Recognising The Needs Of Our Young People

Young unemployed people

To be young in a developing country should be the most exciting stage in any human being's existence.

Development means change. Change brings challenges. And challenges are best met by the youth – who have not yet been made cynical by bad experience; who are not yet ready to write off every endeavour as incapable of bringing about the outcome they desire.

As a member of the generation that attained adulthood at the time our country, Ghana was born, I observed, at first hand, the enormous social changes that independence brought. We thought everything was possible. One day, the Head of News at the Ghana Broadcasting System, where I worked, was a Scot. The next day, he was on a boat home, replaced by a Ghanaian. We could all see ourselves in the Ghanaian who was put at the top. If we worked hard enough (the evidence before our eyes told us) we too would reach the top.

Meanwhile, things were changing everywhere. In the rural areas, whenever the people voluntarily started a project – such as a clinic or a school or a community centre – the Government, through the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development, would step in, offer technical assistance and makeup shortfalls in the funding of the projects, where possible.

So many projects sprang into being that our broadcasts of “home news” became something that no rural dweller could miss. Projects of the same type were – through a process of emulation – being undertaken everywhere and we gave each of them the same amount of coverage on the radio: first in English, then in Twi/Fanti, Ewe, Hausa Dagbani and ultimately, Nzima. Villages with strange names became household words. Our outside broadcasting units often went to cover live, the inauguration of such projects. It felt good to be able to participate vicariously in such projects, for they allowed everyone to “taste the fruits" of our independence.”

I am thus full of hope that the Nation Builders’ Corps (NABCO) inaugurated by the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, on 17 October 2018, will be able to grow into a strong organisation that will rekindle an interest in national development in our youth. The rekindling of such an interest cannot be taken for granted, for our history teaches us that unless great care is taken, the same failures that had led to the disintegration of similar excellent attempts to absorb the youth into productive enterprises in the past, will recur.

Two immediate danger signposts need to be erected with regard to NABCO. The first one is the over-politicisation of NABCO. Naturally, the leadership will almost certainly emerge from the ranks of the ruling NPP. That is inevitable, for the President would not like to invest GHS3 billion in a project, only to find that the project was being sabotaged by his political opponents.

Nevertheless, those selected from the NPP to give leadership to such organisations should re-orientate themselves in such a mature way as to recognise that they are engaged in a national exercise, not a partisan one.They must set a tone tat convinces even politically-motivated individuals that they are there to work for the only nation we've al got.

In other words, political affiliation should not be the only criterion upon which admission into the organisation, and promotion within it, should be based. The reason for this is, as I say, obvious from our history: the Workers Brigade set up by the Nkrumah regime, which became transformed into the Builders Brigade, was so politicised by the regime that as soon as the regime lost power, its political opponents (now newly in power) abolished it.

Yet the Builders/Workers Brigade did achieve success in some areas. For instance, it provided employment and accommodation to many of our national football stars and other sportsmen, who needed assistance because the rules of international “amateur” sports prevented them from being paid directly from their sport.

The United Ghana Farmers' Council – also established by the Nkrumah regime – as well as the State Farms Corporation, equally provided employment to many people. But again, because the (then) ruling CPP turned them visibly into organs of the party, they became hated by non-party members. And they were shown the door by succeeding regimes.

The time has come for this wasteful exercise to stop. True, our immediate ruling party, the NDC did not heed the history of such organisations when it set up GYEEDA and similar organisations. The NDC added to the odium associated with these organisations by appointing to their leadership, individuals who were so crassly ignorant of what modern statecraft requires that they “ate” public funds like guinea fowls that had chanced upon an open barn filled with millet or maize on somebody's farm!. They thus thoroughy disgraced themselves and the party that appointed them.

So, Inrepeat: in their own enlightened self-interest, those appointed to leadership in the new body, NABCO by the NPP should aim primarily to provide excellent service to the nation. It is their good work that would reflect credit upon the party that appointed them, and surprise the party's opponents.

The second danger NABCO can run into is to become somewhat “elitist”. There seems to be far too much emphasis on graduatesgaining entrance into NABCO. A leeway should be found somewhere in the organisational structure to reserve some places for non-graduate youths who possess a good aptitude and are willing to learn more, in order to acquire higher qualifications. It is necessary to fish out enterprising youths who can be trained by NABCO to acquire an employment status as close to that of the graduates as possible. The Government's labour advisers can evolve a plan to allow for this, I am sure. The plight of the unemployed youth is too glfring to be pushed under a carpet of certificates.

The President said the current intake of NABCO personnel would be the first of an envisaged 100,000 members. They would be deployed in seven critical areas of the economy: Education, Revenue Mobilisation, Agriculture, Health, Governance, Digitisation, and the Private sector. I think road repairs and building maintenance should be added to this list, in due course.

Certainly, NABCO is an entity worthy of support by every patriotic Ghanaian. It is up to us to closely monitor the organisation (as the President indicated) in order to ensure that it does not make the same mistakes as organisations set up in the past to achieve the same type of objectives, but which failed dismally, because they did not operate in such a transparently efficient manner as to earn them non-partisan public respect and support.