the government even when they know latter is doing the right thing. The citizenry need to leave that comfort zone of indiscipline and do the right thing. The law enforcement agencies should enforce the law against those citizens who refuse to do the right thing. Opinion leaders or influential people in society should allow the law to work by not interceding for wrong doers when they find themselves on the wrong side of the law. In essence, everybody needs to do the right thing. That is the attitude that increases human wellbeing not indiscipline! We all need to pause a moment and reflect on this and do what is required of us to change the fortunes of our nation!!!

Dr. Adams Sulemana Achanso
Socio-Political Analyst
Dean, Faculty of Education
University for Development Studies
Tamale Campus

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