Part One

The Development Focus in Our Country Ghana: I may be wrong I may be right; many people, including myself, believe that Ghana is an incredible place of abundant future and hope. However, we need to create better avenues and conditions for the realisation of such a promising future, and to do that, it is important to stress that our individual and collective energies and resources should be channelled to achieve accelerated development. Ghana’s developmental challenge should be to promote broad-based development within a stable and peaceful environment with the ultimate aim of increasing the standard of living of its citizens.

Fellow Ghanaians we are not there yet because of the following problems. As my topic suggests, I will tackle this issue from the angle of the roles of competence, loyalty and sycophancy in our developmental efforts.

My question is: can Ghana overcome sycophants in our political and developmental challenges? Yes, it can be overcome only if we the youth stand firmly against the causes, perpetrators, effects or danger of it, and be ready to acknowledge it as a social disease that needs to be eradicated objectively and with a common purpose by all.

The relationship that exists among competence, loyalty and sycophancy: loyalty, competence, and sycophancy can to be related in view of the fact that they complement each other or undermine each other depending on the combination. Of the three: competence, loyalty and sycophancy, only sycophancy has a negative connotation; the first two are positives unless one misuses them. Sycophancy has the more serious implication for the governance and the development whether at the institutional, corporate or national level.

However, it is not uncommon to find incompetent people to be appointed to hold powerful, especially political, positions in our country Ghana all in the name of loyalty. Although it has been the predominant way for a long time, I believe that as a nation it is time we took a closer look at these issues and deal with them effectively. It is my strong conviction that the cost to this economy and our developmental efforts by the misconstruction between loyalty and sycophancy in our country (and at the times the intentional setting aside of competence in favour of other considerations) demands that this topic be discussed to help shape the way forward. Thus advancing our constitutional democracy and the socio-economic benefits of our individual and collective interests.

I would like to use this article to give the definition of sycophancy in my words. Sycophancy is any attempt to please someone in authority in order to gain personal advantage. A sycophant is therefore a servile person who, acting in his or her own self-interest, attempts to win favour by flattering one or more influential persons, with an undertone that these actions are executed at the cost of his or her own personal pride. The culture of sycophancy is becoming a growing phenomenon in Ghana today.

Sycophants summersault to the new government as soon as the handing over ceremony is complete or even as soon as election results are announced, pretending to be more loyal than the long-toiling genuine party members and sympathisers whose support and activities brought victory to the winning party. I believe that many sycophants are warming themselves to president John Evans Attah-Mills.

A true loyal citizen of the country is no doubt a patriotic one. In every country where the majority of the citizens exhibit a sense of patriotism or loyalty, it would mean that they would be faithful, law-abiding, disciplined and committed to every national cause. Once the citizens apply these qualities in their daily national lives, there would be accountability, hard work, increased productivity, less bribery and corruption, and as a result, the development of the country politically, economically and socially would be enhanced.

Thank you and may the almighty God help us all to stop sycophantic loyalty.

“With God the Impossible can be Possible”.

Ibrahim Tanko. (Business Student}

aaibrahimtanko@yahoo.com

+4407556018773