62 Years After Ghana’s Independence: The Good Or The Bad?

No doubt, one question that has been peddling the minds of many well-wishers of our country Ghana and the content citizenry is “AFTER SEVERAL DECADES OF GHANA’S INDEPENDENCE, HAS THE IDEALS OF THE FOUNDING FATHERS OF THE NATION BEEN REALIZED?”. This, if explained, means with the attainment of self-governance, we as a nation have we been able to fulfil the hopes and aspirations of those who fought for it?

Though the wishes and expectations of those who toiled for Ghana’s self-rule were many and varied, few among them were the removal of all vestiges of colonialism from the country, the emunctory or total elimination of poverty, squalor, degradation and want, the raising of the level of formal education and the training of skilled workers who have a high sense of responsibility in the building of the nation.

Several years after the attainment of independence, may we pause here and ask: Have we realized the lofty ideals of our founding fathers? I believe the answer is emphatic NO? I would without temporizing refer to our so-called independence as an empty boast. Why? March 6, 2019 mark exactly 62 years when Ghana’s First President Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah declared self-rule (MOTION OF DESTINY) from our colonial masters. Looking at the intensity of neo-colonialism which is sweeping the country today, we have been re-colonized. All aspects of our lives today have been pervaded by the colonial mentalities.

Sixty – two years after independence, there is no doubt that economic hardship has acquired citizenship in the economy. Its citizenship is famously known that not only the oppositional political parties alone complains a hard time; the Commander – In – Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces (H.E. Addo-Dankwa Akufo-Addo), the Vice President and the Finance Minister have all admitted faithfully that Ghana is in dire straits. Numerous citizens and diplomats have also added their voices to the hardship chorus in the country.

A mark of great statesmanship, it is that the government has admitted the strictures in which Ghanaians found themselves. At the United States is September 2018, President Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo conceded: “it is a difficult situation, but a difficult situation also requires some amount of fortitude and firm action and that’s what we trying to do at home”.

Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia noted: “We are not where we want to be, but we believe that we are on course. But as all good sailors know, rough and turbulent seas are no indications that you are not steering well”.

Gabby Otchere-Darko, an influential New Patriotic Party power broker and regular twitter handler, also commented:” There is a hardship, there is unemployment and it is fair to say that the majority of our people continue to struggle to make ends meet”.

Former President, John Dramani Mahama recently lamented about the present austere economic situation, and added: “The N.P.P. government is just putting Ghanaians under harsh economic conditions”. Though these conditions have been perceived for several decades and even during his administration as a President.

Professor Ransford Gyampo, a senior lecturer at the University of Ghana, asked the government to “focus on dealing with economic hardships Ghanaians are saddled with”. Award-winning journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni too observed: “it is hitting every sector of the economy”. The Managing Editor of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt Jnr., added: “The state of Ghana’s economy over the past two years is nothing to write home about”. According to the seasoned journalist, the prices of foodstuffs and other commodities have increased by 150 per cent likewise the price of petrol and the likes.

Again, Ghana cannot boast of having the requisite manpower to man the various sectors of her country but to resort expatriates to run many of the key sectors (including the Oil and Gas) of the economy and go for advice before programmes are implemented. This is a manifestation of our inability to take our own initiative in our own socio-economic spheres of life.

Undeniably, the trappings of colonialism and neo-colonialism have entrenched themselves in International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditionalities of retrenchment of labour, removal of subsidies on essential services like health, education, water and so on. Quite unbelievably, IMF officials have infiltrated into the Bank of Ghana. Strangely enough, IMF officials would have to draft and implement certain policies inimical to national development. Thus, the idea that after independence, we would be in commanding heights of our economy still appears to be beyond the horizon.

Interestingly, independence sought to improve the material well-being of all Ghanaians since we are endowed with so many natural resources. I dare to say that this ideal has been a myth. One certainly does not need statistics to prove that Ghana is a poor country now. A lot of schools are still under trees. Our hospitals lack ambulances and beds. Poor supply of electricity has become an anthem “Dumsor”. Shooting and killing of innocent citizens is nothing to write home about. Unemployment has become a queue to follow every year when graduates are churned out. There is no respect for human rights.

The people in Ghana plight in the form starvation, diseases, illiteracy, ignorance, frustration and disappointment is conspicuously written on their faces. After so many years of independence where a lot of Ghanaians are homeless, the country is soliciting for funds to evolve a “National Cathedral”. Many of the citizens are not against this project as a lot of them are Christians but the question is which of the priorities do we set first? After so many years of self-government, we are yet to achieve economic emancipation. There is an escalation of crime wave and moral laxity due to unemployment as a result of abject poverty which Ghanaians live in.

No honest and patriotic Ghanaian can begrudge the fact that the African personality and culture, which the founding fathers of independence sought to develop is similarly under attack. The soaring demands of liberalism, have led to an uncontrolled infiltration of negative foreign cultures. Today, we as people appear to have lost our sense of national identity. We clamour for anything European or American while relegating our traditional values to the background.

The same way locally manufactured goods are relegated to nothing before the citizens because we receive privileges from patronizing foreign products. Our educational elites have ever since independence scorned the African cultures regarding it as primitive and barbaric.

After several years, the founding fathers of our independence have tried, unsuccessfully though, to de-colonize the Ghanaian mentality of “the best comes only from Europe”. Our local industries and home-made goods have not been patronized and almost every Ghanaian including Head of States is largely interested in the “discarded” products from Europe, which we affectionately dub as “second-hand goods”.

It is worthy to note that the ideal of the declaration of the “MOTION OF DESTINY” on the 6^th March 1957 thus opening up a country and improving the living conditions of our country-folk has bewilderingly remained an illusion. Sixty –two years of independence, most of our villages are cut off from the regional capital towns. Our roads, even in our regional capitals remain in a deplorable state. I can refer to a substantial number of the roads in some of these areas as death traps and unattended but because the evidence is so clear that even the “blind” person can feel this devastating nature of the roads in our country.

This is a far cry from the idea of expanding the infrastructural base of our country. As far as medical care is concerned, the least said about it, the better. How many of our citizens have access to the best medical care in Ghana today? Is it not true that many patients die in the few hospitals dotted throughout the country just because they cannot afford to buy prescribed drugs and bear medical expenses? Is this sordid state of affairs realization of the dreams of our founding fathers? Each year, nurses, allied health professional graduates culminate to the existing unemployed graduates existing already because there is no policy to cap the knowledge and skills they have acquired in school throughout their training.

I dare say that after so long a period of independence, Ghana cannot boast of many workers who have a sense of responsibility to build the nation.

Corruption, laziness and apathy are found even in high places. Is it, therefore, strange that in a recent survey by an international magazine, Ghana was ranked at the forefront of those countries that are most corrupt?

The Somali’s have a saying that the key to a healthy body is a good head. Several decades after independence, our nation thrives on the generosity of European loans and aids. When will this nation become self-sustaining? Will Ghana ever be able to utilize effectively and more prudently her abundant natural resources? Almost every right-minded Ghanaian would wish the British had come back to put things right. Meet the “common” man in the street; he or she exclaims in virtual agony, the greatest mistake ever committed by the Ghanaian is the expulsion of her colonial masters”. Where are we drifting to after many years of in the wilderness of self-government and self-destruction? Are we not still experimenting with our educational system?

It is an undeniable fact that after 62 years of independence Ghana has now churned to evolve vigilante groups or Militias which I personally termed as ‘Terrorism’. Various political parties especially the ruling party New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the main opposition party, New Democratic Congress has made it possible by arriving able-bodied men to cause mayhem in various sectors of our country. They (political parties) have made the Ghana Police Service looked “useless” when it comes to providing security to the citizens. What a hell of a country! What history are we writing on the wall? This I can also relate as the true state of the nation as at several decades after independence.

I have nothing more to say than to reiterate that after 62 years of independence, the ideals of the founding father of the nation have not been realized.

Thank you.

Kelly Michael Agbesi.

[email protected]