The Finger Print Of Nkrumah

The fingerprint of Dr. Nkrumah cannot be taken off Ghana. No amount of acid can erode his finger print in our lives as Ghanaians.

Mention must be made of but few of the valuables Nkrumah and his able team members left with us-the Akosomgbo dam, Tema motor way, and the many companies which we have deliberately destroyed. The whole world perhaps joins Ghana yearly to celebrate Nkrumah, an icon not only for Ghana but one for Africa and the whole world. The citizens of Ghana on such a day compare Nkrumah’s work to current presidents we have had as a nation and how far the nation has gone in terms of development.

Sitting behind my radio set yearly to listen to the lashes people give to past presidents so far after Nkrumah when it comes to development, they mostly mention the infrastructures Nkrumah constructed. His plan of education for all always surfaces. The question arises, what is development?

Development is the quantitative and qualitative positive change in every aspect of a society, and a stable qualitative change in the standard of living of the people living in the society.

Development for many have been evaluated based on the number of infrastructures a country may have. Hence, countries with skyscrapers are considered developed while the others without them are not. Development is must be limited to infrastructures only. The best way to develop a society or a country is to develop the human capacities of the people. Society can only survive but on human resources, and if this is neglected, such a society is doom.

The human capacities must receive training, education, and must be taken through leadership skills acquisition. Education must be the basis of all the steps taken to develop the human capacities. A good, quality, and purposeful education must be given to all. Purposeful since the education received must have an effect or must have a purpose and serve that purpose. Hence, if the education of people is not serving any purpose, then there has not been any education.

Apart from educating the people to build their human capacities, citizens must be taken through a purposeful training. They must be trained in order to gain skills to develop their own lives. Whichever training is given must serve a purpose, else, no training has taken place.

The human being by nature is a leader and will have to either make a decision for himself or supervise himself or others. Taking an individual for example, he leads his life either towards success or damnation depending on the choices he makes. One can destroy his own life if the right decisions are not made, hence, the need for a person to be trained to acquire such a skill of making the right decision. In the same vein, if citizens are not trained to acquire purposeful leadership skills, they won’t be on the safer side to make right decisions-hence, letting the country perish.

When such and many others that gear towards the building of the human capacities are done, then citizens would want to build their society. Man will surely build his environment when he has built his capacities. Thus, man after building all his human capacities will build his environment because he will want to develop.

Development will come when we have the human capacities built. Remember that development is not measured by the number of infrastructures a nation has but the building of the capacities of the people which eventually will affect their environment is a good start to develop.

To end, Nana Addo, what plans did you have when you said in your presidential address on 7^th January 2017 that citizens should not be spectators? Sorry to tell you that there are many spectators now than before. This is because the human capacities of the people have not been built, hence, cannot join you to work, leading to an increment in the “spectators number”. Development is different from growth-Ghana is growing old but still behaves like a toddler, finding it difficult to develop.

From the pen of Emmanuel Graham Nyameke