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Of Media “unfreedom” And Ghana’s Quest For A Benevolent Dictator

Feature Article Of Media unfreedom And Ghanas Quest For A Benevolent Dictator
MAY 16, 2019 LISTEN

Fellow Ghanaians, if you walk by sight and hear with your pair of ears, unless a fool, every levelheaded Ghanaian can attest to the fact that, the outcome of our democratic experimentation like European Champions League in recent times, is becoming more unpredictable than KNUST final year second-semester examination questions. Too unpredictable.

Say what you like, president Akufu Addo’s syndrome is sparking a kind of democracy that might not befit the definition of either Jeffersonian or Jacksonian democracy by Thomas Jefferson and Andrews Jackson of the USA in the nineteenth century but something very different that should go by the name “Akufu Addo-nian democracy to serve Ghanaians.

Recall the issue of homosexuality brouhaha? He simply said that for now Ghanaians are not homosexuals but subsequent generations might opt for it. That would be their time let’s focus on the now that we have.

The more I try to find faults with the president’s hasty leadership style the more I am convinced that president Akufu Addo would be the best thing that has ever happened to Ghana. He remains a certain je ne sais quoi as far as competent leadership is concerned. And unless you are in dire need of political power to escape the wrath of Special Prosecutor, otherwise, the president proves beyond reasonable doubt that he is the beacon of our hope, the Messiah of the nation, the primus inter-pares, and the capo di tutti capi at the helm of our affairs.

Meanwhile, as usual, propaganda remains the most dependable ally and asset of the main opposition as we count down to 2020. Yet His Excellency continues to shame his naysayers, both destructive and constructive critiques.

Before I am tagged as a nauseating hypocrite for praising the president as his well-known gadfly, let me point out that, as a MasterCard Scholar trained to be a Social Engineer and a harbinger of African development, I don’t lock my feet in the sand. I challenge and change the status quo if the need be.

In Ghana, our dog-eat-dog kind of politics is so gutter that, a known NPP can’t become NDC and the vice versa. Ghana cannot have a certain Atiku Abubakar who can decamp from NPP as a former vice president of the party to NDC to contest for flagbearership position, and when he did not win, he can decamp back to NPP and later back to NDC and still be able to win flagbearership race of NDC. Our form of politics in Ghana is so sentimental that an opponent remains opponent. Yet we call this a democracy!

For far too long, there have been calls by some discerning Ghanaians about the need to have a leader who can tone down our level of negativity, rascality, and mediocrity as a people if we ever want to grow. I think we are almost there under president Akufu Addo.

The media as a fourth estate of the realm, is there to cow governments of bad governance and to critique to build and not to ruin. However, some of our media outlets belonging to political opponents are so bitter than Satan.

We are a nation with a baggage of unbelievable docility when it comes to matters of “stomach politics” but when it is about what is it that we can do to get ourselves to our own Silicon Valley, people become activists at once with their plenty oppositional views without substance.

We live in a country where people embark upon pilgrimage either to Jerusalem or Makkah to pray for the burning to ashes this country, so that the current leadership would have been “incompetentized” for them to take over. Every political party seems to be guilty of this fact. As a result, we have potential state representatives and officials who continue to engage in negotiation of facts about our state of affairs in order to castigate their opponents in government. They sell only the bad aspect of Ghana to fellow Ghanaians and the rest of the world.

Recently, an opposition lawmaker (a supposed “honorable”) was exposed for concocted economic figures deliberately misrepresented to mislead Ghanaians into lambasting the current economic managers.

You see, Robert Frost once said that a mother takes twenty (20) years to make a man of her boy and another woman (a potential wife) uses twenty minutes (maybe even two minutes) to make a foolish of him.

This is our sorry state of politics today.
Whilst ruling parties are busy trying to navigate the country out of the dangerous seas of underdevelopment, opposition parties at the entrance of political power are making every effort through marketplace media houses to undo their efforts.

This is the genesis of our endless tribulations. This is the most reasonable reason why we still find ourselves here today, sixty-two years after independence despite our wealth – mineral, human, and all forms of resources at our disposal.

The deliberate poisoning of the well of our common good by polluting the minds of one another with negative mindsets and evil eyes when we are not in power, is the largest sledge hammer that continuously ruin the very building blocks of our development.

Yes. President Akufu Addo has his snout in the honeypot. He engaged in the same game to come to power. But at least, his excuse was that the then Mahama-led administration was less than competent showcased in the numerous negative figures they supervised in respect of economic growth in every sector of the economy. Then candidate Akufu Addo promised Ghanaians a better form of leadership that is anchored in his campaign promises that he has delivered.

What does the main opposition have to accuse the government of in terms of governance that they think they can do better again after eight years of house-fly hovering leadership?

Initially, I could not fathom why president Akufu Addo seemed to be selling his head to buy a cap. I could not understand why someone who has been given “four hours” to pack the content of a house out, decides to put everything together at once to be taken out at once when he can do it one after the other.

President Akufu Addo defies this warped thinking. He has demonstrated that in economics there is certainly fixed assets, short and long terms with which to carry out any economic transaction.

Fellow Ghanaians, the shutting down of some pro National Democratic Congress, NDC’s media houses that have been painting everything of the government black, is in the right direction to reshaping the minds of Ghanaians. Opposition is at liberty to market their bid, but it is time to be positive about this country. Castigating the country must not be the only way to the Jubilee House.

After intercepting “APRA” (African Public Relations Association) instigated to market Africa of which former president Mahama is a member, I think every critique of Africa at large as a son or daughter of Africa, has been a great disservice to the continent.

I mean, part of our woes have been brought upon ourselves by the negative mindsets we and the rest of the world have about Africa. The “everything is in tatters” if we are not at the helm of affairs we usual say to our dear country, is the greatest source of our sixty-two years’ purposeless lamentations!

In The Secret (a book about thoughts and consequences) by Rhonda Byme, the Secret to personal achievements, is the law of attraction! According to him, everything that’s coming into your life you are attracting into your life. And it’s attracted to you by virtue of the images you’re holding in your mind. It is what you’re thinking. Whatever is going on in your mind you are attracting to you. And hence, every thought of us is a real thing-a force.”

Bob Proctor, a co-author in that same book rather put it succinctly as “if you see it in your mind, you can hold it in your hand”

Mike Dooley commenting on this same principle said this law of attraction can be summed up in three simple words. “Thoughts become things (reality).”

Fellow Ghanaians, are we not the architects of our own backwardness and underdevelopment with ceaseless badmouthing of our state of affairs?

How many of us are optimistic about Ghana’s progress?

As a Religious Studies student, I was shocked to find this fundamental truth in Holy Scriptures.

The Qur’an in chapter 14:24 speaks about a goodly saying (to oneself) and the bad saying to oneself and the fruits each bears with accompanying consequences.

In the Bhagwad Gita I found that “Neither in this world nor elsewhere is there any happiness in store for him who always doubts.”

It also says that “No one who does good work will ever come to a bad end, either here or in the world to come.”

And the Buddha concludes that “What we think, we become.”

Fellow Ghanaians this is the genesis of our tribulations. Evil thoughts of every opposition party are relegating and condemning us into the backwaters of civilization.

Many of our politicians are not only political vultures feeding fat on “spoils of office” of the masses’ cash, but they are also the most well established “political vampires” drinking the lifeblood of our very existence in their negativity towards each other. Ghana is the victim unfortunately.

As a matter of urgency, we need a benevolent dictator to help instill sanity in the Ghanaian tongue to be able to say good things about ourselves no matter what.

There are only few people who are completely homeless in our dear country here in Ghana. Because our elders say an indigene who has no home can never lack where to sleep in his own country. This is due to our sense of humanitarianism manifested in the usual Ghanaian hospitality.

America that has served as a role model to many rising and shining states from the developing world, has a statistic soul-scorching for homeless human beings in the USA. But aside their curled towers and beautiful beaches, one hardly come by heart shattering kind of news items that are rocking Ghana and for that matter Africa, in the American media outlets.

Isn’t it time to speak good of our country even if it is not in good shape?

Accidents do occur in USA, Dubai, Singapore etc. as well, but they have a better “national public relations” officers that cover such bad news to observing and admiring globe in order not to scare visitors and investors away. They market, sell and propagate to the highest heavens what would attract both hopeless and hopeful souls to find these countries as the best destinations on earth.

One of the easiest way to get to our promised land within the shortest possible time is to first and foremost let every Ghanaian see the need to wish Ghana well. To do that, mindless critiques and saboteurs who, because of their ambitions to govern, whether they have the wherewithal or not, must be silenced.

These are group of people who live by the Yoruba proverb “a leper may not be able to squeeze milk, but he definitely has the capacity to spill it”.

Fellow Ghanaians, it was Karl Marx who said “The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness.”

The closure of certain media houses in this country is not “unfreedom” of the masses but for their real freedom to be able to grow and develop. Our negativity is sodomizing!

It would take a benevolent dictator to do that. A leader who would deliberately seize some freedoms and rights of the citizens by the jugular, not for their destruction but in order to nip certain freedoms that create our “unfreedoms” in the bud.

This is one of the reasons why I supported the Vice Chancellor of KNUST, Professor Obiri Danso during the impasse, who attempted to curb some needless “freedoms” of students in order to give them the real and needful academic freedom in a sound and serene campus to study.

It does not take magic wand or rocket science to do this. Every responsible leader who cares for both current and generations unborn does it. That is what our president is doing and nothing else.

He deserves commendation not condemnation.
Somebody must retool our thinking.
We can’t afford to continue like this.
Long Live Ghana,
Long Live Africa,
God Bless all.
The writer, Idrrisu Abdul Hakeem, is a student (MCF Scholar) at KNUST, Department of Religious Studies.

E-mail: [email protected]

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