In the midst of plenty, many a Ghanaian suffers poverty and hunger, if I were to be honest with myself to tell the truth to the face of any Ghanaian I come into contact with. This fact has got its own root cause in the unhelpful attitude by the Ghanaian to be always supportive of wrongdoings so long as they are perpetrated by his or her tribesperson or political party.
Ghanaians are very political, tribally loyal and partisan. Most of them don’t care about the adversities of being overly partisan as long as the political party they belong to wins political power to govern the nation. This behaviour or thinking by the Ghanaian is honestly speaking, absurdity in the highest degree.
It is an undisputable fact that most Ghanaian politicians, traditional overlords, public service heads and those elected or appointed into positions of leadership are corrupt. They abuse their powers to enrich themselves and their family members and cronies. They abuse their powers to bend justice in their favour. In all such instances, we have many a Ghanaian being supportive of them because they are their tribesmen, party members or traditional leaders.
We have elected to be enslaved in our own land by the few people that we have given them the chance to lead us. What type of thinking is that, if I may ask? Is it typical Ghanaian-mindedness or sheer ignorance and stupidity?
We have to love more our nation and be proud of it than loving our political parties and being proud of them at the expense of the collective interests of the nation and the people.
It is unimaginable the volume of corruption perpetrated and perpetuated or perceived to have been executed, by our politicians in whose hands we have entrusted our welfare and the proper governance of the nation, yet we are still blindly supportive of them. This is not on.
The country faces a bleak future if we fail to strive to put in place structures to reverse the trend of affairs. The corruption being masterminded and orchestrated by our politicians without the least shame cannot, and should not, be allowed to continue forever to our own detriment.
Should it be allowed to continue, then believe you me, we are not only digging, but also, rushing into our early graves as a people and a nation. As myopic as we are as a people, we cannot foresee the hidden agenda by some powers that be, to subjugate us as a people and a sovereign nation.
For our partisanship, we do support the destruction of our ecology, principally caused by the numerous difficult to control illegal surface mining activities, otherwise called ‘galamsey’. While one political party is desirous to fight it, the other for the likelihood of winning political power based on not any solid policies and programmes but populism, is encouraging ‘galamsey’ activities.
An Akan adage has it that, “A fetish priest who calls for the destruction of his town also becomes a victim when the town is destroyed because he resides there”. Those Ghanaians who fanatically support their political parties even in the glare evidence of their corrupt practices, stand to suffer when the nation is thrown into a catastrophe occasioned by the magnitude of the said corrupt practices.
By Rockson Adofo