Ghana = Religion
People always cringe when they hear that leadership is a mandatory course taught at my university. “So what do they teach you?”, they ask, “How to lead?”. Well, precisely so, and you will be surprised the doors of conversation a talk on leadership can open up. Take my mid — semester paper for example. It was based on a paired leadership dialogue that was held during class session. My partner and I discussed religion.
Religion is overrated, you may think, but in order for Ghana to achieve meaningful development, it is a sphere of our national lives that must be taken seriously. Hold your horses, I don’t say this because I believe spirituality is what will alleviate Ghana from underdevelopment but because Ghana is one of the most religious countries in the world, or so was announced by Gallup International in a 2012 survey. In essence, to the typical Ghanaian, life is all about religion and religion is life. It is the sphere through which we perceive all of life’s activities. Be it with regards to issues about family, business, relationships or education, the Ghanaian would typically look at events through the eyes of his religion. Thus, what is being taught by our religious leaders may well be more important and more significant to the average Ghanaian than what is heard on the news, taught in school or given as advice by practitioners in the fields of law and medicine. It is not hard to find examples of these. We can all remember stories of people who had some medical issues, court cases or financial problems and immediately attributed them to the works of spiritual forces. I am not saying these do not exist and have no potential to cause havoc but we have some responsibility to take for our failures too.
Our religion is as impactful on our national development as salt is to food
I agree with those who say that in the drawing of plans for economic development or in the setting of development goals, religious factors should be considered as a dominant factor. You can’t draw an economic plan based on a 7 day working week when more than half of the country’s citizens spend at least 3 hours of their day in church once a week. It will again be quite absurd to add the legalization of abortion or homosexuality to the country’s humanitarian goals when majority of the country’s citizens are vehemently against the idea based on their religious beliefs. Our religion is as impactful on our national development as salt is to food (this is no exaggeration).
What this means is that people have to get the right kind of information from their religious institutions. The leaders of our religious sects should endeavor to encourage the practice of good morals and the fulfillment of civic responsibilities to as their contribution to national development. After all, I doubt there is any religion at least here in Ghana that is against national development. If there is, kindly let me know and I will do well to retract my statement. In order for Ghana to move forward in the right direction however, religion is a factor that can’t be counted out, thus religious leaders cannot be exempted from the list of stakeholders of national development. Prosperity preaching and the focus on the amassing of wealth for oneself that has turned many religious institutions into businesses, offering prosperity prayers at fees needs to be eradicated. Our religious leaders need to realize that the future of our country may very well be heavily dependent on how they lead and what they teach their followers and congregations.
They need to understand that their leadership may well be more critical than that of the president, because they have a more direct influence on the lives of citizens. So if a leader will take his leadership seriously, treat his role with all the respect and attention it deserves and use it as a tool for national development, let it be the religious leader. If Ghana will develop tomorrow it will do so by the transformation of minds and mindsets through our religious leaders and institutions.
Week 7
