Founder and leader of the International Central Gospel Church, Pastor Mensa Otabil has attributed Ghana’s current poor economic state and lack of evident development to the ‘complaining attitudes’ and ‘backward mindsets’ of its leaders and citizens.
Speaking at the annual National convocation of the Springboard Roadshow; 2017 edition, Pastor Otabil indicated that Ghanaians and Africans have refused to evolve with new changes emerging worldwide, instead they focus on past achievements and complain about everything, this he said is the biggest factor affecting the country and Africa as a whole.
“The biggest factor is that we want the rules to always be the same, and when the rules change we complain……20 years, 50 years ago, the rules were like this, they have to bring it back …..when the rules change, and the configuration changes, we spend the rest of our time complaining about the change which has happened, and never studying how to play the new game”.
According to him, Ghana is unable to compete with the rest of the world because we cling to the archaic, conventional and unimproved methods of doing things in the name of culture and tradition and the same old ideas and mindset remain government after government.
“sometimes in trying to play the game, we always want to go backwards into what we comfortable call “culture”, this is our culture, this is how we were before the white man messed us up, this is how we used to dress before they messed us up, this is how we used to manage our lives….this is the biggest reason why we are not able to play the game with the rest of the world. ”
Pastor Otabil maintained that the economy and the state of affairs in the country will remain unaffected until there is a change in the mindsets and attitudes of Ghanaians beginning with the leaders. He advised that the front-runners be innovative, learn to adapt to change and find new and better ways of doing things; this he says is the only way Ghana will experience massive progress and development.
He also urged policy makers and leaders to abandon their comfort and conventional, traditional ways of doing things and advance as the world evolves.
“When the game changes, you need to change along, until you are able to do that, you will always be behind and if we do that, I guarantee you, Ghana can change in the next 10 years. For us as Africans, we have to learn to quickly learn, quickly move, quickly adapt, when the rules of the world changes, the economic rules change, the global rules change, the trade rules change, we still play it the same…so policy makers can’t even think”, he said.