My Name Is Ghana -(a Poem)

The spirit of the nation is wailing
Echoing from afar in the wilderness
Ooh Ghana, !
Ooh Ghana !!
Ooh Ghana !!!
My name is Ghana
And I have been mismanaged
My people are suffering
Sleeping in darkness
In the midst of vast energy
Energy embedded in sunshine
Sunshine that burns the cities of
Tamale and Navarongo
Burning from dawn to dusk untapped

I feel ashamed as a country when I see my people
Young, energetic and courageous
youth
Being thrown out of voyaging ship
By wicked whitemen and migrant
merchants
From ship into the Mediterranean sea
Along the coast of Lybia and Italy
In the name of seeking greener
pasture
Young men and women
Being sent as slaves to
Qatar, Kuwait and The United Arab Emirates
In the name of greener pasture
Greener pastures in the whiteman's land?
Land that has nothing but snow
Unfriendly weather and racial
segregation
Compared to my land
Your land and our land
Beautiful land gifted with Gold,
Diamond, Bauxite, Cocoa,Timber,
Akrantie and now Oil !!!
Oil that comes with nothing but
millions of dollars annually

My resources spent extravagantly and needlessly
Airlifting party fool-solidiers and
cronies to footballing events
Football played in Brazil and
Equatorial Guinea
While the nation sleeps in darkness
Millions of dollars spent planting SADA trees and rearing Akonfem
Trees that never grew
Akonfem that flew to Burkina and never came

Buei !! Buei !! Buei !!
My name is Ghana and And I have been mismanaged
I weep not only for myself but for my people
People blessed with precious
resources yet married to poverty and hardships
I weep daily for businessmen and
women in the 'cold store' business
Whose fish and meat gets rotten daily courtesy Dumsor-Dumsor
I weep daily for the 7500 workers of
Anglogold Ashanti laid off
Thier families and numerous
dependents not forgotten
Imagining how they will survive
Surviving without monthly salaries
I weep for hairdressers, printing press operators and the many other Ghanaians
Ghanaians who cannot work without electricity
I weep for the nursing mothers of twins
Who endures sleepless nights every week
As her babies struggle to sleep in thier ovenly hot and charcoally dark room courtesy Dumsor
I weep for the poor Ghanain student
Student being forced to pay utility bills
Though their allowances have been cancelled at the teacher training and nursing colleges
I weep for the already penniless and jobless university student
Student being forced to pay utility bills
My name is Ghana
And I have been mismanaged !!!!

Where lies the wisdom of the nation and its leaders
If already jobless and penniless
students
Are being forced to pay utility bills Whereas ministers and government appointees on fat salaries
And free fueled cars
Are exempted from paying similar bills
Where lies the wisdom of our nation and its leaders
If we spend our money importing electricity to watch football
As industries at Tema continue
shutting down due to electricity
demands
And students writing BECE, WASSCE
and tertiary exams have no lights to study in the night
Where lies the wisdom of the nation and its leaders
If half-baked RLG laptops are given to students with the sole aim of winning elections
Forgetting that the students will not use the Korle-lagoon, Lake Bosomtwe or Kakum forest to charge their bateries
When these laptops run-down
Where lies the wisdom of the nation
If national footballers are paid
thousands of dollars as winning
bonuses
Yet we fail to pay teachers and
nursing traniees their petty allowances
Forgetting that footballers serve the nation for only 90 minutes
But teachers solely make citizens
And nurses save lives for years

Today's Ghana
My Ghana
Your Ghana
Our Ghana
Can best be likened to a very common Ghanaian grain of rice called "TUJIMI"
Highly voluminous in quantity But lacks taste and quality.
People eat it not because they enjoy it
They eat it because they cannot afford others and have no alternative
Today, people are not living in Ghana because of its attractiveness
They unhappily remain in Ghana
because they have no other country they can call home
Like TUJIMI,
The current Ghana has no tasty and quality life for its citizens
The masses are suffering
While a privileged few are swimming in stolen wealth
My name is Ghana and I have lost my taste my people enjoyed !!!
My name is Ghana and I have been mismanaged

My name is Ghana, Ama Ghana
Efo Ghana
Nii, Atia and Fuseini Ghana.
I gave my people everything
Everything needed to succeed
Gold, diamond, cocoa, timber and now oil
Their leaders continue enriching
themselves as the people remain in poverty
Yet these leaders and thier bootlickers have no shame saying;
Rome wasn't built in a day
Ooh yes, Rome wasn't built in a day
But it surely wasn't built in six years of darkness and corruption Importantly, Rome was built without oil money
My name is Ghana
And I have been mismanaged !!!
All I require is an army of patriotic volunteers To help rescue me
Recue me from the grips of these shameless leaders
Raping me daily of my resources
They steal my money and share with their cronies
Calling their booty judgement debt
They claim there is no money to pay utility bills for poor students
Yet they reward themselves per diem on state assignments
And spend nearly two million dollars on luxury cars to inspect rural electrification
Ooh my name is Ghana!!
I have been mismanaged
Come one, come two, come all
To rescue me !!!


MICHAEL KWADWO NKETIAH

([email protected])

Author: Michael Kwadwo Nketiah

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