A modest proposal
Permit me to make this modest proposal: Let us take a week off, sit back and reflect on our ways as a nation.
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By this proposal, I am calling on the President to declare a state of emergency of some sort for at least a week; shut down his government and leave only the essential services running so we can begin examining our lives as a nation. Or better still, adopt some national holiday for that purpose.
I have learnt over the years that there are two kinds of challenges that confront us as a nation; there is the predictable and recurrent challenge that hits us every year and there is the unpredictable and unexpected.
It is pardonable when we trip over our shoelaces when it comes to resolving the unpredictable occurrences that sometimes befall us. But when we consider the fact that we keep reacting to the same old happenings in the same old fashion, I can’t help but plead that we take a week off to consider our ways as a nation.
A good starting point will be the rains. The question I have been asking myself is whether we are going to have an incident-free raining season when the rains set in.
Almost every year, the rains come. Properties are destroyed. Lives are lost. Economic activities in the affected areas come to a standstill. Then the politicians in turn act predictably. They visit the victims, accompanied by television crew and assure them of the government’s continual support.
The National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) is called upon to help the affected victims. They in turn would cry out that they are underfunded and the baton is passed on and on till the media decide to turn their attention to something else.
I remember as a boy, the numerous occasions when together with friends we would dash out into the rains, dance in it and search aimlessly for “ice blocks” till we gave up.
Some years afterwards, I find myself reflecting on rains and the only images that come to mind are floods and their impact on human life.
The question still remains: What are we doing differently in order to ensure that life and properties are protected when the rains set in this year? Is it not time to shut down and think of something? After all, there is no point in carrying on when we keep skirting around the same issues for decades.
What makes it even more imperative for the nation to shut down temporarily and ponder upon its ways has to do with the growing distrust and disappointment that a lot of people are having with state institutions.
The simple fact that a non-governmental organisation can have the temerity to accuse parliament of hastily ratifying a contract with foreign oil exploration companies is in itself a sad development.
The Daily Graphic is currently serialising an article entitled “Ghana’s Members of Parliament: Lawmaking Lawbreakers?” At the heart of the piece written by Ace Ankomah is the statement made by the former minority and majority leader in Parliament, Alban Bagbin; which was to the effect that some Members of Parliament collect bribes or rather are given bribes [whichever way] by organisations and individuals sponsoring certain laws in order for policy intents to become laws.
In spite of all that has been said, the response from Parliament has been: “bring us the evidence if you think a Member of Parliament is corrupt.”
I also read with surprise, the admission by the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) that it had at some point in time dipped its hands into accounts that were supposedly frozen because government subvention for that particular period delayed. And such an occurrence is explained away simply under the pretext that the admitted act took place under the tenure of a different head.
Aside the institutional confidence that needs to be rebuilt and reconfigured, I believe we need to believe more in ourselves and harness the local expertise at our disposal rather than always looking abroad for solutions.
Once again, I was surprised to have discovered that Charles Wereko Brobbey sometime back in December 2007 warned of the excessive reliance on the West Africa Gas Pipeline.
When asked about the future of the West African Gas Pipeline in the book, The Economic History of Ghana, he noted “with the West African Gas Pipeline, we should be very careful.
“My recent assessment suggests that even with the gas pipeline, the amount of gas coming from Nigeria is not going to be enough to meet even our short-to-medium term needs for the power generation systems that are being put up in the country at the moment.
“Unless Nigeria is willing to provide more gas, or we are prepared to build another pipeline from there to send more gas, a fairly major constraint is going to come from that project fairly soon.” And that is the exact situation we have on our hands.
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It is true that the expression “an unexamined life is not worth living” has become a cliché, but I suggest, whenever and however, we make the time to reflect deeply on our ways as a nation, the missed opportunities, the underutilised human and natural resources and the excessive politicisation that almost always rocks the national vessel. There is no doubt that it would invariably serve us better.
Email: politics_today@yahoo.com