Opinions of Tuesday, 17 July 2018

Columnist: Francis Kumadoh

How wired are we as a people?

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Ghana is a beautiful country with beautiful people, and we love our country just like how other citizens love their countries. But it seems the Ghanaian is wired differently from the others. We do things differently, in fact sometimes these same things are done without any fuss in the other countries but we choose to attach some level of pomposity and opulence to it. I then start to ask myself this question, “How wired are we as a people?”

In most developed or developing countries their governments have taken several measures to deal with sanitation. Some of these countries have proper sewerage systems, waste disposal systems, and recycling plants that help them to manage the waste. But here we are as a people, we don’t help ourselves when it comes to managing waste and keeping our environment clean. We seem to have a penchant for blaming government for everything. We dump waste into drains and when it rains and floods happen and lives are lost and properties are destroyed, we appeal to the government to come to our aid. We connive with Town and Country Planning officials who look the other way for us to build in water ways and unauthorized areas, when demolition exercises are to be carried out by the relevant authorities we have the nerve to demand compensation.

We solve all our problems on radio and at workshops and seminars. We take delight in talking more and taking less action. We also take delight in hailing corrupt politicians without investigating their source of wealth. Most of our churches and their leaders woo their congregants with prosperity messages instead of salvation and repentance messages. The churches also hail these corrupt politicians and give them prominent positions.

We also show so much interest in sensational issues but the funny and interesting fact is that, after hyping the issues in the media for one or two weeks, we quickly forget about them. Every week an issue comes up and we discuss it with all manner of so called serial callers and social commentators and experts voicing their opinions. Simply put, the system is seriously messed up and we as a people in particular and the country in general needs total rewiring, retooling and recalibration