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Ghana@59:
Vision, Dream, Reality or Hallucination?
By Thaddeus
Ulzen, Dr.
March 19,
2016
This is the
week every year that Ghanaians spend in
nostalgia about a real or imagined glorious past
depending on your age and your real life
experiences as a Ghanaian.
This year's
celebrations and the message from the president
make me wish I lived in Dar es Salaam where
President John Magufuli has dispensed with the
charade of celebrating independence and applied
the funds to more urgent needs. I have developed
a previously unknown psychological state best
described as "president envy" on the Freudian
scale of unconscious possibilities.
I do not doubt for a
minute that our President is a very hard working
man but to suggest that Nkrumah's vision has
been realized is either an attempt to amuse us
or a sign of very serious disturbance in the
man's relationship with reality as is
experienced by most ordinary Ghanaians. The
continued rise of mediocrity proceeds at an
alarming pace. The failure of the organizing
committee to deliver a grammatically and
factually correct event brochure for the
Ghana@59 celebrations speaks for itself.
I am more interested
in H.E. Mahama's own vision and his game plan
for transporting us to his own Canaan. Nkrumah's
vision has not been attained either in Ghana or
in Africa as a whole, largely because of an
epidemic of horribly short-sighted leadership
across the continent for at least 5 decades.
Uganda’s Museveni is an on-going example.
On every metric, we
are nowhere near Nkrumah's Ghana of the past or
his vision for the future. We are energy
insufficient, we do not have high quality
universal education, we have one of the
filthiest capitals on the continent, our
universities are no longer the best in Africa,
our railway system has collapsed, we have no
national carrier, the Black Star Line is long
gone and law abiding Ghanaians are viewed as an
anachronism in our society. There is a complete
breakdown of law and order because successive
governments have failed to enforce our laws to
support institutional growth and efficiency. We
have moved from the major leagues to the minor
leagues in so many aspects of national life.
If we are going to
realize the vision of our founding president, we
must first be truthful to ourselves in our
assessment of our failures because without that,
we will not find the appropriate prescriptions
for our national malady.
The president must
level with the people on the true state of
affairs. The president invites us all to share
in the failures of the leadership even though
the people are bearing the brunt of the mess
created by poor stewardship of our national
affairs. It is now common place for barely
literate party apparatchiks from both major
parties to take to the airwaves and drown the
contributions of many knowledgeable Ghanaians to
the cheering admiration of listeners and
viewers. As for the Nkrumaist parties, they are
small, some are divided within themselves and
they have so far been unable to overcome their
differences to champion Nkrumah’s vision. How is
Nkrumah's vision, which was rooted in academic
rigor have been achieved when true evidence-
based contributions are routinely dismissed for
political expediency?
The 2016 State of the
Nation (SONA) address was described as evidence
- based by pundits, talking heads and
journalists who clearly do not understand the
very specific use of that term in social
sciences and medicine. The gesture of inviting
ordinary citizens who are beneficiaries of
government programs added a nice touch to the
proceedings but that is anecdotal evidence. That
is the weakest level of evidentiary support for
any program subject to an evaluation of its
outcomes. The presentation of hard data with
verifiable outcome measures is what constitutes
an evidence based accounting of programs. That
was largely absent from the SONA address. Not to
digress, but the conduct of the parliamentarians
during the SONA was nothing short of
disgraceful. The disrespect shown to the
president, Mr. Mahama, the holder of the highest
office in the land and the legislative body
itself was an all-time low for parliamentary
history in Ghana. It was a vivid example of how
professionalism has fled our imagination and our
shores.
Let's not throw
around words loosely. If journalists want to
verify the data presented by the president, they
should do so by actually going around the
country and checking on the data presented to
determine if it is factual. I for one, do not
understand the statement,”123 of community day
schools are in various stages of completion".
Are most of them 90% complete or 15% complete?
That is the level of evidence we are owed as
taxpayers. Resolving such a conundrum is the
work of real investigative journalism. This
should not be difficult to achieve with all the
photo - ready mobile technology available to us
these days.
This is an election
year so the Government's record should not be
vaguely presented to the people. We are at a
stage of development that requires truly skilled
managers in many specialized fields to make
Nkrumah's vision of an economy free of
neo-colonial interests a reality. The country
continues to operate in a crisis response mode
instead of a manner guided by critical thinking,
and population –based planning.
Our agricultural and
manufacturing sectors which should be our
bulwark against imports, are not organized and
resourced enough to protect the value of our
currency. Integration of these sectors, at
various levels with the education system, should
form the basis for planning to solve youth
unemployment through human resource development
in a manner syntonic with our needs as a nation.
The education system stopped serving our
development goals the moment it became
politicized and requires a new review by
educational experts to rescue it from the abyss
within which it currently rests.
While all politics is
said to be local, all economic activity must be
understood to be global. Any product offered for
local consumption or for export should be of the
highest quality because the global market place
is extremely competitive. Setting the highest
standards and striving to achieve was central to
our national ethos under Kwame Nkrumah. No
excuses were made. He had significant management
failures which should have been lessons for
future presidents who followed. He fully
invested in the children of Ghana and their
future during his tenure. For the gift of the
African Personality he must always be
remembered.
We are still asleep
and many are dreaming. You must be awake to have
vision.
T. P. Manus Ulzen is
Professor & Chair, Department of Psychiatry and
Behavioral Medicine, University of Alabama
School of Medicine (Tuscaloosa Regional Campus)
and author of “Java Hill: An African Journey”: A
Historiography of Ghana.
Email:
tulzen@yahoo.com
Twitter:
@ThaddeusUlzen
www.javahillelmina.com
March 7,
2016 |
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 |
Ghana@59: Vision, Dream, Reality or
Hallucination?
Commentary, March 19, Ghanadot
- Ido
not doubt for a minute that our President is a very hard
working man but to suggest that Nkrumah's vision has
been realized is either an attempt to amuse us or a sign
of very serious disturbance in the man's relationship
with reality as is experienced by most ordinary
Ghanaians.
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