Independence
It was the end of the school day and the Friday before Ghana celebrated her 59th independence. One of my lecturers waltzed into the school’s provision shop and after making purchases, he greeted, “Happy Independence Day”, as a good bye remark to anyone who cared to listen. Then as if to reassess the credibility of his statement, he stopped at the door and asked, “Independence? Really?”.
My lecturer is not the first to question the independence of Ghana and will probably not be the last. There is a school of thought that subscribes to the fact that Ghana may have independence on paper but the minds of her citizens are still being colonized. We still jump at the bark of the white man thinking that he has our best interests at heart, even though history tells us that most of the time, that is not necessarily the case. I recently heard a discussion on radio in which sports analysts were questioning behavior of coach of the National Football Team (Black Stars), Avram Grant. It is alleged that Grant is being paid on a monthly basis but spends most if not all of his time in Europe and only returns to the country (in which he should be working, perhaps scouting and training players) when the national team has a match. As the discussion went on, one of the analysts mentioned that like is the case in many other jobs given to expatriates, the coach was taking advantage of the African nation’s reverence for white skinned people. Whereas the black man will reprimand his fellow dark skinned brother for a job not well done, the white man would get away with doing the same thing under the same conditions. The myth of the white god is yet to be broken.
I hear him loud and clear, but I see the fact that we can openly talk about this as a start. Call me overly optimistic but I see many other things as a start. I see the journalism works of Anas Aremeyaw Anas, who is exposing corruption and injustice across the country as a start. I see the theater works if Uncle Ebo Whyte who teaches morals and exposes inefficiencies in governmental institutions through satire as a start. I see the teaching style of Dr. Mensah Otabil, who is not afraid to deviate from prosperity preaching and dive into topics concerning ethics and social responsibility from the pulpit as a start. I see the infectious pride to be Ghanaian being veraciously spread by Creo Concepts through their Ghanaba comics as a start and the active Ghanaian youth who are catching on to the ‘proud to be Ghanaian’ vibe as a start as well. However, that’s all it is for now, a start, and it is definitely going to take more than this to see the better Ghana we all aspire to live in.
Ask a bunch of undergraduate students if they would like to see this country look like the USA in the next perhaps 10 years and all hands would most likely go up in affirmation, but ask who would like to lead Ghana to achieve this transformation and hands will start to drop one after the other, faster than you would think is possible. Politics in Ghana is considered a dirty game so many would rather not get involved, but I’d say that unless someone steps up and makes an effort to do some dry cleaning, we will never get to live in that better Ghana. It’s about time we took leadership in this country personal (excuse my pidgin). This country may not have Ivy League Schools but it’s producing minds competent enough to compete with the best brains across the world. The question is, what are these brains doing?
I was discussing with a friend just the other day, how even in our schools today, many young people shy away from leadership roles, leaving those influenced and backed by manipulative political parties to lead them. The way I see things, it’s about time you and I stepped up to bat. Not being motivated by the class, money or status attached to seats of leadership, but with the desire to see a true turnaround of Ghana. Allow me to borrow the words of my lecturer, Esi Ansah in saying that leadership is too sacred to be taken lightly and add that especially in Ghana, leadership is too important to be left in the hands of just anybody.
So the time is here. Ghana will be hitting the big sixty next year and after six decades of independence, the Ghana we will see in the next year, and the future we will be able to foretell based on what we see, lies well in the hands of you and I, in the soles of the steps we choose to take, and the grasp of the bat we choose to or not to step up to.
Happy Independence day.
#Week 8
