What Has Been Hindering Our Development?

53 years in the life of a person or a country is not a mere achievement that is why we have to rejoice and be glad the Lord has yet again added another year to the life of our country in freedom as a Republican State. More than five decades ago, our colonial masters handed over the baton of leadership to us so that we can make our own decisions and implement them. After many years of presiding over our own affairs, what we see clearly now is political freedom backed by partisanship, coupled with meaningless economic indices and to a large extent some level of social freedom. One wonders what actually might be contributing to our inability to develop our country as expected. It will indeed be out of place to say that God has not given us the right place as a people, because we have all that many a country does not have. Many of the developed and semi-developed countries started with Ghana and some even later and yet they are doing very well. So what then is wrong with us? Have we been cursed perpetually by our colonial masters and their affiliates? That will be too hard to believe because our colonial masters left 53 years ago and it would not be fair for us to continuously blame them for our woes. The problem has always been narrowed down to our attitudes and many other factors, so should the colonial master be held accountable for all the decisions we have made or have not made for the past 53 years? From the very day our first President, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, declared that the black man was capable of managing his own affairs, did we not decide to take our destinies into our own hands? Are we saying we have still not been able to find ways of dealing with our challenges as a country? Our dear country - Ghana is engulfed with a barrage of problems - from sanitation to leadership. All we do is to blame everybody except ourselves. From the media to the farm, no one is finding solutions, we are all looking for excuses. How then can we develop at the rate that we must? Sometimes people talk about the rubbish in our towns and cities as if when we were going to sleep the entire place was very clean and people came from some other planet to make it unclean. If we cannot take responsibility, how then can we proffer concrete solutions to our problems? Should we continue like this? Talk, talk, talk, talk, and talk the more? Why can’t we decide to stop sitting on the fence, why can’t we say it is time to rise and be counted? And why can’t we say never again will we blame anyone for our problems but ourselves?

Ghana is arguably one of the most blessed countries in the world, it is undoubtedly clear that we are not making good use of what God has divinely blessed us with. We have all or most of the resources that must make a country prosperous like gold, diamond, bauxite, and now oil. We also have all the sunshine and rainwater that many a country would have wished to have, we also have rivers, the sea, streams and lakes. Not to talk of the abundant arable land and green vegetation. What again do we need? It is about time we stopped criticizing, politicizing every issue and discussing problems without solutions. We should come to terms with the fact that it is only through our collective efforts that we can get to where we want to. Countries that are doing well would not have reached where they are if they were only interested in identifying problems, criticizing people and systems without suggesting the way forward. Even as we take a sober reflection over the above, let us resolve and say never again will we condemn without due cause, never again will we criticize without suggesting alternatives, never again are we going to allow politics to divide us as a people, never again are we going to renege on our sacred duties of building our country - Ghana. Let us look wider than we have probably been doing for the past 53 years. We must look at what we have and make proper use of it for the betterment of us all. We need an experienced older generation to guide the youth, we need a creative, volunteering, humble and patriotic, and solution-oriented younger generation who will work as a team, to steer this country forward. Our country needs people who will protect and respect its laws, we need people who will stand up and defend its sovereignty. We must consider and know that there is no government that can do better than all of us, no group of people or political activists can do even half of what we can do together. We are all in this together, we may all be sailing in different boats, but we are all going to the same destination. There is no better time than today. All we do is talk about history without making some ourselves. Those who read history are not remembered, it is those who make history that are remembered. We should not forget that. And we should also not forget that, we have had many forefathers, but not all of them can we boast of.

BY: PROSPER DZITSE, PRESIDENT/CEO INSTITUTE OF MENTORSHIP AND LEADERSHIP TRAINING.