Over the past decades, we have, as a nation, concentrated our efforts on ‘bread and kose’ issues everyday of our public discourse. That is, our public discussions have been dominated by issues of the economy and the material and physical well-being of the citizenry. Why not? A parent wakes up and his major concern is how to feed the children. Even when he is left with the last five cedi note, he wants to manage that money to ensure some breakfast for the kids before he thinks about their other needs.
The rise and fall of governments have hinged on the state of the economy at any given point in time. Public discussions have predominantly centred around the rate of inflation, interest rates from the banks, unemployment levels, wages and cost of living and all the other economic indices used every day. Surely, these are very important matters for the citizenry if they are to improve their standards of living. We need the requisite direction, encouragement and support to be productive to generate the goods and services that we all require to improve our lives.
The individual needs of the household are what is aggregated into the national needs. When I was a child, there was a phenomenon in our society. Many poor people, while struggling to support their children with their basic needs, ensured discipline in their homes. Many a child from a poor home could not stay out till the parents came back home. We knew when to go out and play and when to come home to do the domestic chores.
There were also some average to middle class parents who were so much engrossed in their businesses, particularly the local construction contractors and timber merchants, so much so that they had very little time to observe what their children were doing, both at home and outside of the home. Theirs were to provide the resources to maintain their material and physical wellbeing. Many of them, in my generation, fared poorly in school and very badly later in life, particularly when the businesses of the parents collapsed.
In some cases and verifiable instances, those children from poorer backgrounds but whose parents instilled discipline in them ended up doing better in schools and in life subsequently. Dear reader, please note that I have not generalized the situation since some children of many middle and upper class people, particularly the elite also made good standing of themselves by taking advantage of the opportunities that were available to them.
Today, a majority of parents are more focused on looking for the almighty ‘money’ from wherever it is to take care of the home and in the process, have lost the other responsibility of ensuring discipline and proper upbringing of the children. Many children from our homes have lost discipline and decency, and to them, ‘nothing is but what is abhorred’ by decent minded members of the societies. We look on unconcerned.
The nation itself has been trapped in this ugly situation but the urgent need to seek first the economic kingdom, after which the society cannot be controlled or regulated. There is so much impunity in this country to the extent that it is no longer praiseworthy to do what is right. All of these sadly begun with our Fourth Republican democratic dispensation when politicians put their finger into every social pie in order to win their votes. Independent, sometimes purely private institutions, suddenly became wings of political parties.
Two of such institutions which gained political patronage at the onset of the 4th Republic were the Ghana Private Road Transport Union (GPRTU) and the Cocoa and Coffee Farmers Association. Many more joined the political bandwagon just for small mercies which went primarily to their leaders only, many of whom are late.
As a result of this octopus politics, many members of some otherwise nonpolitical organizations spoke and acted like politicians. Since then, these and many more ordinary nonpolitical bodies have become overtly political and some of their members have used their relationships with political office holders to add to the impunity of our society, a very sad spectacle.
A few days to the Easter holiday celebration, an official from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had cautioned and admonished Christians not to take advantage of the festive occasion to make unnecessary noise and that any group of people or churches who increase their noise levels unnecessarily will be dealt with. The response from one of the modern day Dr. Pastors and Reverend Drs. of suspicious educational background had the effrontery to tell the EPA official to deal with those herbal medicine peddlers in our cities who make noise everyday. In effect, the EPA official has no right to ask churches not to make noise because the herbal medicine peddlers are making a lot of noise which the EPA has not said anything about.
Subsequently, the Minister for Environment himself, Prof. Kwabena Frimpong also suggested to our Muslim brothers to use text messages as a way of announcing their prayer time for their the dawn prayers. He was also not spared a moderate diatribe by some Muslim adherents arguing that the call to prayers at dawn is a religious edict. That is true and fine. However, our Muslim brothers and sisters need to appreciate that we are not all Muslims and therefore cannot be bound by Islamic rules and regulations.
I must also state that Christians are making more noise in this country than the Muslims. These days, Christian worships are no longer made on Sundays, it is done 24 hours in the week. Every corner one lives, there is one form of a church or the other using public address systems no matter the size of the church building and the number of worshippers. Their so called ‘All Night’ Worships are the most dangerous practices in this country as far as our health are concerned.
I have a friend whose neighbourhood is surrounded by churches who in their worship, compete as to who shouts the most. People living there cannot sleep, they are developing high blood pressure and insomnia. All in the name of worship. And there are so many of these throughout the country and our laws, some of them enforceable by EPA, have slept all these years just for an officer to come and admonish churches on Easter festivities. While wouldn’t he have those response from some fake dubious pastor?
The truth of the matter is that the Muslims create less noise in their worship after using the public address system to call to prayers, the actual prayers that take longer time are done quietly. Indeed, the dawn call to prayers even serve as time for people who want to get up early in the morning to travel or do other things. These days, mourners play loud music from 6pm to 6am, disturbing the neighbourhood because a relation is dead. Do the noise pollution laws not apply in these instances?
In all these, it is the institutions of state clothed with the powers to ensure decency in our social, political and economic conducts that have failed. We see people build in water courses, we say nothing, we do nothing. Spaces earmarked for public use are encroached, we observe them, or aid the encroachers in their lawless escapade. We sit down for ordinary problems to grow into issues and virtually become crisis before we act.
While we keep our eyes on the economic and social and political needs of the people, if we do not ensure discipline side by side with the issues above, this nation will be wealthy but with greatly undisciplined and lawless citizenry, uncontrolled in what they do by any cultural and moral values and unregulated by laws that do not work. We will be like a father who spent all his time looking for money without looking at how the children grow, in terms of values, morals and discipline.
He gets all the wealth but has spoilt useless children to bequeath his huge wealth to. Nations which have prospered have discipline, honesty and adherence to certain core values as ingredients in their prosperity. They are law abiding.
Daavi, please give me four tots.
From Kwesi Biney