Opinions of Sunday, 7 July 2024
Columnist: Rockson Adofo
No wonder that Ghana like almost all her sister-African countries is suffering from economic and talent haemorrhage, hence lagging light years behind their white contemporaries in everything that justifies and sustains human existence on this planetary earth.
The Ghanaian mentality of individualism in pursuit of wealth, enjoyment, and satisfaction, is the bane of their nation’s progress and respect as a people.
Many a time will one pursuing a course of collective interests of the nation be told by their family members or friends to mind his or her own self-interests.
They will tell you, “Fight for yourself” and leave others or the nation alone for everyone is fighting for themselves and their interests”. They may continue to say, “You as one person will never be able to make any decisive positive changes of collective interest in Ghana same as one tree cannot make a forest, so you had better pursue your personal interests.”
What a deplorable mentality of, and by, the Ghanaian!
If our white contemporaries whose nations have become economic magnets to pull the African talents, causing a brain drain in Africa, had entertained the same selfish notions, their countries would not have become as prosperous as they are today to attract Ghanaians and Africans to become self-made slaves in their white man’s countries.
They thought as, and continue to think as, “one people, one nation and with a common destiny”. By this philosophy of theirs, they have succeeded and continue to succeed as a people to make their nations great to the envy of the struggling and less intelligent Africans whose nations are mocked as “shitholes”.
Fellow Ghanaians, please let us be conscious about our collective interests as a people and a nation, the only way we can come out of our current near-perpetual encasement in the socio-economic abyss. Until we think as one people, one nation, and aspire to attain collective interests instead of selfish interests, we stand doomed as a people.
Had it not been for the pursuit of our personal vainglorious interests, our politicians would not engage in malfeasances and malpractices, corruption, and embezzlement of public funds at any opportunity they get. By this attitude of theirs and all those into politics, are they not ruining the economy and the image of Ghana or Africa?
Fellow Ghanaians, please, let us encourage ourselves to become people in pursuit of collective interests rather than people in pursuit of selfish personal interests.
Many a time had I been dissuaded from pursuing an action of collective interests to Kumawuman when I took on a dishonest bully, a traditional overlord that had usurped the rights and properties of the locality. They advised me to mind my own business and leave Kumawuman alone as there was not much for me to achieve.
Sad though, the mentality of Ghanaians. Some could even go to side with the party doing wrong, all out of ignorance or sheer wickedness.
Finally, I call on fellow Ghanaians to be mindful of their self-defeating actions that ruin their nation and themselves as a people, reducing us to subhuman by empirical observations.
Our selfish aspirations devoid of any room for manoeuvrability for our collective interests as a people will continue to self-harm us as a nation.
Many a Ghanaian is today into politics, not to serve but to be served; giving them a blank cheque to steal and commit crimes with impunity.
Please, don’t accuse me of being a coconut. No, I am not, but telling you the truth to your face.
Let us have collective thoughts and aspirations to succeed as a people.
The writer, a proud and fearless son of Kumawu/Asiampa soil has spoken. He will continue to speak the truth whether it hurts or not, for it is long overdue that Ghanaians were told the truth about why we are not advancing as a country and people.
I call on fellow Ghanaians to support Dr Bawumia and Napo in their political quest to come to power to serve the nation come the 2024 general election. They are the lesser evil when comparing two extreme evils, thus, Dr. Bawumia/NAPO and Mr John Mahama/Professor Naana Opoku-Agyemang.