In the Bible it is written that a new Pharaoh came to power who did not know anything about Joseph nor the Israelites so he made new laws that increased the amount of work the Israelites had to do. The amount of bricks they had to make on daily basis increased and their slave masters were given more powers to make it harder for them to get the straw to make the bricks and the people of Israel started to complain but nobody listened to them. Their groaning was within themselves but when they realized talking and complaining amongst themselves would not ameliorate the pain, they called on the LORD and God listened and sent his servant Moses to rescue them from slavery.

Once upon a time, in the 17th Century, our forefathers in the West African coast, later to be named the Colony of the Gold Coast by the Portuguese, woke up one morning to find that the whole Coast of the land had been occupied by a pale skinned people who had come to colonise them and trade them in as slaves and to loot all the natural resources the land possessed. (For the sake of this article, let us forget about the tribal wars that were going on all over the land which would later be united to form the Gold Coast and the present day Ghana). They had their own gods in the form of stools, stones, skins etc. but these pale skinned people later to be identified as Europeans, introduced them to the BIBLE and the few that embraced the Bible realized they could call upon this new God which is contained in the Bible they have been introduced to by the Europeans and he would answer them so that the slavery, colonisation, plundering of their natural resources would stop.

For well over three hundred years, nothing happened even though there had been world-wide abolishment of slavery; the Europeans would not give them their freedom. Matters came to a head because sometime in 1948, a revolutionary and visionary, Kwame Nkrumah who had had the privilege of the Whiteman’s education in the USA and the United Kingdom was brought back to the then Gold Coast by the leader of the only resistance movement that was then agitating for the colony’s independence, the NLM. As a visionary, he saw that the pace for independence would be attained only if radical methods were applied and he formed a new movement and used the ordinary people of the land, the unemployed, students, workers, farmers and traders and started boycotts, sit-ins and protests and God so good in 1957, their prayers were answered and the Europeans, whom we had always assumed to be pale skinned people but who called themselves whites, gave us the freedom our forefathers fought very hard with their lives and bloodshed.

What puzzles me now is that Ghanaians are behaving like the Israelites did even after Moses had rescued them through the Strong-Arm of the LORD from Slavery in Egypt.

We have forgotten so soon all that history told us about the sacrifices people before us made in order for us to be independent. We are still crying as if we are still in Egypt and going through Slavery and colonialism just because, we have trampled under our feet that Strong arm of the LORD and each one has gone their own way. What do we expect from God, if he were to ask the Ghanaian, you are always calling on my name what do you as a nation want me to do? I promised the Israelite a land that was rich with milk and honey and I have equally given Ghana, a land flowing with all the resources on this earth. He will say I have given you Gold, Manganese, Bauxite, Timber, Rivers, Streams and the ocean and a lot of individual human talents that could be applied to all these resources to make your LAND the richest in Africa but what have you done with all those resources ? By your prayers I have recently added OIL, the number one commodity all your leaders, past and present have complained to me that they spend a lot of you foreign reserves on.

I gave you a vast array of diamond deposits at Akwatia but what did you do with the diamonds? Instead of opening a diamond marketing board in Ghana to market the diamond for the use of your people you allowed Nigerians to build a beautiful Diamond Marketing Board in Lagos to explore all your diamonds. Do you fault me for creating different tribal groupings in Ghana? Did you as a nation ever sat down to PRAISE me for that? Instead you allowed a few GREEDY POLITICIANS to coin phrases and titles which divides the peoples of this beautiful land I created. I, LORD have not ordained or designed to create enmity among my children in Ghana.

I see all the people on the land now called Ghana as my beautiful people but you have allowed a few so called politicians who have refused to acknowledge me as the supreme God, to bring about TRIBAL warfare.

In your present day Ghana, there is distrust everywhere. The Asanteni is being insulted because in my wisdom I made him what he is. Did I not create the Ayegbeni? Did I in my own wisdom find any fault in him? Did I condemn him so why should anybody condemn what I have not condemned? How about the Okyeni, Okuapemni, Fanteni, Hausani, Nzimani, Frafrani, Dagartini, Nkrani and all those lovely and beautiful people I have endowed Ghana with? Have I ever discriminated against them? So why anybody should utter anything BAD against any person I have created in my own image? All, God wanted the Ghanaian politician to do was to use all the beautiful things God has endowed Ghana with to work to the Glory of Ghana but they saw the commercial side of things, which is after all not bad but have rather allowed GREED and Selfishness and for that matter, the resources have never been applied in any reasonable manner but plundered and misused to satisfy only about 5% of the population. Those who have been to Achimota, Adisadel, Opoku Ware,Prempeh, Legon, Cape Coat and Tech., the school mate culture. Is that my making?

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I have never in my life seen any home in Ghana where the ancestors left Gold as an inheritance to the family that the people are poor. Go to Johannesburg and see what the White people there did with the Gold money. Where is Ghana’s Gold? What did Gold achieve for the people of Obuase ? How on earth do we pride ourselves as the GOLD COAST and yet have to queue with other nations that do not have any resources to borrow money from abroad so that we can eat ONE MEAL A DAY? There is something wrong about the country called Ghana and I don’t trust it is the duty of politicians to fix.

For 52 years, they have come in various disguises, they come under the guise of the military, they have come as Professional Politicians, they have come as lawyers and now they have come as teachers or professors but the end rest is the same. We need psychologists to remove all the wrong notions we had about ruling a country and go back to basics by resetting our MIND. Our ATTITUDES need a fundamental renewal and shake-up because we have not moved with times, we are still putting new wines into old wine skins and we expect that to hold without bursting. The time has come for Ghana to move away from the winner take all type of government. We need a type of government that will blend the resources of our country, talents, human and material for our development.

Our national development agenda or programmes should not be set by a political party but it should be formulated by everybody called a Ghanaian, through inputs from local level to national level and our elections should be based on the party that is closest in working the development agenda and programmes. Ghana should by now be too ADVANCED for one president to decide everything in the country. That is not democratic because democracy does not stop the moment elections are concluded, they start the moment a new government is in power: A government by the people and for the people. *It should never be a government by a political party and for a political party. *

Changing our attitudes as I have already indicated, “Oh, oye ohoho”(Oh he is stranger) “and we don’t treat a stranger that way” so in the end, the stranger who knows nothing about what our forefathers went through to gain us our independence, ends up being carried SHOULDER HIGH by the Ghanaian because in Ghana the stranger/foreigner is always the master and boss. Once you are a stranger, we don’t mind giving you our seat of government for free. It is not because of our Love for the stranger but it is because of our attitude of jealousy, envy, hatred, enmity for ourselves after all when the stranger becomes rich he takes it to his country, that is the usual slogan.

The “Enye hwee” mentality. We don’t seem to care about anything. Even if you put a knife into his throat instead of fighting to free himself, the Ghanaian would say: ENYE HWEE. But meanwhile they will be feeling the pain inside. Pastor Mensah Otabil says it is good to be a lamb (humility) but we should allow the Lion in us to show at all times (Power and Strength). The time has come for us to face the challenges of the modern world and strife to achieve something for our country by engaging the Ghanaian politician on modern issues, always reminding them that, it is not enough to give us: Bad roads, disused public toilets, congested classrooms, corrupt school administrations, unprofessional police service, arrogant cabinet ministers, dilapidated and unhygienic hospitals. We are 22million able bodied Ghanaians and they, just fewer than 10 000 politicians need our power transfer before they have any LIFE. Let us think about it.

Ghana, God has long answered your prayers but it is up to you to open up your MINDS to receive all that you asked from the LORD, God.

Kofi Owusu-Ansah