Dear God, can I talk to You about my country?
Let me start by thanking you for your generosity towards Ghana: a land flowing with milk and honey. You have blessed us with every possible resource a nation can ever dream of and with fine brains that can use these resources to prosper us. With these brains, we have enacted wonderful laws that would make it difficult for even Satan to be a delinquent. The only thing we lack is good and faithful leaders who fear you and have the nation’s interest at heart.
This year is exactly 68 years since we gained independence. On the eve of independence, our founding president boldly declared that Ghana would be free forever and that the black man could manage his own affairs. However, with the evidence of 68 years, it is very hard to agree with this assertion. When he made this bold declaration, we were far ahead of nations like Singapore, Malaysia, and South Korea. Our GDP per capita was almost twice that of South Korea. Today, South Korea’s GDP per capita is more than nine times that of ours. It is almost as if we are trying to prove to our colonial masters that they were right in ruling us.
Until now, we are still debating whether we have a founder or founders, so we celebrate Founder’s Day or Founders’ Day depending on which political party is in power. Our seat of government is called Jubilee House or Flagstaff House, depending on which party is in power. Our public holidays and the names of our public universities keep changing depending on which party is in power. These are just a few examples of how petty we have become as a nation.
While we engage in this needless pettiness, every sector of our country is crumbling. There are still students studying under trees without desks or textbooks. We still have water and electricity problems in every city and village. Despite our vast arable land, we still cannot feed ourselves.
The best description of our health system is that our leaders travel abroad for medical check-ups and treatment. The situation is so bad that as of 2023, we were still recording measles outbreaks just because we can’t afford vaccines. Our renal kidney dialysis centre was closed due to a GHS 4 million debt.
As for the economy, the less said about it, the better. We still export cocoa, gold, diamond, and all our minerals in the crude form. Poverty and unemployment remain the order of the day, although we have tried all the development models in the textbooks. Our cedi has become an albatross around our necks and a game of chess in the hands of politicians, always in free fall.
We have turned our gold and diamond into curses, using them to pollute and destroy our water bodies and environment. Since we started managing our own economy, we have run cup-in-hand to the IMF 17 times and are currently under one. Each time we go, we promise it will be the last time, but alas… 17 times! In fact, this time around, we went on a stretcher, dead broke and unable to pay our debts, pushing our grandmothers and grandfathers to demonstrate on the streets after forcefully appropriating their hard-earned investments.
We have practised almost every governance regime in the literature, even allowing soldiers to rule us, but none seems to work for us. Our elections are about which party is worse instead of who is best to solve our problems. We have all agreed that our constitution needs amendment, but we still won’t do it. As for corruption, it defeated us long ago; they say it is as old as Adam, so we have now concluded that we are all corrupt. While we lose US$3 billion annually to corruption, we have gone to borrow the same amount from the IMF subject to all their conditionalities.
Road accidents are so normalized now that they are no longer news to us. Flooding has become an annual ritual that we witness. We used to aspire to make Accra the cleanest city, but now we know it is impossible. Our Black Stars have become a Ponzi scheme that is being used to dupe the nation and destroy our football talent.
Today, we can’t even boast of a single pitch worthy of playing international games. I won’t even mention the daily and increasing traffic in our urban areas. Integrity and honesty are scarce commodities to find: the hands being raised to pray in church/mosque/shrine every day are the same ones being used to steal, kill and destroy.
Despite all these problems, we pay our leaders to live like King Solomon. We give them fat salaries, needless allowances, free utilities and then lavish on them huge end-of-service benefits. The cost of the convoys following our presidents can buy ambulances for our hospitals. When it is election time, they miraculously find enough money to travel around the country to campaign. Ballot boxes supernaturally locate places with no roads and have never seen a tap flowing.
Dear God, let me promise you what you will see by next year. I can assure you that parents will still face hurdles to find the appropriate SHS for their wards. Accommodation at tertiary institutions will still be a topical issue. We will still be talking about flooding, sanitation, road accidents, no beds in hospitals, schools under trees, and no textbooks. We will still be exporting our minerals without adding value while importing toothpicks.
Our cedi will still be on a nosedive. We will still return to the IMF three years after exiting the current programme.
Corruption will still be “as old as Adam”, and we will still be a football caught between the dirty legs of NDC and NPP. Our young men and women will still use any means possible to leave for greener pastures, and the Black Stars will break our hearts again.
The saddest of all of these is that we know our problems and the solutions to these problems, but we won’t solve them because the problems benefit our leaders.
Dear God, aren’t You sick of hearing me talk about my country?
Enoch Randy Aikins, the writer, is a Researcher, African Futures and Innovation, Institute for Security Studies (ISS)