Ghana is a religious country and that is a good thing. Nevertheless, our blind quest for God without reason, is contributing to the economic stagnation we face. “God bless our homeland Ghana and make our nation great and strong.” We sing these words declaring our independence from Great Britain while believing that God will make a way for good things to happen, even as God has already blessed us to succeed in everyway imaginable.

In fact, it comes across as though we perceive God as a loyal servant who should bring good things when we ask, even without input. It appears we forgot or simply do not know that God endowed us with talent and natural resources to control our own destiny. If we understand this truth, why would our national anthem speak otherwise?

The Bible says for the lack of knowledge God's people perish. Knowledge? It is the diligent exploration of our core capabilities as individuals and as a nation. When we unleash the creativity in us, we can indeed transform our lives and the lives of many across the globe. Therefore, our embrace of religion must include reason and devotion to work for the things we need.

The Bible also has it that “In the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the word was God.” This means that to every action, there is an imaginative word. This explains why we must inspire ourselves and our future with the right words. Words that would spur us in the right direction and illumine our inner selves for greatness.

We cannot fold our arms and expect great things to come to us. We cannot send the wrong message and expect the right response. We cannot cross our fingers in sheer hopes of achieving higher standards of living or cast our fate in the blind might of juju to free us from the shackles of poverty and the cloud of ignorance upon us.

We must instill in ourselves the winning ideology that creativity is the answer to higher living standards, even as we embrace entrepreneurial capitalism for peace and prosperity in Ghana. Let's revise our national anthem as "God blessed our homeland Ghana, let's make our nation great and strong.". For the greatness we seek, depends on what and how we build Ghana.

In conclusion, we must return to our roots in practice of religion, be it Christianity, Islam, African traditional religion or Tino'ono the religion of the ancient Egyptian. We must first practice sound culture and strive to improve upon our ways.

We are Africans. Therefore, allowing extraneous norms to deprive us of being African, deprives us of being creative. Let this be the riveting moment when we revise the national anthem of Ghana from "…. God bless our homeland Ghana and make our nation great and strong." to "…. God blessed our homeland Ghana, let's make our nation great and strong." Yes indeed, with an empowering message, we inspire our people, unleash our creativity and build Ghana for all.



Francis Aka-ebila Aka-eri

Someri21@yahoo.com