The Voice of the Youth Time with Richard Obeng Mensah borncapy@yahoo.com

Children are natural mimics. They are like their parents in spite of every attempt to teach them good manners – Anonymous

Yesterday’s Ghana is embodied in her history. The history of Ghana is simply great – politically, she successfully pioneered and championed the struggle for national liberation in Africa. In Today’s Ghana, every attempt is being made to further champion African excellence, especially in the political arena. The future prospect of Ghana is starry because she is still endowed with valuable natural resources such as oil, timber, gold, diamond, bauxite, manganese and cocoa. Aside these, she can relatively boast of intellectuals and abundant human resources. Lastly, over a decade now, Ghana continues to enjoy a relative political stability. Yet the average Ghanaian is in despair as to how Ghana would be tomorrow. How will Tomorrow’s Ghana be?

Today’s Ghana is the product of Yesterday’s Ghana. Therefore, Tomorrow’s Ghana will be dependent upon the Ghana of Today. Suffice to say, children of Today’s Ghana are her functional leaders and her great positional leaders of Tomorrow’s Ghana. It therefore goes without saying that whether or not the future of Ghana would be bright will highly depend on how we build upon Today’s Ghana. Therefore, in formulating and implementing realistic policies towards the vision of achieving excellence in all fields of endeavour, the youth must be borne in mind. One of the surest ways of doing this is when persons (leaders) who know the way, go the way and show the way, do so in an exemplary manner.

Monuments fall, infrastructures fracture, sound economic policies may not stand the test of time, but character creates and survives. It therefore follows that Ghana can secure her gains in yesterday and today, as well as her future prospects, for the benefit of posterity, if her positional political leaders and statesmen lead exemplary lifestyle, in words and in deeds to instill the sense of positive attitudes and character traits in the citizenry, especially in the youth. The only assured way of moving Ghana forward or in the right direction props on the fact that persons to lead Ghanaians in that direction must rightly do so in both refined words and admirable actions. This is because the movement in any particular direction (positive) is not so important, but how the movement is conducted is what matters the most. Indeed, you may get to the Promised Land without having what it takes to possess and use its resources wisely. It is worth noting that if you get yourself into any environment by cheating, you can only survive there by cheating, nothing less; nothing more. Therefore, the youth in Ghana should be shown the right way in the right way and by the right persons. This will not only prepare the youth to face squarely the challenges that may threaten our growth and development in future, but more importantly, equip them to rightly move on with the baton. Besides, Ghana would then be able to truly measure her leadership because leadership is measured by succession.

People, naturally, will do what they see, not necessarily the good things they hear. Consequently, it is not enough for a leader to preach the ‘Good News’ or be inspirational. Actions worth emulating must activate the good intentions of those sanguine words into reality. The words of every true leader should have the force of positively influencing his followers to do exploit. The only way a good leader can achieve this feat is, first, doing what he thinks the followers must do and then motivate them to do likewise or better, by guarding them with his experience.

Today in Ghana, the average man seems to have lost total confidence in our political leaders and partisan politics. For most people, politics is a “dirty game,” hence they prefer to slam the door of their minds on everything that has to do with it. Such persons perceive politicians to be liars, selfish, greedy, wicked, ingrate, insensitive and above all hypocrites! Indeed, these lamentations are most regrettable. It is a sad commentary, however, that the youth of Today’s Ghana seem to be growing in a polluted political environment. This is because the attitude of especially some of our political leaders leaves so much to be desired. Their conducts most often are inconsistent with their status and their ‘Gospel’ messages. Priority on the list of their scale of preference is needless promotion and defence of their political agenda, which usually do not represent national interest. The ‘future leaders’ may therefore end up replicating these negative conducts. We often ignore the fact that the youth are taking after us by listening to our comments and watching our conducts. After 50 years of our enviable political independence, Ghana is still battling with political insincerity in the form of blame games with the Government and the minority parties being the chief architects.

On the contrary, it is high time our political leaders accepted the fact that politics is not a game. Even if it is dogmatically asserted as a game, it should not be played by anybody and anyhow! This is because partisan politics is a serious affair that affects mankind in all endeavours. In addition, politics is neither a business nor the pursuit of the devil. It is a noble pursuit, which should be undertaken by people with unadulterated love for the country, persons with vision and entrusted mission. Political office is certainly not a place for political vendetta and machismo, but only a podium and an opportunity to positively influence the Ghanaian society to ignite the needed transformation and the right reformation. Truly, the prospect of Tomorrow’s Ghana should be measured by the kind of conduct being displayed within the political ring. As it stands now, the story is too far from perfect. Change we must! Without attitudinal change, any trumpeted political change is in fact changeless, deceptive and meaningless.

To sum up, the political leaders of Ghana must be seen to be trustworthy, candid and fair-minded. This will not only generate the needed trust and cooperation of Ghanaians in building mother Ghana, but also promote and sustain the true spirit of nationalism. We need to see more positive character traits in our political system from our beloved surviving ex-presidents: Messrs J.J Rawlings and J.A Kufour, since they are, unassailably, our grandparents and in all respect the elders of this great nation. On the part of His Excellency J.E.A Mills and his team, as well as the leaders of the various political parties, kindly be mindful of the fact that your positive actions will speak better than your mere words. To fellow Ghanaians, if there is any dirt in our political system, let us help in its clean-up crusade to achieve political sanity. With the right attitude, time and effort, we can deodorize and declare light into our political system which seems to be full of darkness. Truly, attitude is everything. I hope our political leaders are sincerely listening to the unpretentious words of this article. Long live Ghana. Long live Africa! Let’s meet another day to reason together about the state of our great homeland, Ghana.

The writer is the author of Persecutions is Promotions and If You Think of Your Opposition You Lose Your Position. He is also the 2009 National Best Student Author/Writer.